Today on our walk through art history, you will be swiftly met by action painting. This is the style of painting that so many of us often think of when we hear the words: abstract art. The image of a slap of paint unconsciously thrown across a canvas comes to mind. Think Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline.

It was during the 40's and 50's that this style of art first came into it's own. It was the jazzy, hip New York School of painters that first started owning action painting and working exclusively in this aesthetic. The process of putting the paint on canvas could have been seen as performance art itself, and this unconscious action was really what the heart of the movement was all about. The artists smeared, dribbled, threw and splashed paint onto their canvases, Pollock famously hid things like cigarette butts in his.

Harold Rosenberg is responsibly for coining the term “action painting” and he said of the art, that the canvas became an “arena in which to act”. Rosenberg saw the actual work of art, not totally in the canvas itself but in the creation of that canvas, the heartfelt and careful work spent making it, the process not the product.

I've noted that the action painters unconsciously threw paint onto canvas, yet doing so was very conscious. This was in a more psychologically-aware era and the artists were interested in the Freudian and Jungian ideas of the unconscious. Part of the idea behind action painting and the making of art becoming art was that the viewer would sense on a subconscious level, the activity in the art, and be drawn to the unfiltered emotion and action in the piece.

Pollock's famous canvases with dripped paint certainly helped create the term of action painting.While the term action painting sort of implies that the paint is simply thrown on the canvas in an accidental piece of art, Pollock was clear that his works were not by accident. He used his whole body to paint, dripping, flinging, running around above the canvas in a spastic dance. This was all in order to get the painting the way he wanted it to look.

"Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" 1949, Courtesy Life Magazine

Woman, de Kooning

No. 2, Kline

His drip-style of painting would become Pollock's ticket to fame. The artist was covered in Life magazine in the 50's, featuring photos of his drip-action-art mid-action. The article asked, “is the most famous living artist living in America?” After the publication of the piece, Pollock stopped using the drip style of painting.

Action painting brought a new dimension to art, it challenged viewers and connoisseurs alike to not look for the figure in an abstract painting, but to look at the art in an entirely new light. In action painting is it not the figure to be seen, but the way the artist has created the shapes, the drips, the vague figures you are looking for. It brings a three dimensional element to art.

Let Oil Painting Express bring this three dimensionality to your home. An action painting brings a chic edge to any home, whether it is contemporary or classic. With Jackson in mind, I say the bigger the better for the canvas. The key in presenting the art is to keep everything around it simple and stay within your color scheme. Like a good jazz album, an action painting immediately beings a beautiful ambiance wherever you hang it.