Alloway looked toward the reinvigoration of British art following the influence of Abstract Expressionism and the major exhibitions of 1956 and 1959. In the context of a popular and cultural fear about the Americanization of society, he argued that “… American art is not an exotic national style. It is the mainstream of modern art, which used to run through Paris.” American art currently provided the standard for contemporary art—it was the prevailing and rigorous orthodoxy—and so, by absorbing recent developments in the USA, British artists would be able to locate themselves “in the tradition of modern art which has only shaky native representatives.”

Post-War British artists are usually categorized into three generations. The older painters, such as Ben Nicholson and Francis Bacon, were over forty-five at the time of the 1956 American exhibition, and were too established or set in their ways to be influenced by the new American painting. However, the “Middle Generation”—Terry Frost, Roger Hilton, Bryan Wynter, and Patrick Heron—were potentially open to influence. Eight of the Nine Abstract Artists about whom he had written in 1954, were included in Alloway's Statements 1957 exhibition, a survey of twenty-one British abstract artists. Wynter and, from the original nine, Heron, were selected as “Typical of an increasing number of artists [that] have been influenced by American art, thus turning away from the once magnetic School of Paris.” Heron's influence was the Paris-based Sam Francis, and Wynter's were Bradley Walker Tomlin and Mark Tobey (the latter had visited St Ives during his solo exhibition at the ICA in 1955). James Hull (Kline) and Alan Davie (Pollock) were also cited as examples. The controversy surrounding America and American art at this time was such that Alloway sought to reassure his readers (and the artists) that “To name these influences is, of course, in no sense derogatory.” However, for Heron at least, the derogatoriness may not have resided in the naming of influences but in the very idea that there were influences as opposed to a situation of parallel developments. Heron was later to accuse American critics—and Alloway was included as an (dis)honorary American—of “cultural imperialism.”