Action Painting was a term coined by the critic
Harold Rosenberg in 1952.
The Action Painters considered the canvas as the temporal and spatial arena on which to imprint, without any figurative or literal reference, a record of the processes of its making. Action paintings are made by means as various as drips or splashes, as in the work of Jackson Pollock; naked women covered in paint and dragged over a canvas by Yves Klein; or the broad gestural brushstrokes of Willem de Kooning. This common interest in `gesture' links Action Painting with the wider concerns of Abstract Expressionism, while the `performances' of Klein anticipate the manifestations of German Aktionismus, Performance Art, Body Art and the Happenings in the 1960s and 1970s.
(Source: Essential Art History. Picture shows Jackson Pollock at
work.)
(Simon's note: Yves Klein, what a guy. I wish I'd thought of that.)
