ROSENBERG, Harold

When I first began writing about the arts, four decades ago, Rosenberg's writings about avant-garde art, in general and in particular, shaped ideas that I continue to hold. It was easy to be seduced by his humanistic image of Action Painting (which was his less successful coinage for Abstract Expressionism): 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 produce,...