1950-59 / Push and Pull
Hofmann’s famous phrase “push and pull” first appeared in print in Search for the Real, although he had used this term and its underlying concepts for some time in his teachings and in the development of his own paintings. “Push and pull,” wrote Hofmann, are expanding and contracting forces which are activated by carriers in visual motion. Planes are the most important carriers, lines and points less so. . . . [T]he picture plane reacts automatically in the opposite direction to the stimulus received; thus action continues as long as it receives stimulus in the creative process. Push answers with pull and pull with push. . . . At the end of his life and the height of his capacity Cézanne understood color as a force of push and pull. In his pictures he created an enormous sense of volume, breathing, pulsating, expanding, contracting through his use of colors.
Citation
Barnes, Lucinda, et al. Hans Hofmann: The Nature of Abstraction. University of California Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, 2019, pp. 32-33.
Hans Hofmann, Search for the Real and Other Essays, ed. Sara T. Weeks and Bartlett H. Hayes Jr. (1948; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967), 45.
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Audio Transcript:
Nature—
We ourselves are nature—how can we ever deny it. . .
Nature is visual— our greatest stimulus. . .
Eyesight however is not yet vision and vision is not
yet plastic experience from which pictorial
creation evolves. The mystery of pictorial creation begins with the mystery of Vision.
—Hans Hofmann, 1963
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Audio Transcription:
My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.
–Hans Hofmann, 1962
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Audio Transcription:
Push and pull are expanding and contracting forces which are activated by carriers in visual motion. Planes are the most important carriers, lines and points less so . . .the picture plane reacts automatically in the opposite direction to the stimulus received; thus action continues as long as it receives stimulus in the creative process. Push answers with pull and pull with push. . . . At the end of his life and the height of his capacity Cézanne understood color as a force of push and pull. In his pictures he created an enormous sense of volume, breathing, pulsating, expanding, contracting through his use of colors.
—Hans Hofmann, 1948
Scintillating Space
1954
Oil on canvas
84 1/8 x 48 3/8 in. (213.7 x 122.9 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Bequest of the artist
1966.47
The Garden
1956
Oil on plywood
60 x 46 ⅜ in.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; gift of
the artist
1963.3
Morning Mist
1958
Oil on canvas
55 ⅛ x 40 ⅜ in. (140 x 102.6 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Bequest of the artist
1966.45
Indian Summer
1959
Oil on canvas
60 ⅛ x 72 ¼ in. (152.7 x 178.43 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Gift of
the artist
1965.11
The Vanquished
1959
Oil on canvas
36 ⅛ x 48 ⅛ in. (91.8 x 122.2 cm)
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Bequest of
the artist
1966.49
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