Blue Poles, by Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (1912-56) grew up in Arizona and California, studying at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles from 1928. As well as learning about art he was also introduced to various spiritual and psychological concepts including Theosophy, Jung’s analytical psychology and Surrealist automatism.

He led a hand-to-mouth existence for many years and became involved in the Federal Arts Project which was introduced as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. While undergoing treatment for alcoholism in 1938 he discovered the therapeutic benefits of drawing and its value in exploring the unconscious through the revelation of symbols. This gradually developed into a form of Abstract Expressionism, in which the pouring of paint directly onto canvas releases the artist’s inner tensions.

Pollock produced many such works between 1947 and 1952, “Blue Poles” being an excellent late example. Pollock was not keen on giving names to paintings, and “Blue Poles” was originally known as “Number 11, 1952”.

Pollock’s technique was to spread a length of unprimed canvas on the studio floor and tack it down. The canvas could be very large, although it was sometimes trimmed down after the paint had been applied. The finished “Blue Poles” measures 4.87 by 2.1 metres (16 by 7 feet).

Paint was then applied by being poured or splashed directly on to the canvas from above, but he always maintained that he was in control of how the paint flowed and that the result was no accident.

Pollock believed that, by using this method, he became part of the painting, with nothing coming between him and the colours on the canvas.

In “Blue Poles” there are countless streaks of orange, yellow, blue, brown, black and cream paint. The story of how the painting was made is an interesting one, with suggestions that Pollock had some help with it, at least in the initial stages, and that, when some of the glass paint tubes would not release their contents, the tubes were broken and some of the glass was incorporated in the final result.

Pollock used various tools to move the paint around and produce the lines and shapes. These included sticks, old brushes and basting syringes. He worked on the canvas for weeks, returning every so often to add a new layer of paint. Sometimes the canvas would be moved from the floor and hung on a wall, so that liquid paint could drip downwards.

The “poles” were a late addition, being added when the lower layers of paint were completely dry. These are broad lines that cross the canvas at various angles to the vertical, some of them reaching the edge of the canvas and others not. They were painted against a straight piece of timber and later blurred so that they seem to emerge from the underlying swirls and streaks. They therefore give an element of form and structure to what is otherwise chaotic. The impression has been likened to that of ships’ masts being swayed in a stormy sea.

What can the viewer make of this painting? That all depends on the viewer. He or she must make of this huge canvas, with its half-inch (or more) thick layers of paint, what they will, and they will no doubt see something different every time they look at it. The viewer may of course dismiss it as meaningless nonsense, or may relate to it in their own particular way. It is, however, difficult to ignore its energy and vitality.

“Blue Poles” was bought for the Australian National Gallery of Art in Canberra in 1973 for the record (at the time) sum of two million US dollars. This caused a huge controversy over whether the government of Gough Whitlam had either taken leave of its senses or made a bold statement of faith in modern art. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that decision, it would appear that the NGA got a bargain based on the prices that works by Jackson Pollock have attracted in recent years. The highest price ever paid for a work of art, by any artist, was $140 million, in 2006, for “No 5, 1948”.

© John Welford