Post #8 Late 20th Century Art

For today's post I have chosen to do my research on American artist Jackson Pollock and more specifically his piece titled Greyed Rainbow. This painting was created by Pollock in 1953 and is of his signature and radical painting style. He is known for his techniques of dripping, pouring, and freely flinging paint on his canvas. He also had a unique painting setup, where he would work with large scale canvas flat on the floor so the paint could fall on to it. Pollock would even have to step out onto his canvas to reach areas during the painting process. Greyed Rainbow measures 72 x 96 1/8 in. and, as the title implies, has a muted, grey scale color palate. Near the bottom half there are moments of yellow, blue and red that show through the grey majority. The painting is completely abstract and is only limited by the edges of the canvas. There is no illusionism to the piece, but one can get a sense of depth created by the overlapping and intertwining lines. The gestural quality of the sweeping lines come from the physical interaction between paint, Pollock and canvas. Pollock once said, " I want to express my feelings, not illustrate them", and express he does. There is such an energy and action communicated visually by the way that the lines move and form. Research into Pollock's painting process prove that what may appear to be chaos, chance or unconscious decision creating the forms of Greyed Rainbow, is not entirely the case. He had a very keen understanding of his materials and the paints he used, and how they behaved on the canvas. This knowledge of their interaction allowed him to paint as freely as he did and still have a good sense of what the result would be. Time magazine once described a Pollock painting as "chaotic", which led the artist to retort with "no chaos, dammit." Though his paintings were free of form, active and expressive, he did not want them deemed chaotic or random. He wanted to reinforce that there was indeed a process to his art. At a point in is career Pollock also got fed up with people searching for representational images in his artwork that were associated with or implied by titles. People approaching his art with these preconceived ideas lead Pollock to give up titling his paintings at all and he went to just numbering them.

Jackson Pollock was revolutionary in the art world. His techniques of "action painting" were original, unconventional, and exciting. He helped spearhead an art movement known as Abstract Expressionism and his influence and impact is immeasurable. Pollock was "also one of the first American painters to be recognized during his lifetime and after as a peer of 20th-century European masters of Modern Art" (Encyclopedia Britannica). I know for me, at first glance it can feel like anyone could fling paint onto a blank canvas and create something similar to a Pollock. Possible, but not probable. There is definitely something special to Jackson Pollock and his abilities. They way he can visualize what he wants but release such control over it. The more you look at one piece, the more you get sucked into the depth and simple complexity of it. The more you look at a collection of Pollocks,  the more you can see the variety and change from piece to piece, all within the same signature style. 

 Image Location: http://bthumme.tripod.com/P5/abstract.jpg

Sources: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/83642?search_id=1
               http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/Modern/Greyed-Rainbow
               http://www.moma.org/explore/conservation/pollock/interview1.html
               http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/468051/Jackson-Pollock