Action painting, term coined by the American art critic Harold Rosenberg to character- ize the work of a group of American Abstract Expressionists (see Abstract Expressionism) who, from about 1950, practiced a direct, instinctual, and highly aggressive kind of painting that involved the spontaneous application of vigorous, sweeping brushstrokes and the chance effects of dripping and spilling paint onto the canvas. Action painting is distinguished from the carefully preconceived work of the “abstract imagists” and “colour-field” painters, which constitutes the other major direction implicit in Abstract Expressionism and resembles Action painting only in its absolute devotion to unfettered personal expression free of all traditional aesthetic and social values. The works of the Action painters Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Bradley Walker Tomlin, and Jack Tworkov reflect the influence of the Automatic techniques developed in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s by the Surrealists (see Surrealism). While Surrealist Automatism (q.v.), which consisted of various chance effects and psychically inspired scribblings recorded without the artist’s conscious control, was primarily designed to awaken unconscious associations in the viewer, the automatic approach of the Action painters was primarily a means of giving the artist’s instinctive creative forces free play and of revealing these forces directly to the viewer.

In Action painting, the act of painting itself, being the moment of the artist’s creative interaction with his materials, is more significant than the finished work. Although it is generally recognized that Jackson Pollock’s abstract drip paintings, executed from 1947, opened the way to the bolder, gestural techniques that characterize Action painting, it was the vigorous brushstrokes of de Kooning’s biomorphic “Woman” series, begun in the early 1950s, that successfully evolved a richly emotive, expressive style. Action painting was of major importance throughout the 1950s in Abstract Expressionism, the most influential art movement at the time in the United States. By the end of the decade, however, leadership of the movement had shifted to the colour-field and abstract imagist painters, whose followers in the 1960s “untitled,” Action painting by Jackson Pollock, oil and enamel on metal, 1948; in the Mr. and Mrs. Willard Gidwitz Collection, Illinois By courtesy of the Stdrrey Jerris Gallery, New Yorkrebelled against the irrationality of the Action painters. See also Tachism. -modern visual art history 19:482h -Pollack and Abstract Expressionism 14:747g - process-emphasizing styles 2:1 26e Whistler’s anticipation of technique 19:814h


Back to Top
Author Resource BoxMarried, 43, living in Ohio and working as a financial consultant. Working on my second degree in history.Read John Bernham Profile