Action Painting

Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist.

Read more about Action Painting:  Background, Historical Context, Notable Action Painters

Famous quotes containing the words action and/or painting:

    An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)