The Five Continents 1984

Sam Francis made "The Five Continents" with ink and acrylic on paper. As the title suggests, this work gestures toward globalism, a concept very much in vogue when Francis made it. Francis was an American artist associated with abstract expressionism, but he spent considerable time living and working in Europe and Japan. Perhaps this internationalism led him to reflect on his relationship to the world as a whole. The drips, splatters, and stains of color could be seen to represent the fluidity of movement and exchange between cultures and peoples, but this would ignore the politics of the mid-20th century. As the old colonial powers declined, the United States rose to global dominance. The abstract expressionists were co-opted to represent American ideals of freedom. We should remember the politics of imagery when interpreting artworks such as this. To understand it better, we can research the history of abstract expressionism, the biography of the artist, and also the ways in which art has been instrumentalized for political purposes. This work's meaning remains contingent on its social and institutional context.