Fred Lionel Orton (born 1945, Coventry, Warwickshire England) is an English art historian.
Orton published an influential essay in 1991 in the Oxford Art Journal[1] that argued that Harold Rosenberg, the critic who coined the term "Action painting", developed the concept as a result of his commitment to Marxism rather than to the photographs of Jackson Pollock in action.
According to art critic Stephen Moonie, Orton's essay was one of the first attempts to define the term, offering a "political reading" which, "as Orton shows with great diligence", was a continued effort in Rosenberg's career.
[2] With Griselda Pollock he wrote Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed and Vincent van Gogh: Artist of his Time.
[6] Orton is also one of the editors of a collection on the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses,[7] and with Catherine Karkov edited an important collection on Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture; he contributed one essay, and three other essays are responses to his.