ook the importance of the transitional stage that preceded Abstract Expressionism. Finally, Jonathan Fineberg allows for the influence of Surrealism and of European modernism in general. But he views the painting of the 1940s as an important separate transitional phase and, therefore, pays special attention to the transformation of early influences as in the relationships between Pollock and Benton, Rothko and Avery, and Gorky and Kandinsky.
The name Abstract Expressionism was an umbrella term that was usually rejected by the painters to whom it was applied. The New York School, the preferred name, included the gestural artists such as Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and the color-field painters such as Rothko and Barnett Newman. The group included others, such as Gorky, Robert Motherwell and Adolph Gottlieb, who did not fit well into either category. In addition, not all their work was abstract "nor obviously expressive" (Moszynska 141). A comparison of the four art historians' views of Proto-Abstract Expressionist painting can be achieved by examining their approaches to the early work of a gestural painter (Pollock), a color-field painter (Rothko), and one of the artists outside these two categories (Gorky).
Pollock's career provides an excellent example of the manner in which Proto-Abstract Expressionist painting is viewed by the four historians. The works by Pollock that fit into this category are those of the period 1942-1946. Works such as Guardians of the Secret (1943) (Anfam 84-85), The She-Wolf (1943) (Sawica 343), Mural (1943) (Anfam 102-103) and Shimmering Substance (1946) (Moszynska 150) are clearly at the mid-point between Pollock's early work and the gestural painting of the fifties for which he became famous. In some painters, however, the works of this period would simply be considered Abstract-Expressionist. This is the difficulty of grouping early works. In Pollock's case, his final gestural style wa...