Jackson Pollock

Number 26

Number 26

In the late 1940s Jackson Pollock developed a revolutionary form of Abstract Expressionism by dripping, pouring, and splashing paint onto large-scale canvases. Pollock emphasized the expressive power of the artist’s gestures, materials, and tools, often applying paint with sticks, trowels, and palette knives instead of brushes. He also challenged the concept of easel painting by working on canvases placed either on the floor or fixed to a wall. With no apparent beginning or end, top or bottom, his paintings imply an extension of his art beyond the edges of the canvas, engulfing the viewer. Among the last great purely abstract paintings Pollock made before his untimely death in 1956, Greyed Rainbow is a quintessential example of action painting. The paint application ranges from thick chunks squeezed directly from a tube to thin, meandering lines poured from a container with a small hole or squirted from a baster. The work is predominantly black, white, gray, and silver; in the bottom third of the canvas, however, Pollock thinly concealed orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The title of the work presumably refers to these grayed sections of hidden color. Gift of Society for Contemporary American Art

Greyed Rainbow

Ocean Greyness

Ocean Greyness

date inscribed Purchased 1988

Summertime: Number 9A

Pollock's semi-abstract engraving is one of a series of prints he produced in 1944-45 at Atelier 17 in New York. Pollock was one of a group of young American artists for whom Hayter's studio in exile became an important meeting place for the exchange of new ideas and technical innovations. There they also met émigré European artists, including such luminaries as Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, and André Masson. Though not editioned at the time, Pollock's intaglio prints of the mid-1940s are often cited as precursors to the fully resolved abstract style seen in his famous "drip" paintings. Pollock was fascinated with automatic drawing as practiced by Hayter, Masson and others. This spontaneous technique was well known among Dada artists of the early 20th century and later adopted by the surrealists as a way to reveal subconscious impulses. Unleashing his inner self, Pollock produced a frenzied arrangement of surrealist-inspired biomorphic forms interspersed with dynamic non-descriptive line.

Untitled

date inscribed Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery (purchased out of funds provided by Mr and Mrs H.J. Heinz II and H.J. Heinz Co. Ltd) 1960

Number 23

Gift of Lee Krasner Pollock

Untitled (7)

Acquired through the generosity of Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, in honor of Lily Auchincloss

Untitled

Gift of Lee Krasner Pollock

Untitled (9), only state

Acquired through the generosity of Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, in honor of Lily Auchincloss

Untitled

Gift of Lee Krasner Pollock

Untitled from an untitled portfolio

Eyes in the Heat

Eyes in the Heat

Reflection of the Big Dipper

Reflection of the Big Dipper

Cathedral

Cathedral

Number 8

Number 8

Untitled

Number 3

Number 3

Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bareiss Fund and purchase

There Were Seven in Eight

One: Number 31

One: Number 31

Acquired through the generosity of Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, in honor of Lily Auchincloss

Untitled

The late 1930s marked a key period of transition for Jackson Pollock, in which he began to separate himself from the influence of his early mentor, the regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. Pollock became engaged in an intense dialogue with the work of the Mexican muralists José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros; he was inspired by their social commitment and use of primitive, archetypal imagery. The expressionistic style and oblong format of Untitled recall Orozco’s murals at Pomona and Dartmouth Colleges, which Pollock had seen firsthand. The bullfight imagery evokes the work of Pablo Picasso, whose Guernica (1937) made a powerful impression on Pollock when he saw the painting in New York in 1939. Major Acquisitions Centennial Fund; estate of Florene May Schoenborn; through prior acquisitions of Mr. and Mrs. Carter H. Harrison, Marguerita S. Ritman, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Borland, and Mary L. and Leigh B. Block

Untitled

Untitled

Bird

Bird

Number 1

Number 1

Man with Knife

Man with Knife

Moon Woman

Moon Woman

Gift of Peggy Guggenheim

Full Fathom Five

Gift of Lee Krasner Pollock

Untitled (8)

Male and Female

Male and Female

Number 13A (Arabesque)

Number 13A (Arabesque)