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- Title
The Tragic Image: Action Painting Refigured.
- Authors
Slifkin, Robert
- Abstract
Have we lost the capacity to perceive Abstract Expressionist painting in the manner its creators envisioned? This paper examines this question through an analysis of Harold Rosenberg’s concept of Action Painting. While typically understood as the dynamic application of paint, Action Painting was originally meant to suggest a dramatic understanding of the work of art (i.e. action as acting) in which the blurred passages and half-erased forms produced emotional effects upon the audience of viewers. By depicting imagery in a decidedly unresolved condition, Action Paintings forged a temporal matrix in which both past and future conditions of morphological possibility could be represented. This hovering state of allusive imagery invested the works with their oft-cited but rarely explored tragic ethos. Like dramatic tragedy, the purpose of Action Painting was to make the audience more sensitive to their own status as actors caught in the middle of events in everyday life, and spur them to act more decisively in their own lives.
- Subjects
ABSTRACT expressionism; ROSENBERG, Harold, 1906-1978; PAINTING techniques; 20TH century art; ART &; philosophy; MENTAL imagery in art; TRAGIC plays of William Shakespeare; POLLOCK, Jackson, 1912-1956; NEW York school of art (20th century); ROTHKO, Mark, 1903-1970; TRAGEDY (Drama)
- Publication
Oxford Art Journal, 2011, Vol 34, Issue 2, p227
- ISSN
0142-6540
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/oxartj/kcr019