(24) Warhol's silk-screened Pop art is primarily an example of counteridentity because he recognized and directly opposed the aspects of Action Painting that were held in high regard by critics.
The mimicry of action painting with such a base material as urine essentially defaces Pollock by pissing on his style, technique, and legacy.
Combining the shape studies of Matisse's cutouts and the action painting of Pollock resulted in marvelous "action collages."
When a pleasing arrangement had been laid out and glued down, we were ready for the action painting. As Pollock did, the students laid the "canvas" on the floor.
This man was no oracle of
action painting channeling the slap and dash of the modern spirit, the photos argue, but rather a calculating genius committed to meticulous construction and detached consideration.
These non-artworks (they were not on the checklist) could be read in any number of ways: as three-dimensional
action paintings, as a reference to 9/11 (they collapsed under their own weight a week after the show opened), as Minimalist barricades set up between the spectator and the show's images, as aesthetic "projects" (art as social failure), etc.
These really are action paintings, albeit of an utterly unromantic, willfully restrained, and deliberative kind.
One felt at once seduced and a little wary: Is Nitsche offering us a fresh take on action painting or just a graphic makeover?
Francis, to the contrary, frequently overthought the way his quasi
action paintings would adjust to his formats, and practically everything he painted after 1959 has a slight, but pervasive, art director's air about it.
