Abstract Expressionism vs Art Informel
抽象表現主義 / アンフォルメル
Both scatter paint across a large surface at the speed of the body, and in both no depicted subject is left on the canvas.
How to tell them apart. In Abstract Expressionism the drips spread evenly over the whole field. In Art Informel paint the color of earth and ash rises in lumps.
Abstract Expressionism
%20-%20Franz%20Kline%20(1910-1962)%20(31087622617).jpg)
On huge canvases, with bodily strokes, drips, stains and broad fields of color, what stays on the surface is the act of painting and strong inner feeling rather than a depicted subject.
Art Informel
%20-%20Jean%20Dubuffet%20(1901%20-%201985)%20(23420452431).jpg)
A postwar European abstraction that refused both geometric composition and figuration, making the surface out of matter and the traces of the act itself. Thickly piled paint, scratches, stains and tears present a state before form. The source of all design that pushes the physicality of material to the front. Tachisme names the same paintings seen from the speed of the gesture, and Lyrical Abstraction names them seen from the lyric side.
| Abstract Expressionism | Art Informel | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1940s–1950s | 1945–1960 |
| Family | Postwar American Art | Postwar Abstract Painting |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Vast canvases / Bodily brushwork / All-over composition / Drips and stains | Traces of impasto and scratching / Stains that never settle into form / A range of earth and ash tones / Tears and exposure of the support |
| Best used for | Key visuals for concerts and theatre where emotional intensity has to arrive first · Book covers where one huge abstract ground carries the title alone | Texture-led art direction for craft, ceramics or fashion houses · Cover art and interiors where raw matter carries the emotion |
| Type | Keep words to a few and place them clear of the paint | Few words set large, part of them buried in the scratched surface |
| Composition | Refuse a center and carry stroke density to every edge | Centreless fields running to the edge, composed by density rather than by figure |
| Material | Thick paint and poured washes on a large support, drips left visible | Impasto, plaster and tar in earth and ash tones on thick paper, scraped and torn |
| Caution | Scattering energetic strokes as decoration skips each artist's method, the postwar politics and the tie between scale and body, and with neither density nor a record of decisions it reads as a dirty backdrop. | Avoid faking the texture with clean digital filters—the style lives on real material resistance, and simulated grunge reads instantly as decor. |