Action Painting II

Mark Tansey

1984

Gift of Nahum Gelber, Q.C., inv. 1984.18

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

A group of artists paint a space shuttle launch in a landscape setting. An American flag flies on a pole to the left, and a large digital clock is visible on the right. A group of artists paint a space shuttle launch in a landscape setting. An American flag flies on a pole to the left, and a large digital clock is visible on the right. Mark Tansey’s painting is centred in the postwar New York art world. “Action painting” is the name Harold Rosenberg attached to a style of painting carried out by the Abstract Expressionists, in particular Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Like many of Tansey’s works, which combine an eccentric view of geopolitical history with movements in art history, Action Painting II depicts anything but the gestural abstraction its title suggests. The main action in this w