The “Degree Zero: Drawing at Midcentury” exhibits approximately eighty works of disillusioned artists, including Jackson Pollock, Dorothy Dehner, Henri Matisse, Saburo Murakami. After the chaos of World War II, artists were in disbelief that they could not believe that humanity had the capability of repeating history since World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Because of this disillusionment, many artists started to practice surrealism and dadaism after World War I.

Beginning a new approach to art. On the exhibition wall, MoMA writes: “Modest, immediate, and direct, drawing was the ideal medium for this period of renewal. Mimicking the look of language, it appeared as graffiti-like scribbling, or borrowed from traditional calligraphies. Its geometric forms sought to communicate universal ideals, and its accumulations of marks reflected society’s new urge to amass.”

The paintings and drawings look like a mix of cave paintings and jumbled up Rorschach tests. Many are in black and white adding a drab and melancholic feeling. The want to start over and in a sense rebuild society is what’s taken away from their art and what feels relevant in the current landscape.

“Zero means ‘nothing’, start with nothing: completely original, no artificial meaning”, was what Japanese artist Saburo Murakami wrote in 1953. In the exhibit is Murakami’s 1954 painting Work Painted by Throwing a Ball, a work that could likened to Pollock’s style of dripping paint, where instead he threw a ball and let that ball and motion create the art. He creates his work to a point and then lets fate take over.

Another artist in the exhibit is Henri Matisse, an artist who has mastered painting and has gone past that to break the rules and make what some might consider “basic” works. One painting The Necklace (Le collier), from 1950 is an example of a deconstructed and “degree zero” idea. The extremely limited strokes of black paint make up the general form of a woman. The viewer’s eyes must add the details. The necklace after which the work is titled consists only of five black dots.

Altogether, the exhibit is an example how masterful works can be created by different elements, either by burning paper, dropping objects, or simply drawing. Sometimes the artist needs to start from scratch and rebuild. Artist Otto Piene said of his art, “Zero is the incommensurable zone in which the old state turns into the new,” a sentiment that is on par with the Zero group of artists displayed at the MoMA.