Action Painting

Jackson Pollock's pioneering "drip" technique provided the model for what Harold Rosenberg would term "Action Painting"--using the canvas as an arena for the emphatically physical, even balletic application of paint, and as a record of that engagement. Pollock also provided the credo for this approach: "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 The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess."
Featuring works by 25 major representatives of this movement, Action Painting: Jackson Pollock and Gesture in Painting addresses the fundamental qualities of gestural abstraction from 1945 to 1965, assessing common traits as well as contrasts in practice between America and Europe (where it was known as Informel). Essays by acclaimed specialists, alongside introductions to each of the featured artists, make this volume a revealing presentation of one of the most important artistic movements in the twentieth century. Artists include Karel Appel, Lynda Benglis, Norman Bluhm, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Hans Hartung, Eva Hesse, Hans Hofmann, Gerhard Hoehme, Asger Jorn, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Morris Louis, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Jackson Pollock, Kazuo Shiraga, Pierre Soulages, Clyfford Still, Cy Twombly and Wols.