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How did Harold Rosenberg’s idea of Action painting differ from Clement Greenberg’s formalism?

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Painting by Gustave Courbet showing the artist at his easel in a crowded studio, surrounded by figures including a nude model, onlookers, and a child with a white dog. — Art criticism *The Painter's Studio*, oil on canvas by Gustave Courbet, 1854–55, in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.

Harold Rosenberg’s concept of Action painting and Clement Greenberg’s formalism represented opposing approaches to art criticism during the mid-20th century.

Clement Greenberg’s Formalism

Greenberg championed a "pure" aesthetic experience, arguing that the value of an artwork is derived solely from its material properties rather than external factors. He believed that modernist painting should be "purified" by eliminating literary, anecdotal, or symbolic content, focusing instead on the medium’s fundamentals—specifically the flatness of the canvas. For Greenberg, the work was autonomous and hermetic, existing independently of the artist’s psychological state or social context.1

Harold Rosenberg’s Action Painting

In contrast, Rosenberg viewed the canvas as "an arena in which to act." He rejected the formalist vacuum, emphasizing that a painting was not merely a picture but an "event"—a record of the encounter between the artist and their material. Rosenberg’s approach focused on the artist’s existential struggle and self-creation, placing the work directly within a social and psychological context. While Greenberg prioritized the object’s material particularity, Rosenberg prioritized the act of creation as a manifestation of the self.23