Skip to main content
Unpublished Paper
American Zeitgeist: Spontaneity in the Work of Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker and Jack Kerouac
(2006)
  • Randall Snyder, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Abstract

During the decade following World War Two, a body of artistic work was created that clearly articulated for the first time, a distinctly American aesthetic, independent of European models. This is not to say that celebrated works like The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Appalachian Spring and Roy Harris’ Third Symphony are not recognized as American masterpieces; but their American characteristics are expressed through content, rather than form or methods of production. Fitzgerald and Hemingway all furthered their apprenticeship in Europe during the 1920s while Copland and Harris studied in Paris with Boulanger. It remained for the next generation of the avant garde, living for the most part in New York, to create original schools through the modes of Abstract Expressionism, the new chromatic jazz of Be Bop, and the literature of the Beats. The singly most important characteristic of the new American expression was the central role played by spontaneity and improvisation yielding works of astonishing vibrant surface detail.

Keywords
  • Pollock Parker Kerouac
Publication Date
2006
Citation Information
Randall Snyder. "American Zeitgeist: Spontaneity in the Work of Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker and Jack Kerouac" (2006)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/randall_snyder/196/