All-over painting refers to the non-differential treatment of the surface of a work of two-dimensional art, for instance a painting. This concept is most popularly thought of as emerging in relation to the so-called "drip" paintings of
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
and the "automatic writing" or "abstract calligraphy" of
Mark Tobey
Mark George Tobey (December 11, 1890 – April 24, 1976) was an American painter. His densely structured compositions, inspired by Asian calligraphy, resemble Abstract expressionism, although the motives for his compositions differ philosophi ...
in the 1950s, though the applicability of the term all-over painting would be wider than that. "All-over painting" is not a formal style of painting and the term does not represent an "
art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defin ...
." Some painting under the heading
color field painting displays the "all-over" painting style. Such a painting would fail to treat the top, for instance, differently from the bottom; the left than the right. Uniform treatment of all sections of the surface are the hallmark of all-over painting. All-over paintings would lack a dominant point of interest, or any indication of which way is "up." Some paintings by
Cy Twombly
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (; April 25, 1928July 5, 2011) was an American Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
Twombly is said to have influenced you ...
have had this term applied to them.
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formal ...
cited
Janet Sobel
Janet Sobel (May 31, 1893 – November 11, 1968), born Jennie Olechovsky (occ. Lechovsky), was a Ukrainian-born American Abstract Expressionist painter whose career started mid-life, at age forty-five in 1938. Sobel pioneered the drip painting te ...
's as the first instance of all-over painting he had seen.
See also
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Action painting
Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical a ...
External links
References
Avant-garde art
Abstract expressionism
Contemporary art
Modern art
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