Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera

Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera begins in the 1940s and extends into the twenty-first century to explore large-scale abstract painting, sculpture, and assemblage through more than fifty works from The Met collection, a selection of loans, and promised gifts and new acquisitions. The installation is anchored by iconic works from The Met collection, including Jackson Pollock's classic "drip" painting Autumn Rhythm (1950), Louise Nevelson's monumental Mrs. N's Palace (1964–77), and Joan Mitchell's panoramic La Vie en Rose (1979). This ongoing and changing display is punctuated with special loans of major works by Helen Frankenthaler, Kazuo Shiraga, Joan Snyder, and Cy Twombly.

In the wake of unprecedented destruction and loss of life during World War II, many painters and sculptors working in the 1940s grew to believe that traditional easel painting and figurative sculpture no longer adequately conveyed the human condition. In this context, numerous artists, including Barnett Newman, Pollock, and others associated with the so-called New York School, were convinced that abstract styles—often on a large scale—most meaningfully evoked contemporary states of being. Many of the artists represented in Epic Abstraction worked in large formats not only to explore aesthetic elements of line, color, shape, and texture, but also to activate scale's metaphoric potential to evoke expansive—"epic"—ideas and subjects, including time, history, nature, the body, and existential concerns of the self.

Epic Abstraction will feature a selection of newly installed works, including major examples by Sam Gilliam, Lee Krasner, and Frank Stella, among others.