“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 not a picture but an event.”

— Harold Rosenberg

"The American Action Painters" (1952) in Art News 51/8, Dec. 1952, p. 22; then published in Tradition of the New, 1959.

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Harold Rosenberg 29

American writer and art critic 1906–1978

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“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 not a picture but an event.”

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Harold Rosenberg 29

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