Jackson Pollock

Denise Bouche, New York
Private Collection, London
Sotheby's, New York, May 5, 1984, lot 83
C & M Arts, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer Gallery, New York Abstract Expressionism, June - July 1975, no. 11
Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas Collects: Willem de Kooning and His Contemporaries, March - May 1995

Francis V. O'Connor and Eugene Thaw, Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings and Other Works, Volume 3: Drawings 1930-1956, New Haven, 1978, cat. no. 836, p. 312, illustrated

This work is in very good condition overall. All four edges are deckled and there is an undulation to the sheet, inherent to the artist’s working method. There is a minor crease at the extreme upper left corner. At the two upper corners, adhesive from an old hinge is visible through the sheet. At the upper right corner, there are losses to the paper, which expose an old hinge beneath. The sheet is hinged verso to the matte intermittently along the edges. Framed under glass.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Jackson Pollock may be the most quintessential American painter of the 20^th century, but what makes him and his oeuvre so enigmatic is the manner in which he approached his art, both painting and drawing, as an extension of one another.  Many of the same techniques that he pioneered were discovered by working on the smaller, more intimate medium of paper and then transformed and transmuted back onto canvas. Similarly, many of the developments he discovered while working on his canvases were later applied to his drawings.

In the present work, Pollock deftly balances the graphic with the painterly in his command of the line and its ability to manifest itself in both a figurative and abstract fashion.  The various inked elements, varying in quality from a sharp strike to a more diffused blurred line, alternate across the picture plane engaging with the equally important, and no less powerful, negative space.  The treatment of the ink affects an ability of the mind and eye to recognize some potentially figurative, "real" objects that still manage to remain abstracted in a particularly surreal fashion.  According to Michael Fried, Pollock, with works on paper such as this, "seems to have been on the verge of an entirely new and different kind of painting, combining figuration with opticality in a new pictorial synthesis of virtually limitless potential..."

Pollock's ability to synthesize a new manner of painting, one which so expertly blended and unified his varying influences, was in large part the catalyst that enabled him to make this not simply a "new" art, but also the new American art.  By compounding and elaborating on the ideas established by the early European modernists, and further pushing the sense of flatness and abstraction, Pollock enabled the burgeoning American art scene to solidify its centrality and importance on a global scale.