Number 14: Gray | Understanding Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism
Artist: Jackson Pollock
Title: Number 14: Gray
Period: Abstract Expressionism
Date: 1948
Photo credit: Yale University Art Gallery
Historical Context:
The artistic movement of abstract expressionism began in the 1940s in post-WWII America with the ambition of releasing the erratic, pent-up emotions dwelling in the unconscious mind.
It was a highly expressive artistic period, as the name suggests, a movement in which the individual is restless to reveal his own autonomy on a large canvas in backlash to the bleak collectivism of war.
While abstract expressionism is not considered an entirely accurate definition for the broad techniques used during this period, it is generally the most agreed upon description.
The artists of this New York-centered movement share the stem of surrealism, out from which they grew, budding into their own unique petals (if you will) but remained unified in their eagerness to articulate the abstract impulses of freedom.
Indeed, despite the artists’ different approaches, you can witness a certain dynamism and fluidity in abstract expressionism, often indulging in the Freudian undertones of the movement’s surrealist father.
It seems fitting that a period so rooted in individualism would produce pieces with such unique techniques. The approaches of the abstract expressionists range somewhat extensively; from Rothko’s block colors, Twombly’s scribble effect, to Pollock’s splatter and pour, you can observe the spontaneity the artists of this period employed, which resulted in a sensuous display of emotional freedom.
No. 14: Gray overview:
American born artist, Jackson Pollock, is considered to be one of the leading artists associated with abstract expressionism.
Pollock’s drip technique garnered him international praise and criticism. He is quoted in regard to his technique saying, “What’s the difference really between drawing directly on the canvas or in the space just above it? Everything and nothing, it turns out. That bit of distance relinquishes authorship and allows gravity and chance and life to play a part.”
This could be said to describe what would come to be known as automatism: spontaneous behavior that springs from the suppression of the conscious in favor of the unconscious. Certainly, this dynamic and unconventional approach to painting is hallmark of abstract expressionism.
Pollock’s critics accused him of being lazy and uncontrolled, but Pollock’s method of art embraces a deconstruction of the norms we once clung to. In the lines of Number 14: Gray, one sees the struggle between human intention and the unpredictable interference of life; that is, the space between the hand and the canvas.
The work, completed between 1947 and 1950, was realized with black enamel gently tossed over a canvas soaked in gesso (a white, glue-like substance). Normally, gesso is allowed to dry and used to prime the canvas, but Pollock applied the enamel over wet gesso, which lets it interfere with the absorption of the enamel: they bled together.
Pollock asked us, his audience, to surrender our own agency, not imposing ourselves onto the canvas but instead allowing the painting to be the subject acting upon us. In an interview with William Wright, he urged his viewers “not to look for [something] but to look passively, and try to receive.”
For Pollock, humans, artists, no longer needed to look outward for subject matter, rather the subject matter comes from within in an expression of man trying to understand himself.
