In 2014, a new term entered the art world's lexicon with the force of an insult. Critic Walter Robinson coined zombie formalism to describe a wave of abstract paintings flooding galleries and art fairs—works that seemed to emerge from some collective unconscious of poured pigment and chance operations.

The paintings shared an uncanny family resemblance. They featured drips, stains, layered veils of color, and evidence of physical processes—fire, gravity, chemical reactions. Young artists barely out of graduate school were commanding six-figure prices. Collectors flipped works for double, triple their purchase price within months.

Was this a genuine aesthetic movement or something more troubling? The debate exposed fault lines in how we value contemporary art, revealing uncomfortable truths about the relationship between market speculation and artistic meaning. Understanding zombie formalism means grappling with fundamental questions about what abstraction can still offer us.

Zombie formalist paintings announced themselves through a distinctive visual language. Artists poured paint rather than applying it with brushes, allowing gravity and viscosity to determine outcomes. Surfaces bore the marks of unconventional tools—squeegees, spray bottles, industrial processes borrowed from manufacturing.

Fire became a favored collaborator. Lucien Smith created works by extinguishing flames on canvas. Oscar Murillo dragged canvases across studio floors, accumulating dirt and debris as compositional elements. Jacob Kassay electroplated paintings with silver, transforming them into mirrors that reflected viewers rather than depicting anything.

The aesthetic traced lineage to postwar abstraction—Morris Louis's veils, Helen Frankenthaler's stain paintings, the process art of the 1970s. But where those predecessors pursued specific conceptual investigations, zombie formalism's relationship to its sources felt more ambient, more atmospheric.

What united these varied approaches was an emphasis on indexicality—the painting as trace of an event rather than representation of a subject. The work documented its own making. This created an appearance of authenticity and spontaneity, suggesting the artist had discovered rather than composed the final image.

Takeaway

Process can substitute for intention, creating works that appear meaningful precisely because they seem uncontrolled—but evidence of making is not the same as evidence of thinking.

The market conditions surrounding zombie formalism proved as significant as the paintings themselves. Between 2011 and 2014, prices for young abstract painters escalated at unprecedented rates. Collectors bought works at galleries and resold them at auction within months, sometimes weeks.

This speculative frenzy created perverse incentives. Paintings needed to photograph well for Instagram and art fairs. They needed to read clearly from across crowded rooms. They needed to complement expensive furniture. The market rewarded decorative impact and brand recognizability over conceptual depth.

Critics argued the work was cynically calibrated for collector tastes—large enough to fill mansion walls, abstract enough to match any décor, processual enough to suggest artistic credibility without requiring intellectual engagement. The paintings became financial instruments that happened to be made of canvas.

The bubble eventually deflated. By 2016, many of the same artists whose works had commanded hundreds of thousands of dollars saw auction results collapse. The speed of the correction suggested the market had been trading on momentum rather than genuine conviction about artistic value.

Takeaway

When secondary market prices outpace gallery prices, speculation has replaced appreciation—the work is being traded as a commodity, not collected as culture.

Not all process-based abstraction deserves the zombie label. The question becomes: how do we distinguish work that genuinely investigates its medium from work that merely performs the gestures of investigation? Several criteria prove useful.

First, consider specificity of inquiry. Does the work pursue a genuine question about materials, perception, or painting's possibilities? Or does it simply produce attractive effects without interrogating what those effects mean? Genuine process painting maintains a research agenda; zombie formalism mistakes novelty for discovery.

Second, examine the relationship to history. Meaningful abstraction positions itself within ongoing conversations about what painting can do. It acknowledges precedents while proposing new terms. Zombie formalism borrows historical credibility without contributing to the discourse—it's citation without argument.

Third, attend to risk and resistance. Does the work challenge viewers, create productive difficulty, or demand sustained attention? Or does it resolve immediately into pleasant decoration? Art that matters typically asks something of us. Zombie formalism's frictionless appeal was precisely what made critics suspicious of its depth.

Takeaway

Ask whether the work poses a question or merely provides an answer that was never in doubt—genuine abstraction investigates; decoration merely illustrates process.

Zombie formalism matters less as a movement than as a diagnostic. It revealed how easily the contemporary art world could mistake market enthusiasm for aesthetic significance, how process could become formula, how the appearance of spontaneity could be manufactured at scale.

Yet the critique shouldn't dismiss all recent abstraction. The best process-based painters—those who survived the market correction—continued developing their investigations, deepening their relationships to materials and history. The label cleared space for more rigorous evaluation.

What remains is a sharper set of questions for approaching any abstract work. We must ask not just what was done, but why—and whether the answer matters beyond the transaction.