ABSTRACT
The makers of Happenings transformed the painterly “action” of gesture painting into bodily gestures in actual space, carrying the visual arts outside of themselves into theater. Thus Happenings can be viewed as a reaction against gesture painting as well as an extension of it. There was another kind of reaction that remained within the area of abstract art. Despite the elimination of gesture, there was an Expressionist aspect in hard-edge painting that made it look different from the geometric abstraction of an earlier period, whose emphasis was didactically idealistic and universalist. Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland to Frankenthaler’s studio. In the following year, Clement Greenberg included both Washingtonians in a new talent show at the Kootz Gallery. If color and form are considered the parameters of the post-gestural styles within 191, 192 New York School painting, then Raymond Parker and Held best represent each.
