ARSHILE GORKY LEGACY
Although usually labeled an Abstract Expressionist, perhaps Arshile Gorky should instead be considered a direct precursor of the Abstract Expressionists. His combination of Expressionist and Surrealist aesthetics exposed the New York-based artists to the innovative ways of assimilating the predominant European modernist styles of the time. As a major force behind the emergence of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Gorky helped to establish New York as an important arts center and, by extension, the United States as the cultural capital of the postwar world.
In particular, Gorky maintained a close personal and professional friendship with De Kooning. It is believed that Gorky introduced De Kooning to the insertion of personally relevant pictorial elements within his work. Moreover, Gorky's approach to assembling his compositions, apparently spontaneous, yet carefully planned, became a methodological template for many Abstract Expressionists, including De Kooning and Jackson Pollock, whose fiercely energetic and seemingly unstructured brushwork was often carefully conceived through a set of preliminary sketches. Gorky's emphasis on the process of painting - as he put it himself, "always to keep starting to paint, never finishing painting" - also greatly impacted Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists.