| Artist: | Pollock, Jackson |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title: | One: Number 31, 1950 (detail) | |
| Date: | 1950 | |
| Nationality: | American | |
| Context: | post WWII, NY School | |
| Movement: | Abstract expressionism | |
| Materials: | oil paint & enamel paint on canvas | |
| Subject: detail of Pollock's layered mark making revealing the creative process (self-reflexivity), the spirit of myth, the existential expression of inner being. 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). | ||
