Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock “broke the ice,” as Willem de Kooning famously declared, clearing the way for an entire generation of abstract artists in the years following World War II. A key figure among the loosely affiliated group referred to as the New York School, he sought a new mode of painting that was both personal and relevant to his time. Pollock had become acquainted with a number of the Surrealists who fled to New York during the war, and their model of psychic automatism, a method that employed spontaneous expression and allowed for manifestations of the unconscious, was particularly important to his artistic progression.

In 1947 Pollock developed the innovative method evinced in Number 27, 1950 and his other “drip” paintings. He tacked unstretched, unprimed canvas onto the floor of his studio. Then he dipped hardened brushes and wooden stir sticks into cans of enamel or aluminum paint and dripped, flung, and poured liquid pigment directly onto the cloth. “On the floor I am more at ease,” Pollock explained. “I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.” With gestures at once controlled and improvisatory, he laid down skeins of black lines before adding looping cords of pink, silver, yellow, brown, and white to create an allover composition. The dense, overlapping layers seem to vibrate with energy. Pollock’s emphasis on spontaneity and the revelatory quality of his process helped elevate the act of painting to a level of importance equal to that of the finished picture. This shift would have a profound influence upon a multitude of artists in succeeding decades.