Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock. "Convergence." 1952. Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.

There are several reasons why Pollock's "Convergence" caught my attention. One was the scale of the work, about eight feet by 13 feet (93" x 155") and the medium used (oil on canvas). But the artistic and emotional appeal was the force and freedom that the painting's nonlinear images suggested to me. The meaning of the painting seemed to be connected to whatever meaning was to be found in life.

Pollock used the elements of painting itself, rather than conventional, recognizable objects (nature, people, etc.) as his subject matter. The color, line, brush strokes, texture, form, and play of light and dark create the "subject." The painting cannot be intellectually interpreted, but the mind can make sense of it in terms of the abstract power, forces and shapes, contrast in colors, and mood. The primary colors -- blue, yellow, red -- in the foreground appear to be emerging from the dark background and are like a convergence of any elements possible, such as a tidal wave or a wild dance. This is not to imply that the result of drip painting is random. For example, there are orange loops in the painting, particularly in the upper half, that clearly appear to have been deliberately applied. In the same vein, not all of the canvas is covered with paint. There are small areas of beige color which are the unpainted canvas. And the total impression is not that of a random style, b

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arated" (233). There are several approaches that can be taken to interpret "Convergence," and the most edifying ones are in the area of Abstract Expressionism in general, and the culture that fostered it. Culturally, the United States that shaped Pollock at the time of his painting "Convergence" was a society in the midst of a post-war, Cold War, anti-communist hysteria which left artists confused and angry. As Jaffe writes of the "New Generation" of which Pollock was a part, "the period after the war really belongs to a new generation and a new view of the world...This was a young generation which had to stifle all hopes of a better, brighter world during the war -- and after the war found all these hopes destroyed" (25). These artists had to replace the old world view with a new one, and "attempt to express a new feeling for life; they were more concerned with what went on in men confronted with reality than with conveying a valid picture of reality itself" (25). The artistic expression of "Conversion" reflected the philosophy of life that there was, at the moment, no philosophy of life possible. The cultural view held by Pollock and the other Action Painters was that intellectualism had grown bankrupt and that true art

Category: Arts - J