influential to the beginning of action painting. The paintings of the Action painters were not meant to portray objects per se or even specific emotions. Instead they were meant to touch the observer deep in the subconscious mind, evoking a sense of the primeval and tapping the collective sense of an archetypal visual language. This was done by the artist painting "unconsciously," and spontaneously, creating a powerful arena of raw emotion and action, in the moment. Action painting was clearly influenced by the surrealist emphasis on automatism which (also) influenced by psychoanalysis claimed a more direct access to the subconscious mind. Important exponents of this concept of art making were the painters Joan Miró and André Masson. Notable action painters Ana Hatherly Frank Avray Wilson Norman Bluhm James Brooks Nicolas Carone Elaine de Kooning Willem de Kooning Perle Fine Sam Francis Michael Goldberg William Green Ismail Gulgee Philip Guston Grace Hartigan Franz Kline Albert Kotin Lee Krasner Alfred Leslie Conrad Marca-Relli Georges Mathieu Joan Mitchell Jackson Pollock Milton Resnick Joe Stefanelli Jack Tworkov Exhibitions Action Painting Organized by Ulf Küster. Fondation Beyekerm Basekm Switzerland, January 27-May 12, 2008 Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976 Organized by Norman L. Kleeblatt. Jewish Museum, New York, May 4-September 21, 2008 See also Tachisme Michel Tapié Gutai group Abstract Imagists New York School Abstract Expressionism Lyrical abstraction 9th Street Art Exhibition Tenth Street galleries References and notes Rosenberg, Harold The Tradition of the New (1959) - Ayer Co Pub - Wills, Garry Action Painting in Venice (1994) Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) Hrebeniak, Michael. Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2006. External links Auction record including a color image of a 1960 action painting by Elaine Hamilton. 9th Street Art Exhibition-abstract expressionist artists reminisce—YouTube video Modern art Contemporary art movements Abstract expressionism Art Informel and Tachisme Painting techniques Western art