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THESIS

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Michigan flaw j
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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

"Harold Rosenberg: Application and
Critique of His Concept of Action
Painting"

presented by

Jong-Ai Kim

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. degree in Art History

MO. mam

Linda 0. Stanford

Date W aogflg7£

 

 

 

Major professor

0-7539 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

MSU

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RETURNING MATERIALS:
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HAROLD ROSENBERGz' APPLICATION AND CRITIQUE
OF HIS CONCEPT OF ACTION PAINTING

BY

Jong—Ai Kim

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Art

1984

ABSTRACT
HAROLD ROSENBERG: APPLICATION AND CRITIQUE
OF HIS CONCEPT OF ACTION PAINTING
BY
Jong—Ai Kim

American art criticism of the forties and fifties
served as a means for understanding individual paintings and
as an activity which provides insight into major artistic
phenomena. Among critics of these decades,_the critic Harold
Rosenberg's role was remarkable, especially through his-
naming some of this current art-Action Painting.

Although the name Action Painting is frequently
used by many critics, historians, and members of the public,
it is often misunderstood and considered most appropriate
for the painter, Jackson Pollock.

The purposes of this thesis are to review the con-
cept of Action Painting and its critical application to two
other painters, Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning, and to
reevaluate the usefulness of Rosenberg's concept of Action
Painting and his critical method.

Action Painting explains art by Hofmann and espe-
cially de Kooning more adequately than art by Pollock,
thereby requiring a new understanding of its meaning and its

use in criticism.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to my
adviser, Dr. Linda Stanford,for her valuable suggestions and
academic advising on this work. Her warm understanding and
patience for a foreign student have provided strong support
during the development of this thesis.

I also wish to thank the members of my committee,
Dr. Sadayoshi Omoto and Dr. Eldon van Liere,for their help
and guidance in the preparation of this thesis.

And also I would like to thank Dr. Webster Smith
for his encouragement and guidance during my education
at Michigan State University.

Of course, the understanding, patience and encour-
agement of my husband, Byung-Kil, is most sincerely appreci-
ated. My appreciation is also extended to my parants-in-law
and my parents for their assistance and willingness to support

my education in the United States.

ii

LIST OF FIGURES
CHAPTER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

0.0.0.000...OOOOOCCOOOOCOOOOOOOOOOOO

I. INITRODIJCTION O000......OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

II. BACKGROUND 0.00.0.0...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

A. Abstract Expressionism and Its Criticism
in America 0......OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.0...

B. Brief Biography of Harold Rosenberg .....

III. THE CONCEPT OF ACTION PAINTING ...........

A. sources 0......00.0.00...OOOOOOOOOOOCOOOO

B. The Concept of Action Painting ..........

IV. THE APPLICATION OF THE CONCEPT OF ACTION
PAINTING: ROSENBERG'S CRITICAL METHOD
AND ITS LIMITATION OOCOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOO...

A. The Application of the Concept of Action
Painting to Hans Hofmann ................

B. The Application of the Concept of Action

Painting to Willem de Kooning ...........

V. CONCLUSION: CRITIQUE OF THE CONCEPT OF
ACTION PAINTING AND ITS METHOD ...........

BIBLIOGRAPHY

0.0.0.000...OCOOOOOOOOOOOOO00.0.0000...

iii

iv

12
16
16
22

36

4O

54

88
97

Figure

2.

4.

5.

LIST OF FIGURES

Hans Hofmann, Landscape, 1942. Oil on wood,

24 x 30 inches. Artcounsel, Inc., Boston.
(Reproduced in Walter Darby Bannard, Hans
Hofmann, A Retrospective Exhibition Cafangue,
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, p. 45) ......

Hans Hofmann, The Pre , 1956. Oil on compo-
sition board SO x 18 1/8 inches, Owned by

the artist. (Reproduced in William c. Seitz,
Hans Hofmann, Exhibition Catalogue, The

‘Museum of Modern Art, New York, p. 37) .......

Hans Hofmann, Ecstas , 1947. Oil on canvas,
68 x 60 inches, Owneg by the artist.
(Reproduced in William C. Seitz, Hgns Hofmann,

p. 22 ....00..............OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Hans Hofmann, Liebesbaum, 1954. Oil on ply-
wood, 60 7/8 x 30 inchés, Owned by the artist.
(Reproduced in William C. Seitz, Hans Hofmann,

p. 40) O0................OOOOOOOOOO......OOOOOO

Hans Hofmann, In the Wake of the Hurricane,
1960. Oil on canvas, 72 174 x 65 inches,
University Art Museum, Berkeley. (Reproduced

in Walter Darby Bannard, Hans Hofmann, p. 86) ..

Hans Hofmann, Cathedral, 1959. Oil on canvas,

74 x 48 inches, Mr. and Mrs. Albrecht Saal-
field. (Reproduced in Walter Darby Bannard,

Hans Hofmann, p. 82) .........................

Willem de Kooning, Attic, 1949. Oil on canvas,
61 3/8 x 80 1/4 incEes, Collection Muriel
Newman, Chicago. (Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess,

Willem de Kooning, Exhibition Catalogue, The
Wiseum 0f MOdem Art, P. 65) 00000000000000...

Jackson Pollock, eugflmn Rhythm, 1950. Oil on
canvas, 8' 7" x 17' 3", The Metropolitan

Museum of Art. (Reproduced in Francis V.
O'Connor, Jackson Pollock, Exhibition Catalogue,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, p. 108) ...

iv

45

46

48

49

53

61

62

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Willem de Kooning, Stud for mural in the
Williamsbur Pro'ect SociaI Room, BrooEIyn,
1935, WPA Péojec%. Present whereabouts
unknown. (Reproduced in Harold Rosenberg,

Willem de Kooning, New York: Abrams, 1974.
?lafi S) O.........COOOOOOOOOOOOOOO......0...

Willem de Kooning, Untitled, Ca. 1937.

Oil on paper, 10 x 14 inches, Collection
Elaine de Kooning. (Reproduced in Thomas

B. Hess, Willem de Kooning, New York:
Braziller, Inc., PIate 467 ..................

Pablo Picasso, The Studio, 1928. Oil on
canvas, 59 x 91 inEhes, The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. (Reproduced in Alfred H.
Barr, Jr. ed., Picasso: Forty Years of his
Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New Ydrk,

p.136 ...O.......OOOOOOOOO......OOOOOOOOOO

Pablo Picasso, Painter and Model, 1928.

Oil on Canvas, 51 578 x 63 778 inches,

Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Janis, New York.
(Reproduced in Alfred H. Barr, Jr. ed.,
Picasso: Forty Years of his Art, p. 138)... ...

Willem de Kooning, Clown, Ca. 1941. Oil

on masonite, 41 x 21 175 inches, Courtesy
Allan Stone Gallery. (Reproduced in

Salley E. Yard, Willem de Kooning, Ph.D.
dissertation, Princeton University, 1980,
Fig-1.8128) 0.00.00.00.00.......OOOOOOOOOOOOO

Willem de Kooning, Pink Lady, Ca. 1944.

Oil and charcoal on composition board,

48 3/8 x 35 5/8 inches, Collection Mr.

and Mrs. Stanley K. Sheinbaum, Santa

Barbara, California. (Reproduced in Thomas

B. Hess, Willem de Kooning, The Museum of
MOdeI'n Arf, p.127 ooooooooooooooooooooooo000

Willem de Kooning, Two Standin Men, Ca.

1939. Pencil on paper, 13 174 x 16 1/4 inches,
Courtesy Xavier Fourcade Gallery. (Reproduced
in Sally E. Yard, Willem de Kooning, Ph.D.
Dissertation, Princetbn University, 1980,
Figure 132) CO.......OOOOOOOOOOOO00.0.0000...

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937. Oil on canvas,
11' 6" x 25' 8", Estate of the artist.
(Reproduced in Alfred H. Barr, Jr. ed.,
Picasso: Forty Years of his Art, p. 174) ....

64

65

66

67

69

7O

71

72

17.

18.

19.

20.

vi

Pablo Picasso, African Sculpture in frog:
of Window, 1937: Oil on canvas, 28 172*x
, inches, Mr. and Mrs. Leo Simon,
New York. (Reproduced in John Richardson,
ed., Picasso an American tribute,
Exhibition Catangue, PEBIic Education
Association in cooperation with Chanticleer
Press, New York, Figure 13) ................ 73

Willem de Kooning, Acrobat, Ca. 1942. Oil
on canvas, 36 1/2 x 25 172 inches, Private
-collection, New York. (Reproduced in Thomas

B. Hess, Willem de Koonin , New York:

Braziller, Ific., PIate 41; ................. 74
Willem de Kooning, Study_for backdrgp

(Labyrinth), 1946. Oil and charcoal on

paper, 22 1/8 x 28 1/2 inches, Private

collection. (Reproduced in Thomas B.

Hess, Willem de Kooning, The Museum of
MOdem Art, p. 49) 0.000.000...000.00.00.00. 7S

Willem de Kooning, Li ht in Au st, Ca,
1946. Oil and enameI on paper, mounted

on canvas, 55 x 41 1/2 inches, Collection
Elise C. Dixon, Scottsdale, Arizona.

(Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess, Willem de

I Kooning, The Museum of Modern Art, p. 51) ... 77

21.

22.

23.

Willem de Kooning, Woman and Bicycle, 1951-
1953. Oil, enamel and‘charcoal on canvas,
76 1/2 x 49 inches, Whitney Museum of
American Art. (Reproduced in Thomas B.

Hess, Willem de Kooning, The Museum of
MOdern Art, po 97 00000000000000.0000...000 78
Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-1952. Oil

on canvas, 75 7/8 x 58 inches, The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. (Reproduced in

Thomas B. Hess, Willem de Koonin , The
Museum of Modern Art, p. 95} ............... 8O

Willem de Kooning, Clam Diggers, 1964. Oil
on paper, mounted on compos1 ion board,

20 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches, Private collection.
(Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess, Willem de

Kooning, The Museum of Modern Art, p. T26) ... 83

 

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

Today the critic‘s role is as essential to the
development of art as that of the artist. Since the artist
has become more and more free to explore himself and his
relationship to the world about him, "the history of modern
art".is billed as ”the history of the progressive loss of
art's audience."1

The involvement with self, regardless of the sup-
posed value to society or the apparent lack of relation to
visual reality, represents one of the major challenges to
the validity of modern painting. And the sense the growing
personal freedom of the artist has made the art more and
more complicated and difficult for the public to understand.

As a necessary buffer between the painter and the
public, the professional critic has played an important
part in explaining the complex meanings of art and justi-
fying its validity. The public has attempted to discern
through the critics the content or the meaning of
particular works of art. Indeed, it is scarcely an exag-
geration to say that the art of our time simply could not
exist without the efforts of the critic.

One of the significant signs of the critic's power,
in modern times, is "his naming of new art," as Donald B.

1

2

Kuspit remarked. As "Icuis Vanxcelles' labels 'Fauvism'

and 'Cubism', ..., have had an enormous influence on the
understanding of these styles," the critic, by naming this
new art, determines its identity and influences the future
interpretation of that art.2 The vivid example of such
critical activity in the art field is revealed in the Ameri-
can art of the 19408 and 19503, known as Abstract Expression-
ism.

Before the artistic experimentation of the post-
world war era, many artists believed that American art
lacked any continuous and profound visual traditions and
suffered from either a provincial eccentricity or a shallow
reflection of conventional EurOpean modes and styles. The
need for an independent and mature art among American art-
ists and critics was fulfilled by the new current develop-
ment of art, Abstract Expressionism, which is "incredibly
complex in itself, mingling Cubist, Surrealist and Expres-
sionist elements in a reprise of twentieth century art.“3
The complexity of this movement demanded from its observers
"a largeness of spirit, broadness of reference and subtlety
of vocabulary.“ That is, a need for new strategies and
categories for this art that stimulated American art critics
and their enthusiasm.

Among these critics was Harold Rosenberg. His emer-
gence, with the rise of Abstract Expressionism, is remark-
able. The importance of Rosenberg's role as a critic lies

in his discovery, advocacy and encouragement of unknown

3

artists of that time. And yet, his fame, above all, rests
. on his naming of this current art as Action Painting.

This term has been used generally until the present day as
frequently as the term Abstract Expressionism and often

as a synonym for it. This use demands reexamination.

In his most celebrated essay of 1952, ”The Ameri-
can Action Rainters,“ Rosenberg sketched the lineaments of
the new development as: "at a certain moment," the American
painter approached the canvas with little idea of what he
was going to paint. Then, creating out of a sense of mental
release, the experience of painting became the subject
matter of his canvas; painting was conceived as an event,

a record cf the artist's feelings and the physical movement
to which they gave rise. The artist brought with him to
the canvas his experience and his emotions which served as
an impulse to set the essential process of action in motion.

Through this concept of Action Painting, Rosenberg
offered his public a way to think about the new painting—-

a way totally different from the traditional conception of
art as object. And yet, the concept of Action Painting by
which Rosenberg justified his criticism still remains in

the need of study. As early as 1960, Thomas B. Hess, among
other critics, pointed out, Action Painting is used "'with
as many different meanings as there are writers to misunder-
stand it.'"4

The purpose of this study is to reveal Rosenberg's

notion of art, Action Painting, in terms of the importance

4

of his criticism in this particular period of art. However,
the concept of Action Painting has no lasting meaning unless
it is applied to actual art or artists. Thus, through the
review of his application of this concept to selected art-
ists such as Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning, the'pro-
priety of Rosenberg's critical method may be reevaluated.

For this task, this thesis is divided into three
main chapters. Chapter 2 is offered to suggest the back-
ground of the concept of Action Painting, that is, what
circumstances of Abstract Expressionism in general and what
particular attributes of Rosenberg's critical activity
permitted the emergence of the concept of Action Painting
and its application to the art of this period. Chapter 3
discusses Rosenberg's sources for the concept of Action
Painting and its meaning. To cope with his concept of
Action Painting, Rosenberg's views on art in general and
also on American art; his presuppositions for the concept of
Action Painting; and his understanding of critics and publics
are discussed. Chapter 4, the major part of this thesis,
treats the actual application of the concept to two artists,
Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning, who were suggested as
the appropriate model for the concept by Rosenberg himself.
In the Conclusion, the achievement and the limitation of the
concept of Action Painting are assessed.

In spite of the importance of the critic who dis-
plays a unique range of methods for the investigation of art,
in modern times, extensive study of the critic and his criti-

cism is still limited. This study may be one of such

5

attempts to enlighten the significance of the critic's role
and the presentation of his special concept to the art
world. By providing ample recognition for Rosenberg's
concept of Action Painting and examining the appropriate-
ness of his concept for actual art, this study also aims

to prevent that critical concept from being misunderstood

and misused by future generations.

ENDNOTES I

1Henry Geldzahler, "The Art Audience and the
Critic," The New Art, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York:

2Quoted from a Foreword by D.B.Kuspit in
Jacqueline Victoria Falkenheim, Ro er Fr and the
Be innin s of Formalist Art Criticism (Ann ArBor, Michigan:
UH? Research Press, 1986), unpaginated.

3Max Kozloff, “The Critical Reception of Abstract
Expressionism,“ Arts Magazine, 40 (December, 1965). 27.

4Irving Sandler, "An Exchange on Art Criticism,"
Axis. 34 (May 1960), 28.

CHAPTER II
BACKGROUND

A. Abstract Expressionism And Its Criticism
in America

American Abstract Expressionism in the late forties
and early fifties is commonly billed as America's first
significant contribution to the international currents of
art.

In fact, the Abstract Expressionist movement,
mingling three currents of modern painting:
abstraction with its concern for pure plastic values,
expressionism with its emphasis on emotional intensifica-
tion,and Surrealism with its reliance upon automatism,
improvisation, and the universality of certain symbols,
was enough to appeal to the international art field which
suffered by the demise of Paris as the major art center.

Barbara Rose pointed out that Abstract Expression-
ism was born of two catastrophes-— a depression and a war.

The first, by means of the NBA, provided new opportu-
nities for professionalism and cooperative values
among artists; the second brought the leading figures
of the European avant-garde to America, where their
attitudes and their works served as an example to

American artists.

Actually during the war, the migration of European

8

intellectuals and artists stimulated American vanguard
artists who were bored with the triteness of current pro-
vincialism and the streotypical mannerism of the Social
Realists. By direct contact with the European masters

and avant—garde groups, the vital group meetings in the gal-
lery of the dealer Peggy Guggenheim, and the influential
teaching of Hans Hofmann, American artists could be better
prepared to join the mainstream of western painting than
before. However, what made American Abstract Expressionism
come of age was, above all, the artists' recognition of

the need for their own independent art and the critics'
active advocation and effective support of them.

American vanguard artists, disillusioned with the
prevailing social-oriented art tempered by Marxism or
chauvinistic prejudices, began to consult continental
examples. During war time, “art had polarized into two
camps: Cubist-derived abstraction", such as
Neoplasticism and Constructivism: and Surrealism. To the
American vanguard artist the former development was too
impersonal and formal to expose the ambiguous irrationality
of their own war period. And the latter, Surrealism, was
too indifferent or hostile to modern art and its pictorial
quality, because it placed major emphasis on humanist con-
tent. But American artists did aspire to infuse their own
art with selected formal values of earlier abstraction by
creating images carrying personal emotional or psychological

importance as they do in Surrealism. To synthesize

9

Cubism and Surrealism in an entirely new way became the
goal of American artists. They were eager to find a new
way for their own art, thus they turned to their own parti-
cular experiences and visions. They experimented in their
art to embody their own reality in contemporary forms.

These new experiments known as Abstract Expression-
ism among American vanguard artists coincided with American
avant-garde critics' ambitions to make American art self-
conscious enough to transcend its provinciality and saphi-
sticated enough to outdistance modern European art. To
enlighten and present America as a new international art
center apart from the earlier European dominancy, these
critics did not attempt to describe its historical develop-
ment. But rather they developed a partisan, personal view,
presenting a theoretical rationale for Abstract Expression-
ism and its artists with particular regard for their avant-
garde status. Critical activity at this time did not serve
merely as a means for understanding pictures. But it served
as an activity which itself provides insights into certain
major artistic phenomena of the time. Critics active in
their critical interpretation of Abstract Expressionism
formulated two major radical camps: Clement Greenberg en
the side of formalism and Harold Rosenberg on the side of
"expressionist criticism."2

Greenberg, as a representative of the formalist
point of view, believed the essential characteristics of

Abstract Expressionism involved a transformation of

10

pictorial space in terms of the patent surface elements on
the canvas. 0n the other hand, Rosenberg saw the essence

of Abstract Expressionism in its breaking with the very

idea of style and in the rejection of formal completeness

or even coherence as an aim; he favored the valuation of the
action of the artists.

Whereas Greenberg's critical style of "didactic
prose" entailed analysis of formal properties of exhibited
art, Rosenberg's style was a metaphoric one concerned more
with the character and context of the creative act of
artists rather than its resulting pictorial form.

Even though their major concerns and approaches
are different, the two critics' ultimate purpose was
basically the same. In his article "Some Advantages of
Provincialism,"3 Greenberg viewed American provincialism,
with its raw energy, its sense of vitality and directness, as
providing an advantage for advanced art because of its
”ignorance or mechanical (however felicitous) rendering
of known styles." Praising the provincial mentality as
the Anerican's foremost advantage for advanced art, Green-
berg tried to enlighten American abstract art as
"advanced" art rather than as "exhausted“ European art.
Like Greenberg, Rosenberg tried to validate the American
avant-garde experiments as "new" art in the international
art field. Viewing "the mistake, the accident, the spontap
neous, the incomplete, the absent"4 as the aesthetic watch-

word of the new American painting, Rosenberg advocated

11
post-war American vanguard artists as revolutionary action
painters and situated them in the international modern
tradition. Actually these critics'attempts were effective
and successful. The first generation of Abstract Expres-
sionists began to receive international acclaim in the
1950s.

Even though, both Greenberg and Rosenberg played
an active role in the field of American art criticism
during the Abstract Expressionist period, Rosenberg's new
term, Action Painting, was frequently used to describe
Abstract Expressionists after his article "The American
Action Painters" appeared in Art News in late 1952. Later
in the 1950s, Greenberg, the most important spokesman on
behalf of Abstract Expressionism during the early and
middle-19403, became dissatisfied with the Abstract Expres-
sionists because of their strong surrealist-expressionistic
concerns. He turned to post-Abstract Expressionist develop-
ment and promptly named it "Post-painterly Abstraction" in
the early 1960s.5

On the other hand, Rosenberg, in the 19503, firmly
established a reputation as a principal spokesman for the
Abstract Expressionists through his essay of 1952 and his
book The Tradition of the New of seven years later. It
has even been said that the "fifties were 'occupied' by a
regiment of Rosenbergians,"6 whereas the sixties by Green-

bergians.

12

B. Brief Biography of Harold Rosenberg

Born in Brooklyn in 1906, as a child of Jewish
immigrants from Eastern Europe, Rosenberg had become
involved with the Abstract Expressionist painters in the
late 1940s, as a poet through the Surrealist circle.

Before his direct involvement with art criticism,
Rosenberg acted as a social poet and essayist on literature
and philosophy. His early writings appeared in such maga-
zines as Poetry; Transition, an important experimental
magazine publiShed in Paris; and The Symposium, which was
dedicated to the theoretical discussion of culture. During
the 1930s he, along with Greenberg, wrote for Partisan Re-
BEE-7

During the Depression, a period of Communist acti-
vism in America, Rosenberg wrote political poems and defend-
ed Marxism through the Partisan Review and Poetry. But,
unlike other left-wing Marxists, what he saw in Marxism was
a kind of individualism.

Like everyone else, I became involved in Marxism, but
from the start my Marxism was out of date. I was
interested in Marx for the sake of something else ....
I found in his writgngs a new image of the drama of
the individual ....
His concern for man's individuality soon led him to his
disillusionment with Marxists and Communists who reduced
individuality simply to social identity. As Harry Roskolenko

remembered, “as a member of a left-wing literary club, Harold

spoke up against most of the left-wing Marxist and Stalinist

13

agitation-propaganda in the arts."9

But Rosenberg "was
closer to surrealism, which was closer to Trotskyism in
France, with Andre Breton."1O He was involved in the aura
realist magazine 1353 edited by Parker Tyler and 12!, in the
19403. At that time, French Smrrealists including the major
spokesman, Andre Breton, fled to New York and began to
develop an exchange of ideas and exhibitions through group
activity. They brought to New York the surrealist idea
which depended on the unconscious for revelation and an
interest in symbols drawn from mythology as a way of under-
standing the truths imbedded in the unconscious. These
surrealist ideas stimulated Rosenberg from that time on.

Rosenberg's association with event-garde painters
and sculptors began in his working on the Federal Art
Project as an assistant to a muralist and in his joining
its Artists Union. The Art Project of the W.P.A. (the Works
ProgressAdministration) was established in 1935 under the
direction of Holger Cahill in an effort to alleviate the
devasting situation of the Depression and to save unemployed
artists. Many of the W.P.A. artists were Social Realists
who sought to convey a specifically political message
through their art. However Rosenberg attacked Social Real-
ists and joined the modernist camp.

He rejected simplistic communist demands on art
and its social function but retained a concern for the mean-
ing and intent of art through his activity at the Artists

Union meetings and his commentary in the Union's magazine,

14

Art Front.11

Through his discourse with Tenth Street's avant—
garde artists, Rosenberg began to establish his career as
an influential art critic during the 19408 when he became
involved with Abstract Expressionist painters.

He wrote introductions to early Abstract Expres-
sionist group exhibitions in 194712 and in the same year
he, with a painter Robert Motherwell, assembled the maga-
zine Possibilities I, and published the works of then
unknown artists, such as Pollock and Rothko. Two years
later, he wrote an essay to the catalogue of the “Intras
subjectives" exhibition at the Samuel Kootz Gallery, which
was an important early group exhibition with works by
Baziotes, De Kooning, Gorky, Gottlieb, Hofmann, Motherwell,
Pollock, Reinhardt, Rothko, Tomlin, Mark Tobey, and Morris
Graves.

As an early member of the Club, the organization
of Abstract Expressionists through the 19508,,he became
the friend of Abstract Expressionists. And through contri-
butions to such magazines as Possibilities I; Tiger's Eye
edited by Barnett Newman; and It_i§, a journal of the
Abstract Expressionists' Club, Rosenberg defended the thinkp
ing of these artists and spoke of their art. Then in 1952,
his major essay, "The American Action Painters," appeared in

Art News.

ENDNOTES II

1Barbara Rose, American Art Since 1900 (New York:
Praeger, 1975), p. 155.

2The word "expressionist criticism" is borrowed
from E. Feldman's term in his book, Varieties of Visual
Ex erience (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1972),

pp. - 5.

3Clement Greenberg, "Some Advantages of Provincial-
ism, " Art Digest, 28 (January, 1954), 6- 8.

4Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New
(New York: McGraw—Hill, 1965; re rint ed., ChiCago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982 , p. 17.

5See Clement Greenberg, "Post- ainterly Abstrac-
tion," Art International, 8 (Summer, 1964, 63-64 and
"-After Abstract Expressionism," Art International, 6
(October, 1962), 24-32.

6Carter Ratcliff, "Art Criticism: Other Minds,
Other Eyes," Art International, 18 (September, 1974), 54.

7A. C. Smith, “Art as Politics: the Abstract
Expressionist Avant-garde and Society," (Ph. D. dissertap
tion, University of North Carolina, 1977), p. 103.

8Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New,
pp. 250-251.

9Harold Roskolenko, "Harold Rosenberg: 1906-
1978. " Art International, 23 (September, 1979), 62.

1O

11A.C.Smith, "Art as Politics: the Abstract

Expressionist Avant-garde and Society," p. 120.

1.2Rosenberg wrote an introduction to "Six
American Artists" exhibited at fialgrig_flagght, Paris, 1947;
the exhibition included work by Baziotes, Gottlieb, and
Motherwell.

Ibid., p. 62.

15

CHAPTER III
THE CONCEPT OF ACTION PAINTING

A. Sources

The concept of Action Painting is not simply based
on improvisational thinking. It is deeply rooted in Rosen-
berg's beliefs and thoughts on art developed throughout his
career as a poet and critic. The major influences derive from
individualism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Existentialism, and John
Dewey's views on art.

From his early life, Rosenberg's central concern was
man's individuality. As Dore Ashton said; "At no time,...,
did Rosenberg relinquish his vision of the individual as the
central, most important player in any drama."1

Throughout the 19508, Rosenberg defended Marxism,
but soon he dismissed it since it demanded only social com-
mitment and rejected any independent role of individuals.2
In art, through his experience with the Federal Art Project
and the Artists Union, he saw the triteness of the Social
Realist's method and their misleading of art by using it mainly
for social purposes. Rosenberg turned to the modernist camp.

As a young critic, Rosenberg was affected by the

avant-garde mentality and its radical, antagonistic, active

dynamism against the established society. According to

16

17
vanguard theory, Rosenberg did not believe any linear
development in art history but bad faith in the spontaneous,
mobile, changing moment, which was performed by revolution.
Revolution buries the dead and inaugurates the realm qf
the New. And the New is the consequence of the artist's
refusal to adhere to the given situation. Avant-gardism
represented this revolutionary mentality through its
artistic revolt against the established tradition. This
appealed to Rosenberg. Furthermore avant—gardism was
meant to be an individualistic revolt against society
according to Rosenberg. Thus he defended modernism in art
and avant-gardism. However, modernism, which was once
the most radical event-garde movement in Europe, suffered
"a serious set back" during wartime, in Rosenberg's view.
In a 1940 article called "The Fall of Paris," Rosenberg
mourned the failure of modernism in Paris, the capital of
modernism and avant-garde movements, since the struggle
against fascism robbed the avant—garde of its intellectual“
freedom, the essence of its existence.3 Rosenberg believed
it was the collective ideologies that corrupted the Paris-
ian avant-garde.

In view of the fall of Paris and his own experience
with grovernment—sponsored art in the thirties, Rosenberg
turned to the individual creator. To him, the "true“ avant-
garde should be free from the community ideologies of the
Parisian avant-garde, from the dictums of the academy, and

from the political demands of groups like the Communist

18
Party. And, according to Rosenberg, only individualaartists
can achieve this true avant-garde mentality, if they do
not surrender to collective artistic goals and values, or
form a shool or movement.

Indeed, after the World War, Marxism, the collec-
tive ethic which had once been so vital to artistic dis-
course, faded into the background of new discussions of
existentialism. The crisis of values brought about by the
Second World War had taken all ideas of social responsi-
bility away from art. Responding tO'thiS change in the
world, each artist became concerned with his own problems
of existence and expression.

Watching this change in the needs of artists, especial-
ly, through such artists as Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning,
and Hans Hofmann, Rosenberg believed that something new was
stirring in this country. These experiments seemed to be
different from other modernism and also seemed to confirm
the individualism of the artist's self. This appealed to
Rosenberg. “Art for them is rather the standpoint for a
private revolt against the materialist tradition that does
surround them."4 Rosenberg introduced these artists and
began to evolve art criticism with enthusiasm. He confirmed
his own belief that new art strove by necessity "... not to
a conscious philosophical or social ideal, but to what is
basically an individual, sensual, psychic and intellectual
effort to live actively in the present."5

Ironically the past provided part of the basis

19
for his thought. Dadaism and its unconventionality rein-
forced Rosenberg's concept of Action Painting. Born in
the cafes of Zurich during World War I, Dadaism was formed
by a group of young radical artists, who, in their indigb
nation and despair, were motivated to subvert every esta-
blished convention of society and its culture. The crisis
mentality of the Dadaists and their outrages against aesthetic

values offered Rosenberg a model for Action Painting. As
Robert Motherwell. said. in an interview of 1965 held by
Max Kozloff:

Actually the notion of 'action' is gratuitous. A
critic's finger in the stew. It was taken by Harold
Rosenberg from a piece by Huelsenbeck.... At that
time I was editing 'Dada' proofs of Huelsenbeck's which
ultimately appeared in the Dada anthology as 'En Avant
Dada.‘ It was a brilliant piece.... Harold came
across the passage in proofs in which Huelsenbeck
violently attacks literary esthetes, and says that
literature should be action, should be made with a
gun in the hand, etc. Harold fell in love with this
section, which we then printed in the single issue
that appeared of 'Possibilities.’ Harold a notion of
'action' derives directly from that piece.

Following is a passage from Huelsenbeck to which Motherwell

referred. It was included in Possibilities:

The Dadaist should be a man who has fully understood
that one is entitled to have ideas only if one can
transform them into life- the completely active type,
who lives only through action, because it holds the
possibility of his achieving knowledge.

Rosenberg admired the activism of the Dadaists who attempted
to bind art and action together.

After the fading of the Dada movement with the end
of the First World War, Dada's mentality, its emphasis on

natural emotions, the intuitive, and the irrational was

20

continued by the Surrealists.

As.a poet through a Surrealist circle in 1940's,
Rosenberg shared the Surrealists' idea of art as
a direct expression of one's inner, subconscious self,
their reliance upon the intuitive promptings of creation,
and their cancept of automatism as ”dictation of thought
without control of mind.” And further he shared their
anti-aesthetic bias and their negative attitude toward the
tradition of modern art. Like other orthodox Surrealists,
Rosenberg was overly preoccupied with art content and
distrusted formal aesthetic values. From this surrealist
standpoint, Rosenberg assumed Action Painting contained
images which transcended formal considerations and described
it as an art which did not intend to produce an art object
but to act to reveal the artist's self in the physical
world.

However, Rosenberg did not tie himself to the
Surrealists' ideological concepts but rather relied on the
individual man epitomized by the artists. Thus he naturally
joined in the prevailing existential philosophy which
stressed the importance of individuality. Even though
Rosenberg did not associate himself with Existentialism,8
his certain assumptions and concepts of Action Painting
show remarkable resemblance to existentialist thoughts,
especially Sartre's.

Existentialism, originated by Soren Kierkegaard,

prevailed in Europe during second quarter of the twentieth

21

century; it denied the idea that man has a definable nature,
but emphasized his central role in determining his own
experience. Sartre, a radical French existentialist, focus-
ed on the importance on human action and placed emphasis
on ‘choice' saying that the only reason for being in man
rested in his continuous action of choice in given situations.9
Through a man's action of choice, Sartre believed, the
world comes to realize itself. Man brings a world into
being by his decisions. Thus nothing is determined, fixed
and limited. But everything is open, unpredictable, un-
certain and possible. Man lives in a mood of expectancy,
remains open to change. But also he is in a condition of
anxiety "arising from the realization of his necessary
freedom of choice, of his ignorance of the future, of his
awareness of manifold possibilities, and of the finiteness
of an existence that was preceded by and must terminate in
nothingness."10
Rosenberg applied this existential concept of human
being and his life to the realm of art, since he believed

11 The condition

art is nothing but an artist who makes it.
of man in Sartre concides with the condition of the artist
in Rosenberg. The existential self in the act of decision
in Sartre is the same as the artist in the act of painting
in Rosenberg.

Art has no definite nature since it is the artist's
will to paint and his act to paint. Action Painting, the

unending process of creative action, coincides with the

22

decision of the artist about himself and about the world.
Through Action Painting, the artist creates self-realization
and this self-realization makes the world reveal itself,12
according to Rosenberg's concept of Action Painting.
Finally, Rosenberg's concept is associated with
John Dewey's views on art. In Art As Experience, Dewey
emphasized the active side of the process in art. In emphap
sizing the energies by which intense moments in the artist's
life were organized into works of art, Dewey focused, rather
than on the object, on the process which formed the object.
And, like Rosenberg, he viewed the fundamental nature of the
aesthetic event as an active process, as individual pheno-
menon. Rosenberg's emphasis on energy, tension, living on
the canvas, and the artist's painting as a mixture of life
and action reflects the same core of ideas of Dewey.13
With these various sources and bases, Rosenberg
established the concept of Action Painting, saying that:

At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to
one American painter after another as an arena.in which
to act-rather than as a space in which to reproduce,
re-design, analyze or 'express' an object, actual or

imagined. What was to go on the canvas was notTa:picture
bu t an event.

B. The Concept of Action Painting
1. "The Tradition of the New"
In his article, "American Action Painters," Rosen-
berg presents the new movement of American painters who did
not intend to produce an art object but to abolish art in

favor of meaningful gesture.

23

Through the concept of Action Painting, Rosenberg
describes the changed nature of the work of art and the
changed consciousness of the artists regarding their art.
To Rosenberg these changes are unavoidable and necessary
for the artists facing the crisis in the art world. 'During
the world wars, the terror of war, totalitarianism, dicta,
torships, and nuclear distruction brought the artists to
the point of a crisis mentality, according to Rosenberg.
Artists felt "a desperate recognition of moral and intel-
lectual exhaustion.” And since the given collective, poli-
tical purposes of art stimulated by the war corrupted Paris,
the capital of modernism, artists were in "a sense of being
surrounded by a visual void.“ Not only the political direc-
tions of the war period, but also the outmoded artistic
tradition of the past itself caused the crisis of the art
world, in Rosenberg's view. That is, the formal modernist
tradition with its obsession of “form," "shape," and "composi.
tionf'and its dependence on aesthetics and visual ideologies
distorted the true nature of art and caused ironies: "the
moral irony that changes a living event into a 'picture on
the wall'“ and "the tragic and comic irony that causes a
masquerade to expose itself, to the surprise of those who
have been taken in by appearances."1S

Facing this crisis, artists recognized the need for
a new, revolutionary art, according to Rosenberg. The
new artist was "revolting against the materialist tradition

which threatened to collapse the old order."16 Thus,

24

“Action Painting is an attempt by artists to project them-
selves into the present, to shake off a past that has become
a mental harness."17

Rejecting the sterile formal exercises of academic
modernism, new artists abandon making "art? and "transform"
or "reincarnate" it as "event." Since existing forms lack
significance, artists, instead of pursuing objective ends,
now "intensify their psychic concentrations in the course
of painting.“ Artists now begin to attempt to find the
true image of their identity through their art, according
to Rosenberg. Now, art arises not out of the principle of
the old ideology, aesthetics, styles and forms, but from
the principle of "action.“

Furthermore, for Rosenberg, significantly enough,
this new movement is an entirely American-born movement
and includes two traditions inherent in American art,
"Redcoatism" and "Coonskinism." The former derives its
values, taste and ideals from European modes, the latter
draws on firsthand American experience itself for the
creation of an art without models.18

The Redcoats ignore the American reality and conti-
nue to put out stylish academic painting but are knockeduoff
by the revolutionary coonskiners. The coonskiners, on the
other hand, recognize their reality, snipe at traditional
European concepts of art and deal with art on their own terms.

The Action Painting is the victory of the revolutionary

coonskiners over the redcoats, during World War II.

25

"Coonskinism as a principle won ascendancy in American
painting for the first time during World War II."19

These new coonskiners emphasize such elements of
creation as "the mistake, the accident, the spontaneous,
the incomplete, the absent." The "uneasy insistence and
individual self-consciousness" that give the new American
painting its vitality are entirely American peculiarities
and are lacking in European art. After Action Painting,
the American coonskiners not only defeated the Europeans
but also began to rule European art, according to Rosenberg.

"Coonskinism has become the Redcoatism of Europe."20

2. "The De-defindtion.of Art":.Action Painting

Then, what is the ActiOn.Painting? In the preface '
of his 1959 book, The Tradition of the New, Rosenberg
stated his purpose of writing "to identify what is happen-
ing," and "to recognize the difference between a 'genuine
uprising' and a 'simulated uprising'fi Thus, he modestly
placed his position as a reporter of the current develop-
ment of American painting. And yet, his entire report on
American Action Painting written with symbolic metaphors
demands certain assumptions to cope with his entire argu-
ments. Most of his assumptions reveal his development of
ideas and beliefs which had been suggested in the concept of
Action Painting and show his heavy dependence on existentialist
assumptions. His concept of Action Painting can be analyzed

by the three following presuppositions:

26

a; Action Painting itself is the ”object.”

Action Painting is the process through which the
artist realizes himself.

c) Action Painting through the self-realization of an
artist makes possible the revelation of Nature and the
self-realization of the Audience.

a) Action Painting itself is the "object."

From the beginning, Rosenberg presupposes the defi-
nition of art is absurd in itself. For him, "the attempt
to define is like a game in which you cannot possibly reach
the goal from the starting point but only close in on it by
picking up each time from where the last play landed."21
And yet, the continuing crisis of art and society resulted
from the misunderstanding that art can be set aside as a
thing.

Art, for Rosenberg, cannot be defined as any other
thing except itself. It precedes any external definitions
or preconceptions. Painting is only "TO PAINT." And "TO
PAINT" is something different from to write or criticize.
Since "language has not accustomed itself to a situation in
which act itself is the 'object'," the extrusion of the
object in art is not for the sake of the aesthetic. Unlike
other artistic developments, Action Painting has no common
aim. This new painting does not constitute a School because
"to form a School in modern times is the result of the link-
age of practice with terminology of certain aesthetics.”

Art is constantly making itself, its definition is in this
process of making. To establish the value of the new art

is absurd because the novelty in art precedes any rigid,

 

27

final or defined judgement. The decision does not precede
the act of painting but 'is' the act of painting. The
decision in this art must constantly renew itself, the
indeterminancy of this painting demands it. Thus Rosen— '
berg's term "T0 PAINT," Action Painting, can be directly
injected into the existential terminology-'"The existence
precedes the essence" and "Essence can come into being only
by the act of existence." Art exists as act not by any
reason but by itself, and it is existence itself as absolute

freedom.

b) Action Painting is the process through which the artist
realizes himself.

Action Painting itself as an object can be identi-
fied with an artist's existence. Because art as an act
belongs to the artist as the subject of action. "A painting
that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the art-
ist. The painting itself is a 'moment' in the adulterated
mixture of life.... The new painting has broken down any
distinction between art and life.“22 The artist discovers
a new function of art as the action that belongs to himself.
Since he is not concerned with producing a certain kind of
object, he does not deal with value from certain aesthetics.
He reacts to the canvas as an "arena“ for his liberation
from all values-political, aesthetic and moral. The artist
only accepts as real the fact that he is in the process of
creating. Art consists only of his will to paint. All
'values depend on his state of being. Thus, the content of

 

28

Action Painting is the artist's drama of creation, "his
private myth." The artist creates the new by means of a
heroic action in which he affirms and defines his artistic
and personal identity. He is making himself what he is at
the very time he is painting. Through the moment of action,
the artist realizes his total personality.

However, "Action Painting is not self-expression,"
even though it has to do with self-creation or self-defini-
tion. Because self-expression “assumes the acceptance of
the ego as it is," and the artist cannot achieve the self-
discovery if he is obsessed by this self-expression. Thus,
in the process of artistic realization, certain "distance“
is necessary. To fulfill himself the artist should retain
the "distance" by which some nullification or chastisement
of his consciousness is achieved. ”To maintain the force
to refrain from settling anything he must exercise in him-
self a constant No."23 In the procedure of self—discovery
the artist should negate his ego constantly. Through this
constant negation of ego, the artist transforms himself,

transcends himself and remakes himself.

c) Action Painting through the self-realization of an
artist makes 'possible the revelation of Nature and the
self-realization of the audience.

Even though the ultimate subject of Action Painting
is the artist, "Action Painting is not personal.” "Action

Painting is ambiguous; it asserts the primacy of the creep

tive act but it looks to the object.“24 Action Painting is

 

 

29

not an artist's soliquuy, because the artist cannot sep-
arate himself from the material world. "He...Lgoes]up
to ... (the canvas} with material in his hand to do some-
thing to that other piece of material in front of him."25
And also the concrete consciousness of the artist is insep-
arable from experience of time and place. An artist cannot
escape from the material world, he must begin with art as
he finds it. In creating he is free, but he creates within
a given context. An artist cannot turn away his face from
material reality and he is always conscious of this as
well as of his self. Thus, Action Painting is the dialecti-
cal relationship between artist and material, and the image
is the result made by this encounter. Antagonism of value
is not an antagonism of reality as material world. 'The
artist, only "through the action of brush," constantly
heightens and transforms himself. "Transformation had to be
total, that is, to take place simultaneously in the psyche of
the artist and on the canvas."26

In the traditional sense of art as an object, the
artist and the material world are separated and conflict
with each other. The material world, the remaining thing,
even though impermanent in its nature, is not autonomous,
thus it is easily established in a rigid state by the influ-
ence of the historically created and socially conditioned

world. On the other hand, the artist, in his nature, is

metaphysically grounded and thus autonomous. He is always

in revolt against being identified as belonging to any given

30

world, as being subject to any particular conditions.
However, in Action Painting, the act and the art-
ist are one. Action carries the psychic state of the artist
into the material world. In the artist's unending struggle
with painting and its possibilities, the material world
gains its nature, its possibilities to free itself from any
limited definition. In Action Painting, the art is not a
"thing" but a "thing" in process. In this way, through the
mutual interaction between the self and the thing, Action
Painting not only fulfills the self-realization of the art-
ist but also reveals Nature, the material world, as itself.
Likewise, ' Action Painting, through the constant
gesture of the artist toward Nature, makes sign language for
the private myth of the artist and shows the possibilities
of the self-realization df the audience. aPminting‘asian
object traditionally obstructs "the psychic transaction"
between the artist and the spectator. However "in Action
Painting the artist is the first spectator and the audience
is invited to repeat with him the experience of seeing the
work take shaped“?7
By the very act of disengaging himself from the
traditional painting as object, and by involving himself
in the process of creative action, the maker of Action
Paintings preserves the direct encounter between himself
and the spectator. The spectator cannot receive this message,

or comprehend the meaning of this art by merely looking.

There is nothing to look at but much to get involved with.

31

It is only when the participant supplies his own subjective
sense of motion and time--the very motion and time with
which the artist had invested his work-- that the partici-
pant is able to "re-enact" the work. The participant must
match the energy of his own ”will" with the painting which
is the record of the artist's "will." That is, through the
same performance as the artist, the spectator can achieve
his self-realization and self-transcendence. "Art never
speaks to the masses, but only to those individually awaken-

ed to it."28

3. "Critic within the Act"
"once you know what good art is, why care about
critics, good or bad?"29
Since the conception of Action Painting appeared as
an art which did not intend to produce an art object but to
reveal the artist's self and physical world, some transforma-
tion must also take place in the art critic, according to
Rosenberg. However, for Rosenberg, critics in their nature
are absurd, because they cannot escape the polemical and
cannot accept the transitional character of a situation.
And once they decide their standards of judgement in the
chosen value, they are bent on holding them as permanent and
absolute. The critic who "goes on judging in terms of schools,
styles, form, as if the painter were still concerned with

producing a certain kind of object, instead of living on

the canvas ...," is "bound to seem a stranger." Furthermore,

32

the language which is the critic's ultimate method is un-
suited to talking of anything but things and therefore
incapable of talking about an act.

For Rosenberg, to appreciate Action Painting in--
volves considerations beyond the esthetic. First, the act
in Action Painting is not proper behavior for an object of
esthetic contemplation. Second, the work of art is not a
"thing" or an image of a "thing,” which is waiting for the
critic's taste to respond to it. And it is not merely "a
quantity of energy released into the whole configuration or
arena of a contending world," but "a reflection of a con-
sciousness of the changed nature of art in contemporary time:"
Thus to deal with Action Painting Rosenberg demands a new
kind of criticism which precedes traditional esthetics,
values, judgements. The new criticism should remain ahead
of any conception of what art should be. But it should deal
with the new function of art, the role of the artist and the
behavioral context in which the thing was embedded.

With traditional aesthetic references discarded as
irrelevant, what gives the canvas its meaning is not
psychological data, but 'role', the way the artist
gigsgggeinhislimigiogilu:gdogngsllectual energy as if

g .
Rosenberg asserted the criticism within the act as a new
system of appreciation.

Criticism must begin by recognizing in the painting
the assumptions inherent in its mode of creation. Since

the painter has become an actor, the spectator has to
think in a vocabulary of action: its inception, durap

tion, direction-psychic state, concentration and relax-
ation of the will, passivity, alert waiting. He must
become a connoisseur of the gradations among the auto-
matic, the spontaneous, the evoked.

33

Rosenberg developsthis new system of criticism for the
new notion of Action Painting in his actual criticism of

artists.

 

 

 

 

ENDNOTES III

1Dore Ashton, "On Harold Rosenberg," Critical
Inguiry, 6 (Summer, 1980), 615.

2See Harold Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New,
pp. 178-198.

31bido, Pp. 209-220.

4Rosenberg, "Introduction to Six American Artists,"
Possibilities I (Winter, 1947-1948), p. 75.

51hid., p. 75.

6Max Kozloff, "An Interview with Robert Motherwell."
Artforum, 4 (September, 1965), 37.

7Richard Huelsenbeck, "En Avant Data," Possibili:
ties I (Winter, 1947-1948), p. 42.

 

88cc Rosenberg, Act and the Actor: Making the
Self (New York: The New American Libfafy’IfiETT'Tg7UTT'
pp. 205-206: " ... but my discussion of 'Hamlet' could
scarcely be identified with Existentialism, since it
followed up on a portion of an essay published more than
a decade before the Existentialist movement began."

9J.P.Sartre, Essa s in Existentialism (Edited
with a foreword by Wade BasEin, New York: Uitadel Press,
1967): 'Existence precedes essence. Essence can come into
being only by the act of existence; movement must be there
before rest: there must have been something moving before
it could come to rest. The act of existence is production.
There is no reality except in action. Man exists only to
the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing
else than the ensemble of his acts.’

1OAntony Flew, A Dictionary of Philosophy (New York:
St. Martin's, 1979), p. 108.

 

11Rosenberg-The Tradition of the New, p. 343:
"The act of painting is of the same metaphysical substance
as the artist's existence."

34

35

12Ibid., pp. 26-27. "What matters always is the
revelation contained in the act." Ibid., p. 30. "the lone
artist did not want the world to be different, he wanted
his canvas to be a world."

13On the relationship of J.Dewey's idea and
American Abstract Expressionism and also Rosenberg's idea,
see S.Buettner, “John Dewey and the Visual Arts in America,"
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 33 (Summer, 1975),

14Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, p. 25.

15Rosenberg, "Critic within the Act," Art News,
59 (October, 1960), 27.

16Rosenberg, "Introduction to Six American Artists,"
Possibilities I, P. 75,

17Rosenberg, The Anxious Object, (New York:

Horizon Press, 1964; reprint ed., New York: Collier Books,
1973), p. 40.

18Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, pp. 13-22.
19Ibid., p. 21.
20Ibid., p. 22.
21Ibid., p. 23.
22 . -
Ibid., pp. 27-28.
23Ibid., p. 32.
24Rosenberg, Artworks and Packa es (New York:

Horizon Press, 1969' reprin e ., icago: University of
Chicago Press, 19825, p. 224.

25
26

Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, p. 25.
Rosenberg, The Anxious Object, p. 126.

2”Ibid., p. 93.

28L.Hall, "Harold Rosenberg says: Once you know
what good art is, why care about critics, good or bad?"
Art News, 72 (April, 1973), 66.

291bid., p. 64.

3ORosenberg, The Tradition of the New, P. 29.

31Ibid.

CHAPTER IV
THE APPLICATION OF THE CONCEPT OF ACTION PAINTING:
ROSENBERG'S CRITICAL METHOD AND ITS LIMITATION

After the initial appearance of the “American
Action Painters" in Art News of 1952 and following the re-
publication of the essay in the volume The Tradition of the
New, the concept of Action Painting evoked various responses
among many writers and artists.

Many critics, on the one hand, rejected the notion
of Action Painting. Mary McCarthy, in her review of The
Tradition of the New in Partisan Review of 1959. admonished
"you cannot hang an event on the wall, only a picture."1
The most violent attack on Rosenberg was made by Greenberg
who ridiculed the idea of Action Painting saying it "came
~from a half-drunken conversation between Rosenberg and

2

Pollock" on a trip. Most of these critics questioned

whether this kind of painting Rosenberg had in mind could
be considered as art.3‘
On the other hand, many artists and writers greeted
Rosenberg's concept of Action Painting, which seemed to offer
an effective explanation for new current abstract paintings,
favorably. And the term, Action Painting, was widely used

as a convenient handle for a new art. As Carter Ratcliff

suggested, critics "who call themselves 'anti-formalists'

36

37

and 'post—Greenbergians' owe their rhetorical strategies
to him [Rosenberg] ."4

And yet, Rosenberg's concept of Action Painting
has been generally misunderstood and reduced to a label for
thrown paint. The concept of Action Painting has been
simply used to describe the painting in which special im-
portance was attached to speed of execution and spontaneous
gestural marks. And also it was commonly assumed that
Rosenberg's article applied mainly to the manner in which
Jackson Pollock approached his work, more than any other
painters.5

As early as 1947, Pollock pioneered a technique of
dripping and flinging paint on the canvas. In the light of
the Surrealist influence, Pollock did away with the use of
the brush to allow bodily motion to determine the conception
of his works. Thus, the need for a description of this art
was met by Rosenberg's new term, Action Painting.

However, Rosenberg himself did not mention any
artists as principal models in his 1958 article and also
said later, "Action Painting is not a synonym for Abstract

6 Rosenberg in

Expressionism through there is a connection.”
his review of Pollock pointed out the limitation of Jackson
Pollock's method7 and rejected the direct relationship
between his idea of Action Painting and Pollock's idea.
Wrathfully attacking Robertson's book, Jackson Pollock of
1961, Rosenberg spoke of himself and Pollock and asserted

that:

 

 

 

38

Apparently, Pollock, or someone presently speaking for
him, wished to acquire this thought for himself exclu-
sively, although Rosenberg had told Pollock, in the
presence of a witness, that the article gas not 'about'
him, even if he had played a part in it.

Actually, the Action Painting Rosenberg had in mind
is not a painting executed in the exclusive manner of Pollock
and of Other gestural artists. But rather it is a kind of
painting which would give the most direct expression to the
artist's vision of himself in this world. Nevertheless,
the general misundérStanding of his concept of Action Paint-
ing results from the reduction of "action" to a certain
“method" or simply to "motion." In other words, many people
consider the concept of action was referring to a speedy.
spontaneous thrown manner of paint or to a "mindless" ges-
ture by the uncontrolled motions of the hand. Indeed when
Rosenberg said, “The painter no longer approached his easel
with an image in his mind; he went up to it with material
in his hand to do something to that other piece of material
in front of him,“ he is refering to a certain kind of method
in art that is free from preconceptions.

However, the concept of Action Painting Rosenberg
wants to suggest is not confinement to a certain method,
but, rather, freedom from it in order to allow for a cons-
tantly renewable method. In this sense, the act in the
Action Painting is not for "performing well in an existing
order“ but for creating an entirely new order. Thus, the

real significance of Action Painting to Rosenberg, as

Irving Sandler suggested, is "involved with a search for

 

39

new values, values rooted in the continual discovery 'of
emotional consciousness of being,’ a moral seeking for
authenticity that has called into question all preconceived
norms, including those of painting."9

It also should be noted that Rosenberg's concep-
tion of "act" does not mean a "mindless gesture." When
Rosenberg said the painting is conceived as an event created
out of a sense of mental release, he did not intend it to
be a mindless physical movement. Rather he pointed out the
dialectical role of both ideas and activity in painting.

As he said, "you cannot think a particular idea without
doing it. Nor can you do it in more than a mediocre manner
without having an idea that transcends the mere activity."1O
That is, he suggested a kind of action which is not only
"unpremediated" but is also "controlled" by the mind. To
Rosenberg, the mind and act cannot be separated. Thus, in
Action Painting, the metaphysical content and physical act
should simultaneously happen. Indeed, through the concept
of Action Painting, Rosenberg intended to create a totally
new kind of art free from any other existing art.

However, to many critics who want to evaluate the
painting as "object" rather than as "event," Rosenberg's
concept of Action Painting is still unacceptable. Most of
them attack this concept as inadequate because it can never
fit actual artists and their art. As a response Rosenberg

asserted any definition of what a lot of artists were doing,

even of Action Painting, could never fit the best artists,

40

because the best artists escape that formula.

And yet, from the late 19508, Rosenberg began to
apply his concept of Action Painting to artists, especially
to Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning. Rosenberg himself
restated, in The Anxious Object, “de Kooning's improvi-
sations provided the model for the concept of Action Pain-

11

ting." And he called Hans Hofmann, "an Action Painter,

not in all his modes, to whom an action implies responsi-

bility to the mind and to something beyond it."12

A. The Application of the Concept of Action Painting
to Hans Hofmann
1. Rosenberg's Criticism of Hans Hofmann
Rosenberg.applied the.concept'of.Action Painting
to Hans Hofmann through such articles as “Nature into Action"
in Art News of 1957 and "The Stability of the New," in The '
New Yorker of 1963. Here Rosenberg noted that Hofmann
comprehended the limitation of relying solely on theory
to make art. For Hofmann, according to Rosenberg, theory
was not enough and so he was forced to turn to the possibil-
ity of action in painting. 1
Based on Hofmann's statement, “I want not to know
what I am doing: a picture should be made with feeling, not
with knowing," Rosenberg painted out that Hofmann was a found-
er of automatism in American painting and an explorer of its
accidental possibilities. According to Rosenberg, Hofmann's

spontaneity is different from other "manneristic

41

representations of the spontaneity formula." That is, to

Rosenberg, Hofmann's spontaneity is the ”actual spontaneity“

resulting from both the reflection of his theory and the

accidental technique. "The best Hofmanns hold the action

from rhythm to rhythm in a superb synthesis of impulse

and esthetic consciousness."13
Rosenberg distinguished Hofmann's painting with

three phases:

a; “Learning to see“ period: a stage of investigation.

b "Dialectic tensions and counter-tensions“: a stage

of development.
c) An extension to pantomime and dance: a stage of
achievement and repetition.

a) "Learning to see" period: a stage Of investigation.
According to Rosenberg, in this stage Hofmann

analyzed Nature to learn to see the nature, that is "How-

to-do-it" or “Howbto-think-it." Thus Rosenberg explains

this nature-study phase as an investigating stage with an

analysis of the material world. "This period centers on a

system for transforming visual experience into plastic

creation on a flat surface without destroying this flat

surface."14

And then, Rosenberg asserts this is a negating
stage against traditional aesthetics. Hofmann choses land-
scape rather than still lifes because he wants to be free
from Matisse, according to Rosenberg. From this time on
Hofmann's paintings are "demonstrations of concepts--and of
getting away from them." Rosenberg includes Hofmann's

still lifes and landscapes of the thirties and forties in

this first stage such as Landscape of 1942 (Figure 1).

 

v v A
I

FIGURE

42

 

1.

Hans Hofmann, Landscape, 1942.

Oil on wood, 24 x 50 inches,
Artcounsel,Inc., Boston. (Reproduced
in Walter Darby Bannard, Hans Hofmann,
A Retrospective Exhibition Catangue,
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, p.45).

43

And he distinguishes Truro River of 1937 and Provincetown

 

 

Harbor of 1938 as examplars of this first stage.

b) "Dialectic of tensions and counter-tensions": a stage
of development.

Explaining this second stage, Rosenberg relates
Hofmann's "push and pull'I to his concept of Action Painting.
Hofmann's "push and pull" is the result of his conflict
between the double reality in frOnt of him, the three-
dimensional real world and the flat and rectangular canvas.
Since the picture plane is the primary element of painting,
to preserve the picture plane leads the painting to flatness.
Thus it cannot reveal the three-dimensional reality fully.
"Using a two dimensional means, artists must bring into
being a three dimensional effect." In this concern with
the limitation of the picture plane, Hofmann set up the
“push and pull" to achieve a simultaneous operation of flat-
ness and depth in the painting. For Hofmann, at first, space
and flatness may exist simultaneously in a tension which is
created by the relationship of planes and colors. Each of
the planes and colors has its own specific qualities and
orders. Second, this phenomenon of "push and pull" continues
the dialogue between painter and medium in the creative
process. And this "push and pull“ effect can be achieved
by an accidental action of the painter according to Hofmann.

This theory, in a sense, coincides with Rosenberg's

concept of Action Painting, especially its dialectical

44

relationship of the material elements and the artist. Rosen-
berg begins with his presupposition of Action Painting and
develops it in Hofmann's "push and pull." Pointing to
Hofmann's painting between 1947 and 1951 in the second

stage, Rosenberg asserts that Hofmann's "plastic animation"
excludes mediation: I

The painter still starts with the model, but once
his notation has begun working on each other the
canvas is allowed to take over, the painter 'thinks
not' nor sets requirements but follows the intimations
of the picture's brain with its dialectic of tensions
and counter-tensions, Hofmann's push and pull.

Rosenberg suggests The Prey of 1956 is one of the Hofmann's
grandest paintings and explains "in it he [Hofmann] touched
the mysterious intersection of hazard and inspiration"
(Figure 2). He also suggests that Hofmann's Ecstasy (1947)
had led him to be among the first in American painting to
explore the possibilities of accident (Figure 3):

In 'Ecstasy', 1947, with its powerful linear swirls
interlocked with curved and boxed shapes like a section
of a machine jutting into the sky, the artist, instead
of calculating equivalences between the scene and the
picture surface, allowed his brush to be moved after
the first stroke by the notations on the canvas as if
by guiding signs... he was the pioneer in defining the

surface of plane by means6of dribblings of paint through
which forms are visible.

After referring to Hofmann's automatism, Rosenberg
also analyzes Hofmann's canvas as the direct representation
of the painter's psychic state. The abstract signs of formal
components on Hofmann's canvas reveal Hofmann's spiritual
intention and his mode of creation according to Rosenberg.
Identifying some of Hofmann's painting with that of Kandin-

sky, he asserts:

 

45

Hans Hofmann, The Prey, 1956. Oil on
composition board, 60 X 48 1/8 inches,
Owned by the artist. (Reproduced in
William C. Seitz, Hans Hofmann,
Exhibition Catalogue, The Museum of
Modern Art, New York, p. 37).

FIGURE 3.

 

Hans Hofmann, Ecstasy, 1947. Oil on canvas,
68 x 60 inches, Owned by the artist.
(Reproduced in William C. Seitz, Hans Hofmann,
Exhibition Catalogue, The Museum of Rodern Art,

New York, p. 22),

47

These are at times effects of compositional intuitions
("Magenta And Blue"); or, seeming to originate apart
from the visual world, they constitute emblems of psy-
chic states or entities ("Perpetuita," "Germania," both
1951), like in impulse to, thcugh not resembling, Kan-
dinsky's later abstractions.

0) An extension to pantomime and dance: a stage of achieve-
ment and repetition
In turning to action, Hofmann's painting offers its
hand to pantomime and dance, according to Rosenberg. Rosen-
iberg relates Liebesbaum of 1955 to Rilke's poetry, and Hof-
mann's elements of painting to that of dance (Figure 4).
"To this transformation of painting belong such Hofmann
masterworks as 'Burst Into Life', 1952, and 'X', 1955."
"'Liebesbaum', 1955, is a tree danced-—in the scent of one
of Rilke's nymphs." He asserts that Liebesbaum shows Hof-
mann's mode of Action Painting very well:
In this canvas nature turns into action under our eyes,
the unmistakable trunk and foliage of the love tree
flinging themselves into the dance of forms which in
this style of painting hag replaced the architectonics
of earlier abstract art.
He suggests the examplars of Hofmann's paintings in which
Action Paintings are dominant, such as, Moonlight Sonata

(1961), Summer Nights Bliss (1961), In The Wake of the
Hurricane (1960) (Figure 5). and Wild Vine (1961).

2. The Critique of Rosenberg's Criticism
of Hans Hofmann
The application of Rosenberg’s concept of Action

Painting to Hans Hofmann is open to serious question from

48

 

9

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FIGURE 4 .

49

 

FIGURE 5. Hans Hofmann, In the Wake of the Hurricane,
1960. Oil on canvas, 72 1/4 x 60 inches,
University Art Museum, Berkeley.
(Reproduced in Walter Darby Bannard, Hans
Hofmann, p.8 X

50

many sides. In fact, unlike his theory, to deal with an
individual artist, Rosenberg does return to the art object.
To explain Hans Hofmann, he continuously refers to Hofmann's
works of art which, according to his original concept, are
nothing but images remaining as the meaningless aftermath
of an "event."

Rosenberg distinguishes Hofmann's paintings as
three phases: the first period including Hofmann's still
lifes and landscapes of the thirties and forties; the second
period abstraction from the forties to the first half of the
fifties; and the third period abstraction from the second '
half of the fifties to the sixties. To apply his idea of
Action Painting in these paintings, Rosenberg uses the
dialectical method of Hegel. That is, he regards Hofmann's
first period, so-called "learning to see" period, i.e., a
period of theorization and analysis, as "thesis" which
negates itself to become its opposite, "anti-thesis," that
is anti-theorization or anti-concept. And then he places the
second and third stages where these two contradictory im-
pulses reconcile in the "synthesis." At the top of the
dialectical development, Rosenberg places the concept of
Action Painting. He sees Hofmann's paintings as a progres-
sive or successive development toward the concept of Action
Painting. Thus he praises Hofmann when he can successfully
achieve the balance of dialectic between self and material
world and thus realize his identity. And, based on this

belief in dialectical movement, Rosenberg praises Hofmann

51

when he transcends himself and repeats his inner struggle
without finishing it as an ending achievement:

The dialectics of Hofmann's morality balances on
his struggle against the given, the struggle for the
'creative'(his favorite word) as the sole reality-
it involves putting into practice his fixed romantic
assumption that painting must be constantly prevented
from becoming the means by which the artist repeats
himself. Beginning again is not only rule for each
new canvas, it is thg inner.process which gives mean-
ing to the picture.

In this way Rosenberg points out Hofmann's weakness when
he loses the balance of Action Painting's dialectics:

Weakness in Hofmann's painting occurs when the
artist has moved so fast that the action on the canvas
is finished before he has been able to get into it:
compositions of this type lack developmega and turn
into more or less lucky swipes of color.

To evaluate Hofmann, Rosenberg applies the criteria
of the dialectical "balance" or "tension.“ And yet, he
does not suggest any examples to prove this weak point in
Hofmann's work and he avoids close analysis that could be
called formal. Thus, we hardly find out what the precise
meaning of the "balance" of Action Painting's dialectics
may be, just when it may be reached,.and how this balance
may be recognized.

Since Rosenberg's appreciation of Hofmann is based
on his admiration for the principle of process, and since
he sees him as "incantatory" rather than formal, his language
dealing with Hofmann‘s painting evolves in a different way.
When he deals with the formal components of Hans Hofmann,
he regards them as an agency of physical motion. That is,

line as the direct manifestation of act establishing "the

 

52 ‘
actual movement of the artist's hand as an esthetic state-
ment." And strokes of color, which are one of the dominant
elements of Hofmann's painting, retain "their separate
identities within the picture situation and function as
forces in conflict, instead of being changed by their width
or length into mere relations of planes." Rosenberg ex—
plains Hofmann's rectangles:

Unique to Hofmann is the insertion of smoothly
painted red, yellow or blue rectangles, into a multi-
originated surface as if to demonstrate that action
in painting need not be dependent upon violent brush-

work but can be attained also through the back and
forth movement produced by relations of hue and scale.

21
Rosenberg compares Hofmann's composition of rectangles

to a.reflection of "the dilemma of motion in an immobile
medium like painting" (Figure 6). Thus rectangles are
"motion poised on stillness." By stating this, Rosenberg
has failed to see the aspect of Hofmann which resists best
the history makers -his formrmaking originality. Actually
Hofmann is an European artist firmly inspired by the modern-
ist tradition. His "push and pull" theory, his need to
translate the volumes and voids of what was seen in the world
into planes of color, in accordance with the two-dimensional
character of the picture surface, is above all a "modernist"
concern. As Irving Sandler suggested, Hofmann's ambition

was "to arrive at a grand synthesis of Cubism and Fauvism

while employing the method of gesture painting.” Although

Hofmann affirmed the artist's spiritual and intuitive feel-

ing in art, he never disregarded systematic picture-

 

53

 

FIGURE 6. Hans Hofmann, Cathedral, 1959.
Oil on canvas, 7 x 8 inches,
Mr. and Mrs. Albrecht Saalfield.
(Reproduced in Walter Darby Bannard,
Hans Hofmann, p. 82).

54

making or such formal elements as Fauve brushwork and its
color and Cubist design and masterly drawing. And yet,
to Rosenberg, Hofmann's theory is never a basis for the
form-making but rather a metaphysical symbol of the artist
and his surrounding art world. Thus, eventually, Rosenberg
is not fully satisfied with Hofmann as an Actimn Painter
and criticizes him negatively. "Weakness also appears when
Hofmann loses his grip on the action and falls back on cone
cept to bring the painting to completion: here the artist's
undefined feelings are suppressed."22
Indeed Rosenberg seems to have another artist in
mind as the most appropriate model for his concept of Action
Painting. In an interview of the painter Robert Motherwell
by the critic Max Kozloff, Motherwell mentioned that, "Of
' course this notion of 'action' (Rosenberg's notion] as
opposed to aestheticism is tailor-made to describe an aspect

of de Kooning's pictures...."23

And in Rosenberg's original
article of 1952, if we read it carefully, we can find him
describing de Kooning several times.24 It was de Kooning's
adventures on canvas which most resembled Rosenberg's

vision of Action Painting.

B. The Application of the Concept of Action Painting
to Willem de Kooning
1. Rosenberg's Criticism of Willem de Kooning
Rosenberg's criticism of de Kooning is entirely

based on his belief in art and his concept of Action

55

Painting. Through such articles as "Painting Is a Way of
Living,“ "On the Borders of the Act,” and the major text
on de Kooning in 1974, Rosenberg continuously advocates

de Kooning as a foremost Action Painter and simultaneously
confirms his concept of Action Painting.

Rosenberg directly applies his aesthetic rhetoric,
which focuses on the threat of ideology, to the free,
creative individual—-de Kooning. With his belief in indi-
‘vidualism, Rosenberg searched the canvases of de Kooning
for signs of the artist's personal independence. "The
logic of de Kooning's work lies not in its rational consis-
tency but in the artist's unending struggle with painting
and its possibilities.“25 De Kooning's use of disembodied
forms and dramatic swaths of color symbolized this indivi-
dualism, for Rosenberg.

De Kooning, like the Dadaists, never passively
accepted ideas. Instead he took ideas and shaped them for
his own purpose. For Rosenberg, de Kooning's mode of
creation is illuminated as the negation of everything. In
order to detach painting from the social, aesthetic, or,
philosophical value of a given time and place, de Kooning
refused to adhere to any social norms, disciplines or the
earlier notions of what art should be. According to Rosenberg,
the art of the past only served as "creative stimuli" to
de Kooning. Rosenberg pointed to de Kooning's art during
the Depression when many American artists turned to either

Social Realism or Regionalism and asserted that de Kooning

56

resisted those claims. Instead he painted "brooding men
that are near self-portraits executed as recondite experi-
ments in perspective."26

De Kooning refused to force a style and said,
"there is no style of painting now.“ Rosenberg explained
de Kooning's concept of “no style" as an expression of the
social estrangement of the artist and an anti-form. And
yet, Rosenberg added de Kooning's "no style" is “not to
disregard style totally, but to transform them to new
possibilities by the new use of the artist."27

De Kooning used many styles from many periods of
art. He employed form or method from Cezanne, Cubism,
Mondrian, Surrealism, Van Gogh, Soutine, and even Pompeian
murals. He himself said, "I am an eclectic painter by
chance: I open almost any book of reproductions and find

a painting I could be influenced by."28

Rosenberg explains
de Kooning's use of traditional paintings as his specific
mode of creation. Rosenberg asserts the meaning of meta-
morphosis lies in the artist's use of it. Thus, de Kooning,
according to Rosenberg, by using or rearranging given styles
as formal devices could achieve the ultimate transformation:
transformation from old masterpieces to new innovative work.
Rosenberg's criticism of de Kooning is heavily
based on the artist's personal talk, statements, and his
interviews with the artist. He firmly believes that the

content of every work of art is the artist's biography:

the psyche of the artist, symbols and metaphors of the

57

artist's mode, and a revelation of the artist's experiences.
To Rosenberg, content is made by a chain of inspirations

And inspiration occurs when the artist encounters the art
(canvas) and "becomes one in the action."

For Rosenberg, art is an artist's experience and
not simply an object to be viewed from a point of aesthetic
detachment. Rejecting Maurice Denis' famous dictum, "Re-
member that a picture-before being a horse, a nude, or
some sort of anecdote-is essentially a flat surface covered
with colors arranged in a certain order," Rosenberg denies
the art-for-art's sake attitude.

For him, all paintings are ultimately represents,
tional, even if they do not look it. Even the oddest
abstract paintings can be considered as "inner" landscape
or "inner“ portrait. "In most of the abstract art, however,
... the scene has not been extinguished.“ Thus, he, most
of all, hates formalist criticism which, he thinks, has
consistently buried the emotional, moral, social and meta-
physical content of modern art under "blueprints of achieve-
ments" in the handling of line, color, and form.

Rosenberg, from this standpoint, finds and tries
to explain every sign of the artist's "desire, frustration,
inner conflict, pleasure, disdain, humor, and irony" in
de Kooning's painting. De Kooning's human forms and land-
scapes reflect the disorder of their time, for Rosenberg.
The expressive canvases created out of spontaneous techniques

are seen as symbols of the disorder of the epoch. And yet,

58

de Kooning also achieves unity through "an act of equili-
brium.“ De Kooning's spontaneous compositions, for Rosen-
berg, rarely rely on automatism or doodling. Instead his
free associations are made by years of painting practice
and the example of other painters. De Kooning's scribble
or a sign, his technique of "rapid flaunts of the brush"
are animated by "conscious intuitions." This "unity” makes
de Kooning different from others such as Surrealists,
Gorky, and Pollock whom, Rosenberg thinks, made their paint-
ings through an ideology or "therapy of the unconscious."
Based on the artist's statements, Rosenberg praises
every attitude of de Kooning and his art. "In his canvases,
painting in the twentieth century recovers the metaphysical
concentration on self, being, and action of the most elevat-
ed moments in art."29 He asserts:
No art of our time is more immediately engaged than
de Kooning's with the organic life of its creator.
Each phase of his work contains the matter of his psy-
chological condition, his iatellectual activity, and
his phySical surroundings.
For Rosenberg, de Kooning's major themes, women
and the sea, are seen as symbols of metamorphosis and
instability. That is, they are "concrete realities,"
“metaphors for the tremblings of nature," and “I" as the
"leitmotif in Western art since the Renaissance." His
early Women are the "massive icons of 'no environment‘."
And the women of the sixties are "today's cuties in their

beach settings." landscape for de Kooning refers to

"scenery," "the physical world-called reality," "the social

 

 

59

context" and ”the specific artistic situation." Gotham

Eggg (1955-56), Saturday Night (1955-56), Police Gazette
(1954-56) are forms of the crowded cityscapes of the mid-
fifties. And Pare Rosenberg (1957), Surburb in Havana (1958)
and Door to the River (1960) are also new symbols of the

 

highway. They are both outer and inner landscapes of the
artist. They are images made by de Kooning's dialectical
encounter with the material world. By his "willful mind"
and “trained hand," de Kooning achieves the title as the

foremost Action Painter, according to Rosenberg.

2. The Critique of Rosenberg's Criticism
of Willem de Kooning

As compared with the application of the concept of
Action Painting to Hans Hofmann, Rosenberg's application to
de Kooning is more direct and extensive. Every mode of de
Kooning and his works of art is directly related to Rosen-
berg's concept of Action Painting.

Indeed, de Kooning who was strongly anti-doctrinaire
might appeal more to Rosenberg than Hofmann who was rather
systematic, basing his aesthetics on a belief in universal
laws. In contrast to Hofmann who was not apparently troubled
by the existential abyss, de Kooning might have more exis-
tential character such as "angst,“ "pathos," and "isolation"
in Rosenberg's eye.

However, the problem of Rosenberg's criticism based

on the concept of Action Painting is still revealed in the

 

60

case of its application to de Kooning. Willem de Kooning
is, above all, a traditional artist. His abiding interest
is in a traditional figuration, in Cubist pictorial struc-
ture,and in an apparent painterliness. Unlike that of many
of his contemporaries, such as Pollock, Newmann, or Still,
each of whom produced a body of work which had a "non-art"
look, de Kooning's work is full of the feel of "real art,"
of "art that looks like art."31

Throughout his career, de Kooning's art is mobile
in a zone between abstraction and figurative iconography.
However, in any of his abstractions, the references to
nature are revealed. Even an abstract form, de Kooning
said, has to have a likeness, and he worked for years to
find the exact abstract forms that could be at once sugges-
tive. In his famous paintings such as Attic of 1949
(Figure 7) and Excavation of 1950, the line is as graphic and
abstract as the line in a Pollock painting (Figure 8), it
also carries the memory of concrete objects, particularly
human limbs.

With his love of "the vulgar and flesh part" of
Western art, he chose the human figure as subject matter.
Throughout the thirties, male figures dominated and in the
forties women prevailed. Indeed, this choice of the human
figure is an apparent indication of his attachment to past
art. However, Rosenberg does not accept this figure-ground
subject as the sign of traditidnal obsession. But, rather,

with his firm belief in the avant-garde status of de Kooning,

 

FIGURE 7.

 

Willem de Kooning, Attic, 1949. Oil on canvas,
61 3/8 x 80 1/4 inches, Collection Muriel Newman,
Chicago. (Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess, Willem

 

de Kooning, Exhibition Catalogue, The Museum of

Modern Art, p. 65).

.71‘4‘

"Ilt
~‘tr54’
,-' I.

,4

FIGURE 8.

62

 

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm, 1950.
Oil on canvas, 8' 7” x 17' 3",

The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
(Reproduced in Francis V. O'Connor,
Jackson Pollock, Exhibition Catalogue,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York,

p. 108).

63

he explained this as "the rejection of radical cliches."
Since woman is a "forbidden subject for the radical artist,"
using this given subject de Kooning is a "true" radical
avant-garde artist, according to Rosenberg. By saying so,
Rosenberg reduced other artists who have not deal with
"forbidden subjects," to the level of "not true" radical
artists or second-level avant-gardists.

With his open indifference to formal values in the
work of art, Rosenberg's problem or parochialism is revealed.
As in the case of Hofmann, Rosenberg is mainly concerned
with the character and context of the creative act in de
Kooning's art and ignores its resulting pictorial problems.
His opposite, Greenberg, claimed that de Kooning was a "Late
Cubist." ”De Kooning‘s apparent aim is'a synthesis of tra-
dition and modernism that would grant him more flexibility
within the confines of the Late Cubist canon of design."32

Actually de Kooning's relation to Cubism is appar---1
ent. As he himself said, "Of all movements I like Cubism
most," he admired the firm design of Cubism and also its
poetic qualities. In his dominant male figures, de Kooning
flattened the forms, fragmented their bodies into planar
anatomical shapes, and spread them across the surfaces.
These are devices favored by the Cubists. De Kooning's
sketch (Figure 9) and Untitled of 1937 (Figure 10) are
apparently borrowed from Picasso's Studio of 1928 (Figure 11)
and Painter and Model of same year (Figure 12). Likewise,

Clown of 1941 shows the bold double profile view of the

FIGURE 9.

64

 

 

Willem de Kooning, Study for mural in the
Williamgburg Project Social Room, Brooklyn,
1935, WPA Project. Present whereabouts
unknown. (Reproduced in Harold Rosenberg,
Willem de Kooning, New York: Abrams, 1974,
Plate 5),

 

FIGURE 10.

65

Willem de Kooning, Untitled, Ca. 1957.
Oil on paper, 10 x 14 inches,
Collection Elaine de Kooning. (Reproduced

in Thomas B. Hess, Willem de Koonin
New York: Braziller, Inc., PIate IE).

66

 

 

FIGURE ll. Pablo Picasso, The Studio, 1928.
Oil on canvas, 59 x 91 inches,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
(Reproduced in Alfred H. Barr, Jr. ed.,
Picasso: Fort Years of his Art,
The Museum of Rodern Art, New York,

p. 136).

67

 

 

 

-i
t i
}_|

F LGU?"

l\)

. Pablo Picasso, Painter and Model, 1928.
Oil on canvas, 51 5/8 x 63 7/o inches,
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Janis, New York.
(Reproduced in Alfred H. Barr, Jr. ed.,
Picasso: Fortngears of his Art, p. 138).

68

face, reflecting de Kooning's interest in the fractured
repetitions of Cubism (Figure 13). And also in Pink Lady
Of 1944, the multiple viewpoint of the head, the neck and
arms are closer to Picasso than anyone else (Figure 14).

The impact of Picasso's work can be apparently
traced through a series of related works on paper. As
Sally E. Yard recently suggested in her thesis on Willem
de Kooning,33 Two Standing Men in 1939 (Figure 15) and

Mannikins (1942) show distortions derived from Picasso's

 

Guernica (1937), (Figure 16). And the flared nostrils and
large eyes, in Two Standing Men and Mannikins are directly
related to Picasso's African Sculpture in front of Window
of 1937 (Figure 17).34

Not only the Cubist method, but also its poetic
mood is found in de Kooning's work. That is, de Kooning's
paintings, gig!§_(1941) and Acrobat of 1942 (Figure 18),
recall in mood the performers of Picasso's Blue and Rose
periods. However, do Kooning who insists on firm pictorial
structure like the Cubists, also tries to make a form that
is more ambiguous and dynamic.

Picasso's expressionistic late Cubism enabled him
to distort his own figures to gain a more intense form of
expression. But, unlike the Cubists who eliminated color
and employed tone to differentiate space, de Kooning evoked
space by means of color and superposition of forms. In
Study for a Backdrop of 1946 the packed forms are in no
space, yet space is suggested by color and superposition

of shapes (Figure 19). Furthermore, de Kooning's Cubism is

69

«1511513

"o~-- “
. ‘.K-I‘P'
\ g'R‘,

 

Willem de Kooning, Clown, Ca. 19U1.
Oil on masonite, #1 x 2h 1/2 inches,
Courtesy Allan Stone Gallery.
(Reproduced in Galley E. Yard, Willem
de Kooning, Ph.D.Dessertation,
Princeton University, 1980, Figure 128).

 

 

FIGURE 14.

 

70

;~'.-

'2, WHEV;FW§-—l
‘3‘" «U‘*_,' , fi' M

Willem de Kooning, Pink Lady, Ca. 1944.
Oil and charcoal on composition board,

48 5/8 X 35 5/8 inches,

Collection Mr. and Mrs. Stanley K. Shein—
baum, Santa Barbara, California.
(Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess, Willem de
Kooning, The Museum of Modern Art, p. 42L

71

 

 

 

 

 

Willem de Kooning, Two Standing Men,

Ca. 1959. Pencil on paper,

13 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches, Courtesy

Courtesy Xavier Fourcade Gallery.
(Reproduced in Sally E. Yard, Willem
de Kooning, ph.D. Dissertation,
PrincetonFUniversity, 1980, Figure

:32).

FIGURE 15.

 

FIGURE 16.

72

 

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937.

Oil on canvas, 11 feet 6 inches x

25 feet 8 inches, Estate of the

artist.

(Reproduced in Alfred H. Barr, Jr. ed.,
Picasso: Forty Years of his Art, p. 174).

73

 

(Reproduced in John Richardson, ed.,
Picasso, an American tribute,

Exhibition Catalogue, Public Education
Association in cooperation with Chanticleer
Press, New York, Figure 13).

74

 

FIGURE 18. Willem de Kooning, Acrobat, Ca. 1942.
Oil on canvas, 56 172 x 25 1/2 inches,
Private collection, New York.
(Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess, Willem

de Koonin , New York: Braziller, Inc.,
Plate Z15,

75

 

1 ,n

.1 .

‘.'- ‘ |I ’ ' '

(“W1 \ MW g
‘5‘; gym" I) W‘fif"'

- twee- - .. , ‘ . ;.

nhzfifiéfihn/”fl.'
h. - .

.“ ”‘5

are ..., -» . ~ ,
, ‘ ‘n. ‘ ‘ :‘ 5.1,,

‘ MK ~ . ‘ .v (_ 5:43:11;

“BIS! ILI'21: , ' ' ' "’li‘w‘ffi'f‘L

,

 

Study for Backdron

 

The Iuseum of Modern

 

19. Willem de Kooning,
(Labyrinth), 1946. Oil and charcoal on
p p , 22 1/Q r 28 1/2 inches, Private
0 l .lon (1 produced in Thomas B. Hess,
. 1 Y
.t

76

tinted by the Surrealist mode, through Miro and Gorky.

The Surrealists' multiplicity of association and ambiguous
biomorphic shapes and Gorky's disembodied lines are pre-
sented in de Kooning's abstractions as early as the 19303.
And from the early forties he combined a biomorphic vocabu-
lary with a loose painterly application of pigment, probably
influenced by Surrealist automatism and later, Pollock's
invention of drip painting.

Furthermore, de Kooning further "agonized" the
biomorphic form, tearing it open to give it an angular
Expressionist character. In Pink Lagy (Ca. 1944) the ges-
tural brushstrokes were combined with Cubist dislocation.
And then he increased his gestural activity by loosing
shapes and allowing paint to run in pictures like Light in
Auggst (Figure 20) and Untitled of 1950. Throughout the
late forties works and famous Woman series, such characteristics
as "big, slashing flayed stroke, tactile mashing and streak-
ing of paint, drips and spatters, deformity and queer atti-
tudes of figures,"' have been a hallmark of his art (Figure
21).

Greenberg did not accept this Surrealist-expression-
ist quality in de Kooning's art, because of his parochial
favoring of disinterested abstract and pure art. Likewise,
what Rosenberg did not see in de Kooning's painting was its
logicality based on Cubism. He refused to believe that
de Kooning, throughout his career, could not deny the insis-

tence on flatness and the firm pictorial structure of Cubism.

 

FIGURE 20.

Willem de Kooning, Light in August,
Ca. 1946. Oil and enamel on paper,

mounted on canvas, 55 x 41 1/2 inches,
Collection Elise C. Dixon, Scottsdale,
Arizona. (Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess,
Willem de Kooning, The Museum of Modern
Art. 13- W.

FIGURE 21.

“RT ,1; fr‘jfik -

...;._..

, ...‘4...

 

Willem de Kooning, Woman and Bicycle,

1951-1953. Oil, enamel and charcoal

on canvas, 76 1/2 X 49 inches,
Whitney Museum of American Art.
(Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess, Willem

de Kooning, The Museum of Modern Art,
p“ 0

79

Indeed, even in his Woman I of 1950 - 1952, de Kooning did
not lose the surface qualities of painting while using
traditional light and dark contrasts and recessive-projec-
tive color contrasts (Figure 22).

Rosenberg did not accept de Kooning's traditional
formal concern, but rather neglected it as a secondary
means for the artist's metaphysical intent. Based on Kan-
dinsky's doctrine that art is the expression of an "inner
necessity" and that emotion provides the true content of
art, Rosenberg sought only the emotional content in art.
And then, modified by Existentialism's concern with "action,"
he neglected the resulting picture and its pictorial prob-
lems.

Rosenberg firmly believed that Abstract Expression-
ism was dominated by a sense of "angst," "crisis" and an
overwhelming concern for the expression of a certain kind
of content. And he also believed de Kooning attained the
status of Existentialist artist hero: one who risked
everything willingly in the "act" of painting and bodily
enacted his personal drama through the creative process.
Thus, de Kooning's emotional, personal characteristics are
emphasized in an exaggerated way. De Kooning's art, from
the first to the last, is described as a symbol of all
artists' personal dilemmas and the heroism of the post-war
epoch with its chaos and confusions.

By emphasizing this "metaphysical" content as the

artist's only and ultimate intent, Rosenberg asserted that

8O

 

FIGURE 22. Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950—1952.
Oil on canvas, 75 7 8 x 58 inches,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
(Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess, Willem

de Kooning, The Museum of Modern Art,
p'90 o

81

every form of art should convey this intent. And he also
asserted that an artist could use every form and every
style in every period of art for his special mode. Thus,
the sign of eclecticism in de Kooning's art is justified

as the means for the artist's ultimate ambition, that is,
the ambition for "no style." Here we see Rosenberg's meta-
physical irony. He explained "no style" as an expression
of the artist's estrangement from society and an anti-form.
And yet, we know, the Dadaists, especially Marcel Duchamp
had already discarded all established stylistic methods for
making art. By submitting a ready-made porcelain urinal
entitled Fountain (1917), Duchamp ridiculed all artistic

 

norms, aesthetics, artist's personalities and styles.
Indeed it is an art with "no style" achieved by Duchamp's
sarcastic nihilism. But, how about de Kooning?

Since de Kooning's paintings show many elements and
many other "looks," we have lost sight of their uniqueness.
As a result of the ambiguities achieved by a variety of
pictorial approaches and devices, de Kooning is often said
to have no style. However, it is not "no style,” but
rather an eclectic style achieved by de Kooning's sophisti-
cated "trained hand."

It is still interesting to question whether the
work of art, always coincides with the artist's intent.
Matte once said that he talks about the violence of paint,
but his own work is not violent in its handling.35 Besides,

could style be avoided, even if an artist intended to do so?

82

But, de Kooning did say "there is no style of painting
now."
Some painters, including myself, do not care what

chair they are sitting on. It does not even have to be
a comfortable one. They are too nervous to find out
where they ought to sit. They do not want to 'sit in
style.’ Rather, they have found that painting -any
kind of painting, any style of painting -- to be painting
at all, in fact —-136a way of living today, a style of
living so to speak.

However, unlike de Kooning's intent, from the muted,
lyrical Man to the exorbitant mesh of color and texture that
is the 1964 figures (figure 23), a constant factor is reveal-
ed. He has shown persistent themes of Pompeian color, blue,
pink, ocher and similar hooking forms and flickering con-
tours. With a formal style, de Kooning also shows the
characteristic emotional style of an intense unrest, a
certain mood of irritation. Not only does de Kooning have
a style, but that style has been so influential that it
has practically come to stand for Abstract Expressionism
in general.

Evidently it is de Kooning's irony which denies the
style in his own mind, yet develops the "eclectic style"
as if it were a kind of achievement free from the idea of
style. And further, he "sits" on the chair of heroic, de
Kooning style. Likewise, Rosenberg's irony is in his heavy
dependence on the artist's statement. Thus he does not see
the difference between what is happening and what the artist
wants to happen. Of course, no work exists by itself, and

all art exists in a context which includes other works and

a climate of ideas, of which an artist's attitude and

83

 

FIGURE 23. Willem de Kooning, Clam Diggers,' 1964.
Oil on paper, mounted on composition board,

20 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches, Private collection.
(Reproduced in Thomas B. Hess, Willem de
Kooning, The Museum of Modern Art, p. 126).

 

84
intention are "a part." But Rosenberg, looking at art only
through its creators, does not believe the fact that art
and the psychology of artists, although related, remain
as two distinct areas. Thus, he denies the formal or visual
effect of the work of art to the viewer or the critic, saying
that "Once you know what good art is, why care about critics,
good or bad?"37 If art is nothing but an artist who makes
it, and anything external is useless, why is Rosenberg

himself doing the same useless job? What is he?

 

ENDNOTES IV

1Mary McCarthy "AnIAcademy of Risk," Partisan
Review, 26 (Summer, 1959), 476-480.

2C. Greenberg, "How Art Writing Earns Its Bad Name,"
Encounter, 19 (December, 1962), 67-71.

3See Hilton Kramer's review of The Tradition of
the New in Arts (September, 1959), pp. 56-59 and aIso
“The New American Painting," Partisan Review, 20 (July—
August, 1953), 421-427.

4Carter Ratcliff, "Art Criticism: Other Eyes,
Other Minds," Part V, Art International, 18 (December, 1974),

‘ 5B.H.Friedman, Jackson PolloCk—-ener made visible
(New York: ' McGrQWe-Hill, 1W
asserts that Rosenberg's article, "The american Action
Painters,“ has broad reminders of Pollock's life and outlook.
He said, "In the remainder of the essay the reminders seem
sometimes to refer even more specifically to Pollock (who
himself referred to the essay as 'Rosenberg's piece on me')--
that is, more than to de Kooning and Kline who must have
been Rosenberg's other principal modelsJ'

6See Friedman, Jackson Pollock-- energy made visi-
ble, p. 197.

 

 

7Rosenberg, Artworks and Packa as (New York: Horizon
Press, 1969‘ reprint e ., icago: niversity of Chicago
Press, 1982), pp. 58-74.

8Rosenberg, "The Search for Jackson Pollock,"
Art News, 59 (February, 1961), 60.

9Irving Sandler, "An Exchange on Art Criticism,"
Art. 34 (May. 19 0), 28.

1OL.Hall, "Harold Rosenberg says; Once you know
what good art is, why care about critics, good or bad?"
Art News, 72 (April, 1973), 64.

11Rosenberg, The Anxious Object, p. 117.
121bid., p. 155.

85

86

13Ibid., p. 159.
141bid., p. 156.
15Ibid., p. 157.
16Ibid., p. 247.

171bid., p. 157.

181bid., p. 248.

191bid., p. 159.

2olbid.

21Ibid., p. 249.
22Ibid., p. 159.

23Max Kozloff, "An.Interview with Robert Motherwell,
How I admire my colleagues," Art Forum, 4 (September, 1965), 37.

24See Rosenberg, "The American Action Painters." in
The Tradition of the New, pp. 25-26. Here Rosenberg referred
to de Kooning who useHBSketches uniquely at that time. And
also when Rosenberg said that “The American vanguard painter
took to the white expanse of the canvas as Melville's Ishmael
took to the sea," (p. 31), he was describing de Kooning who
considered Melville as his favorite author.

25Rosenberg, Willem de Kooning_(New York: Abrams,
1974), p. 14.

26

 

Rosenberg, The Anxious Object, p. 110.
271bid., p. 124.

28Rosenberg, "Interview with Willem de Kooning,"
Art News, 71 (September, 1972), p. 55.

29Rosenberg, Willem de Kooning, p. 32.
30Ibid., p. 34.

31W.D.Bannard, "Willem de Kooning's Retrospective
at the Museum of Modern Art," Art Forum, 7 (April, 1969), 43.

32Greenberg, Art and Culture (New York: Beacon Press,
1961), p. 213.

33Sally E. Yard, "Willem de Kooning," (Ph.D. dis-

 

 

sertation, Princeton University, 1980), p. 122.

87

341bid., p. 123.
35Max Kozloff, "An Interview with Matte," Art Forum,
4 (September, 1965), 23-26. .

36Rosenberg, Willem de Kooning, p. 146.

37L. Hall, "Harold Rosenberg Says: Once you know
what good art is, why care about critics, good or bad?" p. 64.

CHAPTER V
CONCIUSION: CRITIQUE OF THE CONCEPT OF
ACTION PAINTING AND ITS METHOD

It is dangerous to criticize the critic‘s critique.
Because other criteria are inescapably needed in order to
point out the fallacy of the critic's critique. And this
kind of criteria by its nature cannot escape from critici-'
zing again, and yet it is impossible not to use the same
tool.

In fact, the most significant problem of criticism
is the critic's subjectivity. As Sartre said, it is impos-
sible for man to transcend human subjectivity. The worst
thing is once a critic sets up his position, he does not
intend to accept other possibilities at all, as Rosenberg
said himself. Rosenberg tried to solve that problem eager-
ly with his existential conception of Abstract Expressionism
and he left his theory at the level of understanding not at
the level of aesthetic perfection. With his firm belief in
individualism Rosenberg defined art as an activity that
engages the entire being of the individual.

Rosenberg's concept of Action Painting tried to
break down every distinction between art and life. He did
not dismiss reality as material world, instead he hoped to

reach the balance between the artist's self and material

88

 

89

reality through dialectical action. To achieve or sustain
the dialectics as a neutral state, he abandoned either
mere intellectualization or mere formalism in painting.

He assumed an artist could achieve self-identity or self-
transcendence through his constant inner struggle between
himself and his surroundings. And then, this dialectical
encounter could achieve the other creation, i.e., the self-
realization of the audience possessing an eye which can see
the importance of that mode within the process of creation.
Thus the justification of this concept was not in the tra-
ditional system of object-oriented judgment but in the will
of understanding individuals eager for new possibilities.
Rosenberg's concept of Action Painting seems to possess
more flexible possibilities than any other prior critical
bases for judgment.

Actually, the idea of Action Painting is an excel-
lent extension and elaboration of ideas regarding the uni-
queness of the individual artist and the importance of the
act, in that it is an idea. It reflects the concept of
"liberation": liberation from crisis and political and
aesthetic ideologies. And it reflects an action for the
entire emancipation of the individual from the universal,
"a priori" order. This comes from Rosenberg's belief that
the authentic existence of the artist is not based on the
existing order and his worry over the increasing surrender
to the masses and its negative effect on the solitary artist.

Through the concept of Action Painting, Rosenberg tries to

 

9O

protect the uniqueness of the individual artist and protest
against the totalitarian, impersonal threat of mass culture
and society. He expresses the "active force" of the artist
who protests against accepted values and tries to find his
own unique identity as "action."

Through the concept of Action Painting, Rosenberg,
as Max Kozloff pointed out, shows "the ample recognition of
such basic constituents of Abstract Expressionism as its auto-
matism, and its empathetic appeal."1 Indeed he supplies a
good theoretical justification for extending art to pantomime
and dance, i.e., Happenings and total art with his belief in
the importance of action.

However, in spite of his great ambition for creating
a totally new order by the concept of Action Painting, Rosen-
berg himself cannot escape from being caught in his own snare.
Along with Greenberg, in the fifties, Rosenberg retained his
leadership as a spokesman for the new movement. And yet,
during the critical reception of Abstract Expressionism, Rosen-
berg, along with his rival Greenberg, represented the partisan
position. After the open, direct attack by Greenberg of the
concept of Action Painting, Rosenberg began to criticize
Greenberg through such articles as "Action Painting: a Decade
of Distortion" in Art News of 1961 and "After Next, What?",
in Art in America of 1964. From then on the two men began to
quarrel. And the dispute between the two encouraged both to
refine their stands in mutual opposition and each became more

fixed in his own approach. As S.C.Foster remembered:

91

What became clear in the fifties is that these critical
positions that of Greenberg and Rosenberg were conceived
by their authors as mutually exclusive. The ensuing dia-
logue then assumed more of the character of a dispute;
indeed, the temperature of the dispute oftea suggests
another, more appropriate word such as war.
In the mood of disputation Rosenberg is shown to
be subject to the same inescapable limitations as all critics.
To advocate his concept Rosenberg began to apply his concept
to the Abstract Expressionist artists. And in the process of
application, Rosenberg shows the methodological limitation of
his concept.
Art historians, not being psychologists, have gener-
ally avoided, or found themselves inadequate to deal with,
the deeply personal elements from which each artist's

world has been constructed. As Barbara M. Reise states, in

Studio International of 1968, American-art history in general

 

has been permeated by formalist analysis of art seen as style-
epochs in a linear evolutionary progression. And content is
seen "as relevant to intellectual history rather than to art-
istic value."3

During the post-world war period, Rosenberg's oppo-
nent, Greenberg was in such a formalist position and occupied
the active field of art criticism. By concentrating exclu-
sively on formal relationships in art, Greenberg ignored the
question of content and mainly concerned himself with analysis
of formal properties of exhibited art.

As a poet through the Surrealist circle, Rosenberg

'violently opposed Greenberg's formalist method of criticism.

 

92

With his interests in the life history of artistic creation,
Rosenberg insisted the new criticism must begin "by recog-
nizing in the painting the assumptions inherent in its mode
of creation." "The apples," said Rosenberg, "weren't brushed
off the table in order to make room for perfect relations of
space and color. They had to go so that nothing would get

in the way of the act of painting."4

With this belief, he had become more concerned with
artistic collaboration behind the scenes than with public
discussions of exhibited works. Rosenberg's position as
a major critic is authorized by his fidelity to the intentions
of the artists. Indeed, Rosenberg's formulation of an atti-
tude toward painting, which was based on his admiration of
great artists served the public who eagerly wanted to under-
stand what the artists were about. And it was also appealing
to many artists whose works were sometimes misunderstood by
the formalist protagonist who ignored the artist¥s own inten-
tions.

Especially, Rosenberg's devotion to de Kooning was
remarkable. As Motherwell said in a 1965 interview, "I honor
Rosenberg's devotion to de Kooning; still neither 'action'
painting nor de Kooning himself are the 'center' of Abstract
Expressionism, but instead, like the rest of us, one dimension
of it."5

However, as Motherwell pointed out, the problem of

Rosenberg's criticism is not his concern with the artist but

with his partisan, polemical view. With his open indifference

 

93

to formal values of the work of art, Rosenberg mainly insist-
ed on the importance of "metaphysical"content in art. And
with his emphasis on energy, tension, and living on.the canvas
as a mixture of life and action, Rosenberg is obsessed by

the idea of Action Painting.

Under the dictum of Action Painting, Rosenberg
threw out all traditional aesthetic criteria. He disclaimed
the material object as the major consideration of painting
in favor of the act of painting. He distrusted not only
traditional "a priori" values, but also artistic values in
any form. However, as a critic, he had to write about artists
with certain criteria and a certain method. Thus, he tried
to transform the traditional artistic terminology into a
metaphysical terminology.

In treating Hans Hofmann, he changed every physical
component of Hofmann's paintings, i.e., lines, colors, oblongs,
into literal metaphors. He did not examine individual pic-
tures for any other purpose than to illustrate his rhetorical
concept. He placed a premium on the emotional charge in Hof-
mann's art. He did not accept the intellectualism in Hofmann's
mode of creation and the formal possibilities of abstraction
which Hofmann attempted to create in a various manner of styles.
Rosenberg did so partly to oppose the decorative emptiness of
the “worst new abstract" painting and partly because he genu-
inely distrusted intellectualism in painting.

Likewise, Rosenberg's parochialism is more apparently

revealed in treating Willem de Kooning. Taking his cue from

94

de Kooning‘s phrase, "style of living," Rosenberg applied
his idea of Action Painting directly to the artist. He
related de Kooning's way of life directly to the mode of
creation of the artist. Believing any quality in de Kooning's
art is comprehended by examining the life of the artist,
Rosenberg transformed artistic value to Existentialist phi-
losophical value. In this obsession with Action Painting,
he tried to bestow centrality to de Kooning as the existential
hero and as the foremost Action Painter.

However, de Kooning is neither an existential hero
nor the only model of the authentic artist. Before being
an existential hero, de Kooning is an artist with the high
ambition to achieve a triumphant masterpiece. De Kooning's
art, instead of "synthesis," shows an oscillation between
abstraction and the figure, between all-over and focused
space, and between excess and negation. Before being- an
anxious man's existential gesture against the void, de Koon-
ing's habit of painting and re-painting or his continual
practice of wiping out his painting is the simple pictorial
problem of an artist using awesomely complicated methods.
Rosenberg, with his obsession of Action Painting, could not
see de Kooning as an artist and his art as an art. To apply
his metaphysical idea of Action Painting to de Kooning, he
rather isolated the artist as a kind of mysterious superhuman.

Indeed, there is no such thing as neutral, "ideology-
free" criticism. Unlike those art historians who engage in

the dissection of art after the work of art has settled in

95

history, critics have to respond to the work of art, grasp
it when it is still new and strange, and give us a prelimi-

nary hold on its meaning.6

Thus, to advocate the contempo-
rary work of art which still remains a surprise, the critic
is often a,"passionate, partisan observer" of the work,rather
than a detached judge of its value.

Rosenberg tried to cut off Abstract Expressionism
from the history of art, since the history is only the record
of past. Instead he tried to "envisage the artist as a hero
who has the awesome task of re-making history." He tried to
raise the Abstract Expressionists to this prominence, with
his revolutionary and to him, “ideology-free" concept of
Action Painting.

However, unlike his concept, in the actual criticism
he does not possess enough detachment to let the work enter
fully into his responses as the product of a sensibility
different from his own. He does not accept the "otherness"
of the artist. By doing so, Rosenberg isolates the work of art
and the artist - shrouding them in his partisan view, situa-
ting them in a nebulous area, a kind of "twilight zone" which
is incomprehensible. Rosenberg is also doomed to isolation
himself by the limitation of his own subjectivity. With his
partisan position his ambiguous concept leads the audience to

another form of isolation.

".-

 

96

ENDNOTES V

1Max Kozloff, "The Critical Reception of Abstract
Expressionism," Arts_flag§zine,,40 (December, 1965). 30.

2S.C.Foster, "The Avant-garde and the Privacy of
Mind," Art International, 19 (November, 1975). 75.

3B.M.Reise, "Greenberg and The Group: a Retros-
pective View," Part I, Studio_lnternational, 175 (May, 1968),
257.

4Rosenberg, The Tradition of the New, p. 26.

5Max Kozloff, "An Interview with Robert Motherwell,"
Art Fgrum, 4 (September, 1965). 37.

6Quoted from a Foreward by D.B.Kuspit in Jacqueline

Victoria Falkenheim, Reger Fry and the Beginnigs of Formalist
Art Criticism.

 

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Theses

Smith, A.C. "Art as Politics: the Abstract Expressionist
Avant-garde and Society," Ph.D. dissertation,
Universlty of North Carolina, 1977.

Yard, Sally E. v"Willem de Kooning," Ph.D. dissertation,
Princeton University, 1980.

   

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