Action Painting was a unique style of painting because of how it was applied to the canvas. Everyone was use to witnessing artists paint with caution while they applied the paint delicately on the canvas. The term Action painting came about from Harold Rosenberg who was a famous critic. “It emphasizes the process of making art, often through a variety of techniques that include dripping, dabbing, smearing, and even flinging paint onto the surface of the canvas”.
This Action Painting was created by Jackson Pollock. Pollock played a major role in the Abstract Expressionist Movement. His style consisted of dripping the paint onto the canvas.This style of painting allowed the painter to express themselves on another level. “To Greenberg, it was the physicality of the paintings’ clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the key to understanding them. ‘Some of the labels that became attached to Abstract Expressionism, like “informal” and “Action Painting,’ definitely implied this; one was given to understand that what was involved was an utterly new kind of art that was no longer art in any accepted sense”.
