Jackson Pollock

I clicked on my bookmarks because Google is of course in there and I needed to search to something at work. I use Google a lot - I wonder if I overuse it?? Today would have been Jackson Pollock's birthday and the Google letters are amidst paint drips and it's a tribute to one of his paintings today. Kind of neat. This is an example of one of his paintings. The name of the painting is One, painted in 1950.



"One is a masterpiece of the "drip," or pouring, technique, the radical method that Pollock contributed to Abstract Expressionism. Moving around an expanse of canvas laid on the floor, Pollock would fling and pour ropes of paint across the surface. One is among the largest of his works that bear evidence of these dynamic gestures. The canvas pulses with energy: strings and skeins of enamel, some matte, some glossy, weave and run, an intricate web of tans, blues, and grays lashed through with black and white. The way the paint lies on the canvas can suggest speed and force, and the image as a whole is dense and lush yet its details have a lacelike filigree, a delicacy, a lyricism.

The Surrealists' embrace of accident as a way to bypass the conscious mind sparked Pollock's experiments with the chance effects of gravity and momentum on falling paint. Yet although works like One have neither a single point of focus nor any obvious repetition or pattern, they sustain a sense of underlying order. This and the physicality of Pollock's method have led to comparisons of his process with choreography, as if the works were the traces of a dance. Some see in paintings like One the nervous intensity of the modern city, others the primal rhythms of nature."

Here he is in his action painting.





In January 1997, my parents and I went to RIT to see Jackson Pollock: In the Painting performed by the Rochester Institute for the Deaf Performing Arts. It was optional for extra credit through one of my Art History courses at SUNY Geneseo and my parents were willing to go with me. I loved it!! There was no talking through the whole performance and it was pretty loud with a lot of vibrations and drumbeats. I believe this was to help the performers dance and act through the various pieces because they were deaf or hearing impaired. Most of the audience were either deaf of hearing impaired and intermission was very much a learning experience for us also. It was really quite interesting.

Here is a website if you want to try making your own Jackson Pollock. Each time you click your mouse, the color changes.
Jacksonpollock.org