Number 32 (Pollock)
| Number 32 |
|---|
| Jackson Pollock , 1950 |
| Lacquer paint on canvas |
| 269 × 457.5 cm |
| Art collection of North Rhine-Westphalia , Düsseldorf |
Number 32 is a 1950 painting by the American painter Jackson Pollock . It is one of his most important works and is the only large drip painting in a European museum. The picture has been in the North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection since 1964 .
History and provenance
Number 32, 1950 is one of the most radical pictorial inventions, not only in Jackson Pollock's work, but in American abstract expressionism in general. In 1950 Pollock painted a group of three consisting of large-format mural paintings. In addition to the Düsseldorf work, these include One: Number 31, 1950 ( MoMa ) and Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 ( Metropolitan Museum of Art ).
“In contrast to the artist's two other monumental main works, 'Number 32, 1950' is characterized by its greatest simplicity: 'Number 32, 1950' is the only one of the works mentioned that is monochrome; its effect is based solely on the interplay of black dye and light image carrier "
Pollock painted the picture in 1950 and did not sell it until his death (1956). It then passed to his wife Lee Krasner , who finally sold it in 1964 via the Marlborough-Gerson-Gallery for DM 650,000 to the art collection of North Rhine-Westphalia, at a price that aroused much criticism at the time.
Emergence
For Pollock, the turn to purely abstract painting in the form of drip pictures such as Number 32 represented a transition to “automatic, freely associative painting”, whereby “his painting itself became a ritual process”. In his own words, he wanted to “express his feelings, not depict them” and tried to “let the painting live”.
Pollock painted the picture like other pictures by laying the canvas on the floor and then working it on all sides with the paint. He seldom used the classic painting tools such as a color palette and a brush, instead he used sticks, spatulas, knives and diluted and dripping, liquid paint, which he sometimes also let drip directly from the can onto the canvas. He moved continuously around the canvas and worked on every point without highlighting individual areas. As with many pictures put Pollock even in Number 32 until a complex pattern of black lines with diluted paint, which moved partially into the untreated canvas and made further samples. The pattern from the other colors was then applied. "He left the movements and the color scheme to a large extent to chance and he largely foregone conscious control by setting the hand, arm and also the whole body in motion. At the same time he emphasized that he could control the color and that nothing in the picture should be considered an accident.
Only shortly before its first exhibition in the Betty Parsons Gallery was the work mounted on a stretcher frame and provided with directional arrows.
Exhibitions
The picture has been shown in over thirty different exhibitions since its creation. Some examples:
- Jackson Pollock , Museum of Modern Art, New York 1956/57, cat.no.25 with illus. P. 1, p. 27
- IV.Biennale, São Paulo 1957, cat.no.20 with illus. P. 199
- Jackson Pollock 1912-1956 , Kunsthalle Basel / Stedelijk Museum , Amsterdam / Kunstverein Hamburg , 1958, cat.no.19
- Documenta 2 , Kassel 1959, cat.no.8
- Jackson Pollock , Kunsthaus Zürich , 1961, cat.no.88 with ill. 7
- Documenta 3 , Kassel 1964, cat. No. 1, p. 280
- Jackson Pollock , Museum of Modern Art, New York 1967, cat. No. 52 with ill. P. 8/9
- Picasso to Lichtenstein , Tate Gallery , London 1974, cat.no.111
- American Art at mid-century. The Subjects of the Artist , National Gallery of Art , Washington 1978, fig. 3, p. 126, fig. 11, p. 135
- Jackson Pollock , Museum of Modern Art, New York / Tate Gallery, London, 1998/99
literature
- Regine Prange: Jackson Pollock. Number 32, 1950. Painting as the present , Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 48.
- Pepe Karmel: Pollock at Work. The Films and Photographs of Hans Namuth . In: Jackson Pollock , The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1998, p. 110.
- Volkmar Essers: Jackson Pollock - "Painting is self-discovery" . In: Jackson Pollock. Works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and European collections . Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf 1999, p. 55.
Individual evidence
- ↑ [1] "Mona Lisa" of the modern age: Pollock picture is cleaned
- ↑ [2] " Number 32 " on Kunstsammlung.de.
- ↑ Werner Schmalenbach : The lust for the picture, A life with art . Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1996, p. 259.
- ↑ a b c Milton Brown: Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), Autumn Rhythm (1950). In: Edwin Mullins (Hrsg.): 100 masterpieces from the great museums of the world, Volume 1. Verlagsgesellschaft Schulfernsehen (vgs), Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-8025-2161-7 , pp. 69–72.
- ↑ a b Autumn Rhythm in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History in the Metropolitan Museum of Art .
- ↑ Autumn Rhythm in the Metropolitan Museum of Art