"action" painting

Roy Lichtenstein - Little Big Painting (1965)

In 'Little Big Painting,’ Lichtenstein’s subject-matter is a detail of brushwork from an action painting. Action painting was a sub-category of abstract expressionism, the dominant art movement of the post-1945 period. At one and the same time, Lichtenstein pays homage to his forebears and renounces them by parodying their stylistic mannerisms.

Abstract expressionist painting was emotional, intuitive, spontaneous, autographic, personal, serious and morally committed - in short, a 'hot' or romantic style. American pop painting, by contrast, was unemotional, deliberate, systematic, impersonal, ironic, detached, non-autographic and amoral - a 'cool' or classical style. In action painting the violent, direct brushstroke was the sign of an existential authenticity; Lichtenstein's painting presents us with the sign of the sign of authenticity. As a result, the mark is drained of all energy, its movement is frozen, it is transformed into a decorative emblem. The paint-thickness and substance of the original is denied by Lichtenstein who makes the stroke even more two-dimensional so that it does not sit on the surface of the canvas in the same way - it becomes more illusionistic. Lichtenstein takes a small detail and inflates it. He thereby implies that action painting has become overblown, that its pictorial rhetoric no longer carries conviction. The automatism of action painting, he seems to be saying, has become automatic.

By using the conventions of representation derived from graphic design, Lichtenstein presents us with brushstrokes which appear to have undergone mechanical reproduction and processing. (This suggests that his source material may have been a reproduction of an action painting rather than an actual action painting.) The pop painting looks mechanical but the irony is that it too was painted by hand - only Lichtenstein has gone to great trouble to hide the fact. Another irony: a painting whose subject-matter is brushstrokes is executed in such a way that the minute brushstrokes which formed the image are disguised.

Lichtenstein's strategy was to translate the 'language' of abstract expressionism into the 'language' of graphic design. 'Non-commercial' fine art appears to have become commercial applied art. Again, the implication is that by the 1960s abstract expressionism had become hopelessly commercialized and mediatized, and therefore it had ceased to deserve its high moral and artistic status. It is relevant to add that the leading action painter, Jackson Pollock, was one of the first American artists to benefit from the full mass media treatment - an article and picture spread in Life magazine (8 August 1949). In an analysis of the marketing of the abstract expressionists, Bradford Collins has argued that they were sold on the basis of a bohemian legend. It is evident from the above analysis that some knowledge of painting and the history of American art since 1945 is required before the iconoclastic implications of 'Little Big Painting' can be understood. To generalize: works of art whose subject-matter is other works of art, or which employ self-referential devices, are likely to appeal mainly to an artworld audience, to those knowledgeable enough to be able to grasp the references and in-jokes. Works of art that take as their subject matter familiar media images, in contrast, have the possibility of being appreciated by people without specialist knowledge.

- John Walker