people check out this website on beat art:
http://www.beatmuseum.org/Bowen/bowen.html
cool artworks. lots of ranting going on in the canvas. i don't exactly know yet what separates this from all other art movements.
(later...)
wait, i think i found something:
Beat Art Gallery
These galleries are intended to provide an introduction
to Abstract Expressionism and the art of the 1950s.
"While calling themselves abstract expressionists, the artists of
the New York School did not think of themselves as a coherent
group with common ideals. The most that can be said for the unity
of the school was that its members shared a range of attitudes
derived principally from the despair and anxiety of the times.
All of the artists insisted on spontaneity, intensity of feeling, and a vast
range of individual choices, materials, and situations. In practice, after
all the talking, the goal of these American artists became the realization
of an entirely new pictoral style, one synthesized from cubism and
surrealism and fully equal to these in ambition and accomplishemnt.
Within this spectrum each remained an individual, each had access to
an infinite set of options, each strained in a personal direction."
-William Fleming (http://www.stfrancis.edu/en/student/beatart/beatart.htm)
