Action/Abstraction at the Jewish Museum

Binaries drive Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976, beginning, obviously, with the title. Critic Harold Rosenberg praised American painters like de Kooning for their “action,” the literal, physical movement of making paint move across a canvas (a physical concern). His rival Clement Greenberg prefered people like Pollock and favored the term “abstraction,” which denotes a way of dealing with the flatness of the painterly plane (a formal concern).

The Jewish Museum makes it all so much less confusing by organizing its show into various pairs of painters, one favored by Rosenberg, one by Greenberg. Clearly written labels help orient viewers too. (Think it’s weird that we’re praising labels? Go take a spin through the New Museum or most galleries in Chelsea and get back to us.) One of us liked the Stills and Hoffmans and Newmans (above, White and Hot [1967]), and the other just liked being there. That’s the beauty of binaries.

Photo: thanks