American art's heroic moment

NEW YORK — The exhibition called Action/Abstraction at the Jewish Museum in New York is framed by a pair of film clips. The first, made in 1967, shows Willem de Kooning at work in his orderly studio. He moves carefully, standing back to consider the shapes he has made on the canvas. His paint is in a coffee cup and he dips a fine brush into it before making his delicate marks. He is the painter in an act of contemplation.

The second film, shot by Hans Namuth in 1950, shows Jackson Pollock making a painting. He has stretched his canvas outside, on the ground, his shoes are splattered in paint and a cigarette dangles from his mouth. His constant movement and the energy with which he flings and drips paint onto its surface make him seem more a force of nature than a painter.

You see these two clips as soon as you walk into the gallery space. De Kooning and Pollock were the giants of the new American art and each had the support of a formidable critic. De Kooning was championed by Harold Rosenberg, an existentialist who viewed American painting as a rupture with the past and the canvas as an arena in which the artist inescapably acted out his psychic dramas.