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]

• Action painting

What is Abstract Expressionism? (Contains description of "all over composition") on YouTube

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