Today's Word of the Day is Irascible, meaning, marked by hot temper and easily provoked anger. Immediately, I thought of the 1951 cover of Life Magazine featuring the Abstract Expressionists (de Kooning, Rothko, Sterne, Pollock, etc.) and their protest of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The irony of the photograph, entitled The Irascibles, operates twofold. On one hand, these artists are making a statement against what art institutions considered "advanced American art." And on the other, these institutions would eventually utilize this particular art movement as the ubiquitous poster-child of U.S. cultural world dominance. How iconic/ironic.
Image: Nina Leen, The Irascibles, 1950. Life magazine. Front row, left to right: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko. Middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin. Back row: Willem De Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne.
