ABSTRACT
The painterly “look” was important to early-wave realists, since like that of gesture painting, it conveyed the impression of directness and of honesty. Even more worrisome than Hubert Crehan’s thrust at the very heart of gestural realism was the attack of Greenberg, since he was the most respected of modernist critics in America and an early champion of the second generation. Of greater importance to de Kooning than the degree of representation and of illusion in painting was the openness in attitude and process, an openness that had its primary source in first-generation gesture painting. Older gesture painters also encouraged younger artists to employ representation. Indeed, the young artists were open to what they saw in nature and in the museums in much the same spirit as they reacted to their own painterly gestures. The young artists were attracted by representation because it was different—and thought to be fresher—than the prevalent abstraction.
