Jackson Pollock's Over-Splatter


 




































Jackson Pollock's Over-Splatter,  
How They Happened, Where They are Located, Why They Went Unnoted for More than Fifty Years, and How They May be Understood and Put to Use

By Sandy Kinnee and Lauren Kinnee, Ph.D.


Once You See the Drips You will Always See them

PART 2

Jackson Pollock’s Stray Drips (Over-Splatter): Their origins and implications

 

Abstract

 

This paper proposes a wholly new method for reconstructing the chronology of Jackson Pollock's oeuvre based on the presence of drips of stray pigment on otherwise cohesive canvases.  Pollock, after having finished a painting and let it dry, moved it to the side in his studio where it occasionally accumulated drips and other marks that were the byproduct of his working method.  These marks, here termed ‘over-splatter,’ are present on both recto and verso of many Pollocks in major museums.  Lavender Mist of 1950, for example, has a large and distinctive red splotch on the front, right side that does not match any other pigment in the painting.  This red paint must have come from another canvas in progress, which must therefore postdate Lavender Mist.  Examination of the reverses of the canvases has also revealed evidence of ‘over-splatter.’  Arabesque at the Yale University Art Gallery displays such splatter that, upon initial observation, appears to derive from Number 2, 1949.  This paper proposes that examination of the canvases’ reverses may be particularly fruitful as Pollock tended to lean his finished works face-in against the wall of his studio.  The authors propose cross-referencing examples of over-splatter with data from Harvard University's catalogue of Pollock's pigment usage, in conjunction with circumstantial evidence from the photography of Hans Namuth, to clarify the timeline of Pollock’s work.  This project is of particular importance as the current timeline is known to be inaccurate: the paintings were arbitrarily numbered for Pollock's 1950 exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, lending confusion to the sequence of creation in Jackson Pollock’s oevre.

 

 

The Over-Splatter Project: Introduction to the Methodology

 

The ‘over-splatter’ project began in 2003 with the authors’ observation of alien pink drips (fig. 1) on the face of One, Number 31, 1950 (MoMA XXX, fig. 2) and a red dot (fig. 3) on Autumn Rhythm, Number 30, 1950 (MMA XXX, fig. 4).  In neither painting did these drips belong to the color scheme of the composition. There was no other pink paint in the painting at the Museum of Modern Art and no other red in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Pollock.  In the time since these original observations, the authors have noticed more and more examples of such anomalous drips of paint.  This paper proposes an explanation of the drips’ origin, which may, in turn, allow for a resequencing of the artist’s oeuvre.  We will present the basis for this entirely new methodology and, by way of illustration, will employ it to sequence three major artworks: Autumn Rhythm (MMA?); One: Number 31, 1950 (?); and One: Number 32, 1950 (?).  Hans Namuth’s photographs of Pollock at work between July and October of 1950 provide considerable corroborating evidence.

 

Even superficial examination of Namuth’s photographs demonstrates that Pollock’s painting methods led to a significant amount of uncontrolled spattering of paint throughout his studio.  In the photographs, Pollock’s right (?) arm is coated with oil paint from his process.  Likewise, the lower wall of his studio is covered in numerous drips (figs. 7 and 8).  Pollock was a whirlwind as he worked.  He himself stated that in his process he was “Nature”.  When he worked, paint flew everywhere, not just onto the painting in production.  It is no surprise that over-splatter should appear on Pollock’s other paintings, including finished ones within range of airborne paint in the studio.

 

The Nature and Usefulness of Drips

 

Recently, in 2013, the Museum of Modern Art in New York removed Pollock’s painting One: Number 31, 1950 from display in order to clean and carefully examine it.  The conservators noted the pink stray drips of paint on the lower front. (fig. 19). This discovery resulted in a New York Times feature article in which Jim Coddington, the Museum of Modern Art’s chief conservator, stated his belief that the tiny blobs of pink paint had found their way onto the canvas by accident.  We believe that Coddington’s conclusions are essentially accurate: however, we would add that while the drips were not intentional, they were inevitable due to Pollock’s and Namuth’s staging in the studio, a matter to be discussed shortly.[i]  These accidental drips are cast off paint intended for a horizontal canvas that Pollock was creating on the studio floor. We can be confident that these “tiny blobs” are in fact over-splatter because they are not merely “blobs” at all: instead, they are directional drips that gravity has pulled into streaks.[ii]  In other words, the “blobs” were not simply dropped onto the canvas in progress.  Instead they were the result of Pollock’s intense painting process, in which drips landed on finished pieces and trickled down their surfaces.  Tracing the colors of these drips may assist art historians in establishing a more firm and reliable sequence for Pollock’s artwork.

 

Though the drips were not purposeful additions to Pollock’s canvases, he seems to have accepted or perhaps even appreciated them as the natural products of his approach to art.  Evidence suggests that he never attempted to remove his over-splatter.[iii]  Though Pollock did not directly discuss the drips, some of his statements regarding artistic practice imply acceptance of over-splatter.  Pollock has been quoted as saying, “I don't use the accident—'cause I deny the accident...” and “I can control the flow of the paint: there is no accident.”   The drips belong to this philosophy: control in the studio can take the form of physically aggressive treatment of materials, which certainly included the spattering of paint across himself and his studio. 

 

Photography: Hans Namuth

 

Hans Namuth approached Jackson Pollock in July of 1950 and proposed to document him at work in frozen black and white images and later on in two short movies. Life magazine’s famous, illustrated article about the painter, published August 1949 (fig. 11), taught Jackson Pollock the value of publicity.  Therefore, despite Pollock’s initial resistance, he agreed to Namuth’s proposal and worked in collaboration with him from July through October of 1950.  In order to expose more of Pollock’s paintings to the public eye, Namuth turned the faces of finished artworks in the studio into a backdrop for the photographs. This was an entirely theatrical ploy, based in part on Pollock’s experience posing before his best work in the Life magazine feature.  The difference between the photography for Life and that for Namuth is that in Life Pollock is merely posing, while in Namuth’s work Pollock is actively creating.  Namuth’s photography is documentary and provides evidence concerning not only Pollock’s working methods—which resulted in over-splatter—but also the sequence in which Pollock painted certain of his pieces.  In particular, the backdrop of finished paintings facing the viewer reveals which canvases preceded the one Pollock actively paints on the floor.

 

Lest one believe that Pollock generally worked with his finished paintings in the line of fire, so to speak, it is worth noting that there is hard documentary evidence to the contrary.  In photographs by Herbert Matter, taken in 1947, it is evident Pollock stacked his finished art with face-to-the-wall, protected from the action of painting. Pollock was not in the habit of leaving completed paintings unprotected as he worked in the studio.  Of course, Pollock’s more typical approach to storing his finished works left the reverse of the canvas completely exposed to over-splatter, where it may be observed as well.  In Pollock’s standard practice, the more recently finished and stretched canvases would be the ones whose backs would be exposed while the next artwork was created.  One might deduce, then, that over-splatter on the reverse of a painting indicates that it was painted immediately—or almost immediately—preceding source of the splatter, which may be traced using an examination of the pigments in the splatter.  This is not an air-tight theory but it is an idea worth considering if only because it puts forward the concept that the artist often splattered paint onto finished artworks and that, as a result, we can today piece together which artworks most definitely preceded which others.[iv]

 

It is probably only because Pollock allowed Namuth to arrange the paintings otherwise—face-out—that we can observe unintentional drips on the verso of some canvases.  Likewise, it is no great surprise that the paintings with verso over-splatter can be associated with the period of July through October of 1950.  One month after the conclusion of Namuth’s and Pollock’s relationship, the Betty Parsons Gallery exhibited Pollock’s paintings and assigned their inadvertently misleading numerical designations.

 

In earlier exhibitions, the Betty Parsons Gallery devised a numeric coding system to identify the paintings. Though the system has at times been used as the basis for dating or sequencing Pollock's canvases, this was probably not the Gallery’s original intent.  The numbers do seem to indicate a sequence according to year, but even so the exact year for any given piece is unclear.  For example, the numbering will indicate that one painting was produced in an earlier year than another, but the years recorded in the Parsons system are unreliable.  Art historians and critics have generally, and logically, accepted that paintings labeled “1949” precede those labeled “1950.”  However, while this broad, annual sequencing is unproblematic, the dates themselves are.  Paintings identified as “1949” may be from 1948, for example.  Moreover, when speaking of an artist who worked rapidly and within such a short timespan as Pollock did, the lack of precision involved in dating works to what we might call “approximate years” is troublesome to say the least.  The numbering system is extraordinarily limited as an art historical tool.  It serves only the purpose of Gallery identification and does not indicate the order in which Pollock made the paintings.

 

The sequence of creation has been lost.  Reestablishing a chronology and sense of progression would allow art historians and critics to peer into Jackson Pollock’s decision-making process. We might be able to retrace his steps and understand how and why he altered his approach from one artwork to the next.  The authors believe that this sequence can be reconstructed via examination of over-splatter, particularly when Namuth’s photographs indicate the proximity of a finished work to the creation of a new one, which could be the source of anomalous drips upon the finished painting’s surface.

 

A Test Case: Numbers 30, 31, and 32 of 1950

 

Namuth's documentation of Pollock in 1950, and most importantly his records of the creation of those major paintings shown at the November Parsons exhibition, are useful tools with which to study Pollock's methods.  Not only do the photographs contain identifiable paintings, revealing which were already finished while another recognizable work was in progress: they also allow us to see which paintings might have distributed over-splatter onto others.  Thanks to the Namuth images, we have photographic evidence proving that the Parsons Gallery numbers do not accurately reflect the order of creation of several of Pollock’s paintings.  In fact, Namuth’s photographs prove that the following paintings were painted in an order inverse to that indicated by the Gallery’s numbering system: Number 32, 1950 (fig. 6 ) was painted before One: Number 31, 1950, which, in turn, predates Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 (fig. 7).  In one photograph, the finished Number 32, 1950 appears dry and displayed upon the wall during the creation of One: Number 31, 1950 (fig. 8).  Meanwhile, another image reveals the completed One: Number 31, 1950 hanging on the wall as Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950, is underway on the floor. Autumn Rhythm is even still attached to the roll of canvas (fig. 9).  Based on the photographs we must conclude that 32 was complete while 31 was in-progress, and that 31 was complete while 30 was underway.  The photographs provide unmistakable proof of the correct sequence for these three paintings.[v]

 

While staging his lengthy, four-month photoshoot, Namuth inadvertently provided further evidence useful to the sequencing Pollock’s works.  Namuth recorded not only which images were finished while others were in progress: he also revealed which were in proximity to Pollock’s “force of nature” action painting and were therefore likely to receive over-splatter.  Inspection of the canvases themselves confirms that those background, finished works did indeed receive splashes of paint in the process of painting the new pieces seen on the floor in the photographs.  Thus brown splatter from One: Number 31, 1950 appears on the already-finished Number 32, 1950; and brown, white, and black splatter from Autumn Rhythm Number 30 appears on the finished One: Number 31, 1950. The pink drips originate from neither of these paintings, but a painting which at that time was yet to be created. We will address the pink drips later. This brown, white, and black splatter is visible in Namuth’s photographs as well as easily identifiable  to the trained eye on the museum wall.  Again, Namuth provides proof that the Parsons Gallery code is confusing for sequencing and dating Pollock’s paintings.  It even suggests a trend whereby higher-number paintings were completed before lower-number ones, as in 32, 31, and 30.  At this point, it is unclear whether this this inverse numbering was a happy accident in the case of these three paintings, or a consistent system used for all the Parsons images.

 

When Namuth’s photographic assistance is lacking, both before July 1950 and after October of that same year, it is far more difficult to trace the sequence of Pollock’s work: however, it is not impossible.  The drips, or over-splatter, become a useful source of evidence.  This paper is not the first discussion of superfluous drips on Pollock’s paintings, though it provides what is to our knowledge a completely novel understanding of these drips, of their significance, and of their usefulness as a tool for understanding the artist and his oeuvre.

 

Let us use what the drips can tell us to examine 30, 31, and 32, whose relative sequence have already been confirmed photographically.  Pollock used a tinted brown paint from the same bucket or related buckets to create One: Number 31, 1950 and in Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950. This brown is identical in the two paintings, and in both of them it was a dominant color.  It was this brown that, during the creation of One: Number 31, 1950, landed as over-splatter on the black and white painting Number 32, 1950 (fig. 22 THE FIGURE NUMBERS ARE ALL MESSED UP THROUGHOUT). It seems that Pollock had some brown paint remaining after he completed One: Number 31, 1950 because the paint reappears in what must have been the early stages of Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950. Unlike a painter who mixes on a painter’s palette and may dab a touch a red here and some green with his next stroke, Pollock painter in what might be described as the laying on from a single pot of color at a time.  One can often see which color was used first, which second, etc. Brown was a base color, if not the very first color, on Number 30.  During his energetic gesturing over the canvas that would become Autumn Rhythm, he hurled brown paint onto One: Number 31, 1950, which was propped vertically against the wall.  Not only did brown find its way there: so did white and black pigment. (figs. 23, 24, and 25)

 

Such brown, white, and black over-splatter is less apparent than the brighter-colored drips, such as the pink ones we have discussed.  All four colors of splatter, however, occur on the lower portion of One: Number 31, 1950.  During his cleaning of the painting, Jim Coddington did note both the pink drips and the brown.  While we agree with his assessment of the pink dots as accidental, we question his conclusions concerning brown drips.  Coddington does not comment on any white or black drips, and the brown drips, he surmises, reflect Pollock’s attempt to “show off” his masterful dripping control.[vi]  We believe instead that the brown drips, along with the equally inconspicuous black and white drips, are in fact over-splatter.  Specifically, we believe that these drips are all over-splatter from Autumn Rhythm.  While both paintings use these same pigments, Namuth’s photographs, as discussed above, reveal that Pollock was at work on Autumn Rhythm while One: Number 31, 1950 stood propped against the studio wall, facing outward.  Because the white, black, and brown drips on One: Number 31, 1950 fit the model of other, more obvious examples of over-splatter, it seems highly likely that that is exactly what they are: over-splatter from Autumn Rhythm.  That Namuth’s photographs corroborate the sequence that this more obtuse over-splatter is suggestive of the power of over-splatter in both sequencing and dating Pollock’s oeuvre.

 

Namuth’s photographs provide a useful tool for verifying the sequencing that over-splatter suggests particularly because they show Pollock at work on recognizable paintings with other recognizable paintings behind him.  These staged photographs, however, span only a very brief period of Pollock’s career.  Most of Pollock’s over-splatter can, in fact, be found on the reverse of his paintings.  It is more difficult to trace this over-splatter from one painting to another for several reasons: firstly, the over-splatter is generally more difficult to view; secondly, the backs of paintings are, of course, less recognizable than the fronts; and then thirdly and relatedly, without a photographic record it is difficult to determine which painting Pollock was working on when he might have splattered the back of another.

 

Before Hans Namuth began to record Pollock at work, and after Namuth's final photograph, Jackson Pollock would have stretched and stacked his completed paintings in a non-theatrical and economical manner: facing the wall, their backs, not their faces, in danger of receiving over-splatter. Long paintings, whether intended for display as horizontals or verticals, would be stood on their short ends.  This arrangement led to very different patterns of over-splatter than those found on Namuth paintings: particularly striking are the paintings which were stacked vertically and therefore appear to have drips racing horizontally across their backs.

 

Conclusions and Further Questions

 

There are too many Pollock paintings with ‘non-accidental’ drips to be ignored or considered insignificant.  Virtually every Jackson Pollock artwork on stretched canvas displays over-splatter on the recto, verso, or both: yet the over-splatter phenomenon has received little to no attention in the world of art history and criticism.  Perhaps this is because most often the over-splatter actually is on the backs of the completed, stretched canvases.

 

The black, white, and aluminum which Pollock used most frequently in his paintings are difficult for the human eye to differentiate when comparing over-splatter to its source artwork.  Yet advanced techniques such as ___________ spectroscopy could reveal the difference between two whites, blacks, or aluminums. The same would hold true for the pink drips that show up on One: Number 31, 1950.  The naked eye can guess: comparison by spectroscopy may be a better, though more expensive, technique. ACTUALLY THE NAKED EYE IS A BETTER “GUESSER” THAN MANY SCIENTIFIC METHODS, FOR EXAMPLE IT IS THE BEST WAY TO OBSERVE STARS AND STAR MOVEMENT IN TELESCOPE IMAGES.

 

There is also the matter of the paint Pollock used.  The brands of paint he used, such as Devoe and Pittsburgh Paints were known brands, not the cheapest available.  Nonetheless, from one gallon of paint to the next there may be differences in the compositions of pigments, binder, and vehicle, possibly even different materials within those ingredients.  Judging from the photographs of the quarts and gallons of open paint, he probably dumped the contents of one container into another to mix a new color.  Pollock’s selection and treatment of his paints may aid spectrographic analysis.

 

If the over-splatter on both sides of Pollock’s work is cross referenced with the catalogue of pigments that the artist used, we can correlate which artworks came first and which followed, establishing a reliable sequence of creation that has been muddled by the Betty Parsons inventory numbers.  This will be a monumental undertaking.  The goal of this paper has been to establish the examination of over-splatter as a powerful new tool in the study of Jackson Pollock’s oeuvre.

 

Lauren M. Kinnee, Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, NYU

Sandy Kinnee, MFA

 

 









Fig. 1.  Pink drip on One: Number 31, 1950. Museum of Modern Art, NYC. Photo by Author

 







Fig. 2. One: Number 31, 1950. Museum of Modern Art. NYC


 

 






Fig. 3. Red drip , Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.  Photo by author.

 

 









Fig. 4. Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

 

 

 








Fig. 5. Publicity portrait of Jackson Pollock in his studio, posing as if working on Alchemy, 1947 . Archives of American Art. Photo by Herbert Matter.




 


Fig. 6. Number 32, 1950.  Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany









Fig. 7. Pollock painting Number 32, 1950.  Photo by Hans Namuth.

 

 








Fig. 8. Pollock creating  One: Number 31, 1950 with the completed Number 32, 1950 hanging in the background.  Photo Hans Namuth.








Fig. 9. Pollock at work on Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950. Immediately behind Pollock is the already dry One: Number 31, 1950, hanging vertically .  Photo by Hans Namuth.










Fig. 10.  Arms covered with paint, while still wearing a wristwatch.  Photo Hans Namuth.

 








Fig. 11.  First page of LIFE magazine article, August 8, 1949.









Figs. 12. and 13. Taken 1947 .  Photos by Herbert Matter.

Archives of American Art.


 






Fig. 14.   Number 1, 1949. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

 

 







Fig. 15.  Hans Namuth photo of Pollock painting Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950,

standing in front of Number 1, 1949 and to Pollock’s right,  One: Number 31, 1950.

 


Fig. 16.  Number 7, 1950 .  Museum of Modern Art, NYC

 




Fig. 17.   Number 3, 1950 . St. Louis Art Museum

 








Fig. 18.  Painting One: Number 31, 1950 with Number 7, 1950 and Number 3, 1950 to Pollock’s back.  Hans Namuth photo.

 

 


 


Fig. 19.  There at least seven pink dots on One: Number 31, 1950

Museum of Modern Art, NYC. Photo by author.

 

 




Fig. 20.   Number 27, 1950, Whitney Museum , NYC

 





Fig. 21.  Number 28, 1950, Metropolitan Art Museum, NYC

 





 

Fig.22. Number 32, 1950 detail. Kunstsammlung  Nordhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany





Fig. 23. Brown Over-Splatter on One: Number 31, 1950. 

Museum of Modern Art, NYC.  Photo by author.

 







Fig. 24. Both brown and white Over-Splatter on 

One: Number 31, 1959. Museum of Modern Art, NYC

Photo by the author.

 








Fig. 25 One: Number 31, 1950 showing brown, white, and black over-splatter drips. 

Museum of Modern Art, NYC.   Photo by author.

 


 

Fig. 26 

Jackson Pollock's studio one month after his death, 1956 Sept.  Notice paintings are stacked, face to the wall, for the most part.  Maurice Berezov, photographer. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.  © Madelyn Berezov

 

 



[i] "tiny blobs of pink paint that they believe landed on the canvas by accident; there is no pink anywhere else in the composition." (NYTimes A Pollock Restored, a Mystery Revealed, By CAROL VOGEL. MAY 27, 2013).

 

[ii] The length of the drips reflects the viscosity and other physical properties of the paint.  The lower the viscosity the longer the drip, for example.  Drying rate, mass, and other factors as well impact the flow of the alien paint on the surface of the dried canvas.  These stray drips of paint tend to land on the lower edge of the finished artwork, that edge which happens to be in closest proximity with the action of paint application and the studio floor.  See also note ii.

 

[iii] It is possible that Pollock himself did not notice the over-splatter until it had already dried and was not so easily wiped away.  One might assume, however, that the artist, who worked, as he has said “within” his own paintings, would have been intimately aware of all their physical and visual details.

 

[iv] The basic methods that Pollock employed in his approach to painting were significant departures from traditional easel painting on stretched canvas.  He painted on horizontal, unstretched canvas. Once he was satisfied the painting was finished it could be stretched for exhibition.  Sometimes he did use paint, straight from the tube.  Mainly, his medium which he bought at a store, not an art supply store, was already mixed in a gallon can.

 

[v] Interestingly, the paintings shown in Namuth's photographs are all in their traditional, correct orientation, with Pollock's signature readily viewed, announcing which direction was up. The three paintings: 32, 31, and 30 are all displayed in their respective museums as they are shown in the photographs.  Each of the three canvases demonstrate the over-splatter of the work that directly follows them in creation

 

[vi] (NYTimes A Pollock Restored, a Mystery Revealed, By CAROL VOGEL. MAY 27, 2013).

"They're like final edits applied late in the game," Mr. Coddington said of the downward drips. "They showed that the artist was not just looking at these paintings as the big gestural achievements that they appeared to be."

 

 

Pollock Paintings in MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

 

CATEGORY A

PAINTINGS EXAMINED BOTH RECTO and VERSO: Over-Splatter found

 

   • RISD Museum: Magic Lantern, 1949 O-S verso

 

   • Yale University Art Gallery :  Number 13A: Arabesque  1948 O-S recto and verso

 

 

 

CATEGORY  B

PAINTINGS  EXAMINED RECTO ONLY : Over-Splatter found

 

VERSO TO BE EXAMINED for Over-Splatter

 

    • Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950

                                                                                        (red and other over-splatter)

   

    • Museum of Modern Art, NYC - One: Number 1, 1950

                                                               (pink, brown, white, and black over-splatter)

 

   • Philadelphia Art Museum: Male and Female, 1942-43 (silver paint drip at bottom)

 

   • Centre Pompidou, Paris (now at CGP Metz): 

     Silver over Black, White, Yellow and  Red, 1948 (thick red oil paint crosses signature)

 

    • Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf: Number 32, 1950   brown O-S

 

    • National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. : Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)

                                                                                             Brown and red O-S noted

 

 

 

 

CATEGORY C

PAINTINGS EXAMINED RECTO ONLY: NO Over-Splatter noted

 

VERSO TO BE EXAMINED for Over-Splatter

 

 

   • Museum of Modern Art, NYC:  Full Fathom Five, 1947;  Number 1A, 1948; She Wolf, 1943.

  

    • Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice : The Moon Woman, 1942; Circumcision, 1946;      

      Alchemy, 1947; Enchanted Forest, 1947; Eyes in the Heat, 1946.

 

    • Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York : Convergence, 1952.

 

    • Tate Gallery in London : Naked Man with Knife, circa 1938-40; Birth, circa 1941;

      Untitled (Composition with Pouring I), 1943; Number 23, 1948; Summertime, Number 9A, 1948; 

     Number 14, 1951; Yellow Islands, 1952.

 

    • Art Institute of Chicago : Greyed Rainbow, 1953.

 

    • Museum of Fine Arts in Boston : Number 10, 1949.

 

    • Baltimore Museum of Art: Water Birds, 1943

 

     • Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:: Number 28, 1950.

       (possible source of pink over-splatter on recto of One: Number 31,1950)

 

   • Centre Pompidou, Paris: The Deep, 1953; Number 26A, 1948, Black and White

             

 

 

 

 

CATEGORY D

 

POLLOCKS NOT EXAMINED

 

   • Centre Pompidou, Paris: Number 26A, 1948: Black and White

 

   • St Louis Art Museum: Number 3, 1950 (VERY LIKELY O-S on FACE)

 

   • Museum of Modern Art, NYC: Shimmering Substance, 1946;  Number 7, 1950;    Echo: Number 25, 1951;     Easter and the Totem, 1953 (possible single drop slightly above signature, indicated in reproduction) ;

White Light, 1954

 

    • National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. : Number 7, 1951

 

    • National Gallery of Australia in Canberra : Totem Lesson 2, 1945;

        Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952.

 

    • Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio : Number 5, 1950.  

 

    • Dallas Museum of Art in Texas : Cathedral, 1947.

 

    • Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany : Two-sided painting, circa 1950-51.

 

    • Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. : Composition with Pouring II, 1943;

      Number 2, 1951; Number 25, 1950; Number 3, 1949 Tiger; Water Figure, 1945.

 

    • Kunsthaus Zurich : Number 21, 1951.

 

 

 

    • Kunstmuseum Bassel in Switzerland : Electric Night, 1946; Silver and Black I, 1950.

 

    • Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester in New York : Farmyard circa 1934; Red, 1950;

      a number of Untitleds.

 

    • Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas : Masqued Image, 1938; Untitled (Collage I), circa 1951;

      Number 5, 1952;

 

    • Monclair Art Museum in New Jersey : Untitled, 1951, enamel on paper.

 

    • Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Argentina : It stars Fleeting, 1947.

 

    • Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles : Untitled, 1943; No. 1, 1949; #3, 1948.

 

    • Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. : Going West, circa 1934-35;

       Miners, circa 1934-38; Peddler, circa 1930-35; Untitled, 1942.

 

    • Staatsgalerie Stuttgart : Out of the Web: Numbers 7, 1949

 

    • Städtische Galerie in Frankfurt

 

    • Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel : Earth Worms, 1946.

 

    • The Albertina in Vienna : Untitled

 

    • Washington University Gallery of Art in Missouri : Sleeping Effort Number 3, 1953.

 

     • Whitney Museum of American Art in New York : Number 27, 1950.

       (possible source of pink over-splatter on recto of Number 31,1950)

 

    • Museum of Fine Arts Houston:  Number 6, 1949

 

   •  Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art: Number 2, 1949

       probable red pigment deposited on Arabesque

  

    • Joslyn Art Museum: Galaxy , 1947

 

    • Seattle Art Museum: Sea Change, 1947

 

    • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond: Number 15, 1948

 

    • Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas : Ocean Greyness, 1953.

 

    • Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art : Frieze, circa 1953-55

 

 

 



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