The School of the Pacific: The Asian Side of the Postwar Transatlantic Exchanges

Abstract

In the 1950s, many people in Paris were talking about a School of the Pacific. The term referred to various artists connected with the West Coast of the United States, including Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and Sam Francis. Parisians praised those artists for the meditative quality of their works, which they contrasted with the action painting of the New York School.  Relying on a systematic study of the reception of American art in postwar France, my paper will show that the artists associated with the Pacific School were then highly visible in Paris, where they enjoyed public and critical favor. Unlike their "European" colleagues from the East Coast, they were deemed to be truly American, because they belonged to the Far West and from there to the Pacific world, and so had their roots not just outside Europe but most importantly in Asia.  In Postwar France, Asian culture played an important role, and many artists and thinkers were deeply influenced by Buddhism and calligraphy. By a complex play of cultural transfers, this interest, fed by several important exhibitions of Chinese and Japanese art, shaped the French reception and interpretation of American art scene of the 1950s.