Abstract

The problem for this study was to determine if paradigmatic examples of painting in the gestural abstractionist style, sometimes called action painting, reveals parallels to certain aspects of Christian belief. Attendant to the problem was a testing of the applicability of phenomenological criticism in making artistic analyses from a Christian frame of reference. ;The procedure included a study of Christian cosmology, Christian anthropology, Christology, and Christian eschatology. Under these headings the study considered Christian beliefs concerning the supernatural, the creation, time, the spiritual self, personhood of God, the incarnation, the crucifixion, resurrection life, resurrection time and resurrection primordia. Next, five exemplars of gestural abstraction were taken as representative of the style. The examplars are Hans Hofmann's Burst Into Life, Willem DeKooning's Gotham News, Jack Tworkov's Transverse, Jackson Pollock's Lucifer, and Franz Kline's Slate Cross. Each of these was phenomenologically analyzed in order to ascertain the nature of the visual evidence. This evidence was then compared to the findings on Christian belief. ;It was discovered that through gesture, through the evidence of an involvement in process, through materiality, through a manifest spontaneity, through non-representation, and through artistic structure, gestural abstraction is analogous to certain doctrinal positions which are basic to Christian belief. Therefore, gestural abstraction offers believers an opportunity to experience their faith in a heretofore unrecognized source