| Artist: | Namuth, Hans |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title: | Jackson Pollock painting | |
| Date: | 1950 | |
| Nationality: | American | |
| Context: | Post WWII, NY School | |
| Movement: | Abstract Expressionism | |
| Materials: | black-and-white photograph | |
| Subject: photo documentation of Pollock's creative process ("Process over product"), the spirit of myth, the existential expression of inner being ("The Existential Cowboy"). Style: wholistic, decentered web; structured chaos; action painting; all-over field painting; mural size. Radical break from easel painting. The gesture: mark making becomes independent of description and representation; no longer painting from the wrist (the embodied gesture). Context: existentialism ("existence precedes essence"); alone in the void (alienation); the Cold War: post-Hiroshima; the Soviet Union gets the bomb in 1949; the 50's beat generation (pushing to the edge of one's consciousness.) Jungian analysis (the collective unconscious; the archetype; mythic structures embedded in everyone's unconscious). Inspired by jazz improvisation; listened to records by Charlie Parker while he painted. Also influenced by Native American sand painting and the idea that painting could be ritualistic, a rites of passage. | ||
