Who invented action painting

When this movement emerged, critics were merciless. Even today, many art enthusiasts, experts and critics dismiss this movement as artistic one. Pretty harsh words for an art movement that led to one of the most revolutionary developments in American contemporary art, right? Fifty years after its appearance, Action Painting still raises a lot of controversy, but a lot of admirations as well. One thing is sure — art pieces that are created using unique techniques and styles of Action Painting leave no one indifferent.

Like it or not, everybody has opinion about these magical paintings. If we want to examine what is the position of Action Painting today, or to be more precise, to see what the heritage of Jackson Pollock is, we have to define this extraordinary art style. As the term says for itself, Action Painting is a style used in painting — a style that emphasizes the process of making art, often through a variety of techniques that include dripping, dabbing, smearing , and even flinging paint on to the surface of the canvas.

Action Painting is characterized by energetic techniques that depend on broad gestures directed by the artist's sense of control interacting with chance or random occurrences that is why it is also called Gestural Abstraction. In the essay entitled The American Action Painters , Rosenberg argued that the canvas was an arena in which to act for Action Painters. Until , those who would later be labeled as Action Painters had been part of the Abstract Expressionism.

However, their unique style and technique simply begged for a new term. Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning had already been using this technique, but the critics and writers were those who defined their art. Rosenberg's critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle itself, with the finished painting being only the physical — the process and the action is the act of art , artworks are not in the focus; this is something that would influence the emergence of a number of art movements in the coming years.

There is no way to understand the Action Painting without having in mind the historical context in which it emerged. The style was widespread from the s until the early s. It was post-World War II artistic reaction to the developments in the fields of psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics.

Psychoanalysis was particularly important, because people became aware of something that is called Self-Consciousness and Subconscious. But, psychoanalysis proved that objects can be perceived only by conscious part of human mind — but, what about the subconscious, which is probably even more important for a human than consciousness? Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung both wrote and developed ideas on sub-consciousness. Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, ….

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Main menu additional Become a Member Shop. Art Term Action painters The term action painters is applied to artists working from the s until the early s whose approach to painting emphasized the physical act of painting as an essential part of the finished work. Twitter Facebook Email Pinterest. Related Terms and Concepts Left Right.

Automatism In art, automatism refers to creating art without conscious thought, accessing material from the unconscious mind as part of the …. Gestural Gestural is a term used to describe the application of paint in free sweeping gestures with a brush.

Another influential art critic, Clement Greenberg , was equally taken with the idea of the existential-type "struggle", citing the paintings' pitted, clotted and impastoed surfaces as physical evidence of what had occurred.

For an explanation of abstract expressionist paintings, like those produced by Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko, please see: Analysis of Modern Paintings : The influence of Surrealism and its use of automatism in art , in order to give free artistic expression to the subconscious mind, can clearly be seen in the above analysis. Inspired by Freud's theories of the subconscious, surrealist artists like Andre Breton , Andre Masson and Joan Miro were convinced users of this type of involuntary, spontaneous painting, all of which had a significant impact on later abstract expressionists.

See Sand Art. Another possibility is that Pollock heard of experiments conducted in New York during the war, by the emigre surrealist artist Max Ernst , who married Peggy Guggenheim , one of Pollock's most important patrons. Ernst developed a method of using paint dripped from a swinging can. Pollock worked in a highly spontaneous improvisatory manner, dancing around the canvas pouring, splashing and dripping paint onto it.

In this way, he claimed to be channelling his inner impulses directly onto the canvas. Even so, he remained unable to articulate precisely what transpired during bouts of action-painting. He varied between admitting: "When I am in my painting, I am not aware of what I'm doing"; and saying "When I am painting