Jackson Pollock

Number 23 is an abstract painting on paper. Comprised of layered skeins of black and white enamel paint, the composition was created by dripping and flicking the paint onto the surface of the paper from all four sides. This unusual technique creates a sense of frenzied movement within the image, and results in a composition that could be read from several orientations, although the small inscription of the artist’s name and the date (‘Jackson Pollock, 48’) along one side suggests this to be the lower edge. The juxtaposition between the thin, interlacing threads of paint and the flat negative space of the paper underscores the speed with which the artist worked; an impression that is reinforced for the viewer by the presence of a bee embedded in the paint in the upper right hand corner of the painting.

This painting was created in 1948 by the American abstract expressionist artist Jackson Pollock. He is best known for pioneering action painting, a vigorous method of dripping paint onto a surface laid out on the floor. For four years from 1947 onwards Pollock employed this drip technique to produce the rhythmic, energetic paintings for which he is renowned. Number 23 was created during this period, in which Pollock worked with commercially available materials, watering down black industrial enamel to a consistency he could apply deftly. The paint was dripped by hand or applied using a syringe, an implement Pollock handled ‘like a giant fountain pen’, as Pollock’s partner, the artist Lee Krasner, described it in 1969 (quoted in Karmel 1999, p.38). Pollock applied the paint from above, circling around the paper’s surface, which he dubbed ‘the arena’. This technique created thin, sweeping arcs of paint, with no central point of focus or hierarchy of elements, imbuing the work with a rhythmic and energetic quality.

Number 23 is one of eleven works on paper of a similar size that Pollock executed in 1948. It was shown alongside twenty-five other Pollock paintings at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, between January and February 1949. Each work in this exhibition had a numbered title. Krasner explained in 1950 that these nonrepresentational works were given numerical titles to avoid steering the viewer towards a particular subject: ‘Numbers are neutral. They make people look at a painting for what it is – pure painting.’ (Quoted in Karmel 1999, p.19.)

Pollock’s drip paintings, which are also represented in the Tate collection by Summertime: Number 9A 1948 (Tate T03977), were met with a mixed reaction by critics. Following the 1949 exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery, art critic Emily Genauer wrote that the paintings ‘resemble nothing so much as a mop of tangled hair I have an irresistible urge to comb out’ (quoted in Karmel 1999, p.62). However, Pollock’s paintings were championed by art historian Clement Greenberg, who wrote in 1949 that the new works ‘quieted any doubts this reviewer may have felt … as to the justness of the superlatives with which he has praised Pollock’s art in the past’ (quoted in Karmel 1999, p.62), and an article on Pollock appeared in the 8 August 1949 issue of Life magazine with the sensationalist title ‘Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?’.

Further reading
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery’s Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, London 1981, p.617.
Pepe Karmel (ed.), Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles and Reviews, New York 1999.
Carolyn Lancher, Jackson Pollock, New York 2009.

Phoebe Roberts
December 2016

Supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.