What was action painting

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. Although surrealists from s addressed those issues as well, Action Painting took ideas of the subconscious as its underlying foundations.

Action Painters tried to touch the observer deep in the subconscious mind , evoking a sense of the primeval and addressing the collective sense of an archetypal visual language. In order to do so, they were creating unconsciously, or at least, they tried to do so. And, one of the main features of unconscious behavior is automatism.

It means that the artists do not have to use their conscious part of their mind — they created like they were in some phase of ecstasy or hypnosis. Indeed, many recognize Jackson Pollock as the father of Action Painting. In the late s, Pollock began to use hardened brushes, sticks, and even basting syringes as paint applicators. His technique of pouring and dripping paint is thought to be one of the origins of the term action painting.

With this technique, Pollock was able to achieve a more immediate means of creating art, the paint now literally flowing from his chosen tool onto the canvas. He did not even touch the canvas — he defined the convention of painting on an upright surface. And this technique is crucial for understanding of the Action Painting. 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 channeling his inner impulses directly onto the canvas.

We already mentioned that surrealism influenced the emergence of Action Painting. Selected artists in the collection Left Right. Arshile Gorky c. Franz Kline — Willem de Kooning — Jackson Pollock — Sorry, no image available. Niki de Saint Phalle — Selected artworks in the collection. Arshile Gorky Waterfall Franz Kline Meryon —1. See all artworks. Action Painters at Tate.

Many scholars speculate that Jackson Pollock was Rosenberg's primary model for his description of Action Painting, although equally good arguments have been made for other artists as well.

Even if he was not the chief artist Rosenberg had in mind, Pollock's paintings have become synonymous with Action Painting. Autumn Rhythm is a quintessential drip painting, with its all-over composition of a dizzying web of black, brown, and white enamel paint. To execute this work, Pollock laid out a large unstretched canvas on the floor of his studio, and then, walking around the four edges of the canvas, he systematically poured, dribbled, and flung paint across its surface.

In one of his rare written statements, Pollock explained, "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about.

I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well. While many scholars speak of Pollock's work as a metaphor for the unconscious - its inchoate skeins of paint suggesting the inchoate nature of our pre-conscious minds - in reality, Pollock's control and decision-making processes in the act of painting create a tension with that reading.

It is, though, this very back and forth between painter and painting that was at the heart of Rosenberg's idea of Action Painting. Franz Kline's stark black and white compositions of bold brushstrokes make him one of the quintessential gestural Abstract Expressionists. The simplicity of the colors and means, though, belies the often complex compositions that balance strong verticals and horizontals, broken curves, and imperfectly formed roundels.

Importantly, Kline does not just paint black strokes onto a white ground but also paints the white next to and on top of the black, setting up a beguiling tension between figure and ground. Many of the Abstract Expressionists, including Kline, insisted that their paintings were spontaneous acts, without preplanning.

While one might assume that this spontaneity means the paintings were done quickly in one sitting, the actual process suggests otherwise.

Kline, in fact, was constantly drawing, making small, black ink drawings on any paper he could find, even thin telephone book pages. Some of his paintings are reminiscent of one or sometimes a combination of these drawings.

In his essay on Action Painting, Rosenberg recounts a conversation with an unnamed artist who complains that one of his colleagues - also unnamed - is old fashioned because he works from sketches, but Rosenberg counters this artist's protestation by saying, "There is no reason why an act cannot be prolonged from a piece of paper to a canvas.

Or repeated on another scale and with more control. A sketch can have the function of a skirmish. Rosenberg's conception of Action Painting complicates notions of spontaneity, and Kline's Chief , when carefully studied, embodies that complexity. Willem de Kooning shocked the art world when he showed a Women series at the Sidney Janis Gallery in Many critics decried his "return" to the figure without understanding that de Kooning had always painted abstractly and representationally more or less at the same time.

But even by this early date, Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting were yoked to abstraction, and the revelation of the figure in de Kooning's latest work seemed like an affront to avant-garde art.

De Kooning dodged accusations of misogyny by talking about his Women as modern equivalents of ancient idols and trying to point out the humor in his representations. The controversies of subject matter aside, Rosenberg certainly would have counted de Kooning among the Action Painters, as Action Painting had little to do with subject matter and most to do with the artist's attitude toward painting.

In describing abstract painting, Rosenberg wrote, "The apples weren't brushed off the table in order to make room for perfect relations of space and color. They had to go so that nothing would get in the way of the act of painting.

In an undated note, de Kooning wrote, "With intimate proportions I mean the familiarity you have when you look at somebody's big toe when close to it, or a crease in a hand or a nose - or lips or a ty [thigh]. The drawing those parts make are interchangeable one for the other and become so many spots of paint or brushstrokes. Furthermore, de Kooning's willingness to buck the strictures that avant-garde art has to be abstract made him more original than most in Rosenberg's estimation.