Pollock's Particular Process

Here’s Autumn Rhythm, considered one of Pollock’s great masterpieces painted in 1950. In Autumn Rhythm Pollock started the piece by creating a complex linear skeleton using black paint. The paint in this layer was diluted and was able to soak into the canvas, melding the image with its backdrop. Over this black framework Pollock applied an intricate web of white, brown, and turquoise lines, which produce contrasting rhythms and sensations: light and dark, thick and thin, straight and curved, horizontal and vertical. Pollock adds texture in his paint application process, which is only noticeable after a closer look, as the immediate impression is a confusion of overlapping lines and colors. Autumn Rhythm is not meant to represent anything, but the title in conjunction with the piece’s palette of earth tones undeniably invokes nature, especially due to how it envelops the viewer as a result of its expansiveness. Pollock actually painted Autumn Rhythm over the span of two days, making it not only one of his largest paintings, but probably his quickest as well. Pollock titled the work Number 30 at its original exhibition, but it later was shown with the title Autumn Rhythm in 1955 at a different exhibition. Some historians believe that Autumn Rhythm was Pollock’s intended title, but that the piece was originally called Number 30 to fit with the titles of his works at the time, which were all numbered to avoid ascribing meanings to them.

Pollock’s artistic process is very interesting and important, so here is the link to a documentary created by photographer Hans Namuth, who famously took black and white stills of Pollock painting and his studio in order to capture his process of creating the drip paintings. Namuth made this short documentary afterwards in order to more broadly encapsulate the process, and so we’re just going to watch a little bit of this. Notice how the canvas is laid on the ground and how Pollock moves around it, spattering, pouring, and dripping paint onto it.