All-over painting

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 and the "automatic writing" or "abstract calligraphy" of Mark Tobey 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." 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 have had this term applied to them.[1][2][3][4][5]

Clement Greenberg cited Janet Sobel's as the first instance of all-over painting he had seen.[6]

  1. ^ "all-over painting Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about all-over painting". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  2. ^ [1] Archived October 7, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ "All-over Painting". Artprofessor.com. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  4. ^ "ArtLex's Al-Am page". Artlex.com. 2007-02-16. Archived from the original on 2012-07-05. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  5. ^ "Directory of Art Services and Resources". artnet. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  6. ^ ROBERTA SMITHPublished: February 15, 2002 (2002-02-15). "ART IN REVIEW; Janet Sobel - New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2012-07-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)