Number 2, 1949

Artist Jackson Pollock (American, 1912 - 1956)

Date1949

MediumOil, Duco and aluminum paint on unsized canvas

DimensionsOverall: 38 x 189 1/2in. (96.5 x 481.3cm)

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Terms

20th Century

Object number54.38

On View

On view

Collections

20th-Century Paintings

Label TextSince the 1500s, European and American artists traditionally have created paintings that illusionistically depict three-dimensional space. The picture surface might be described as "transparent" and can be understood as a "window." That is to say, a viewer could visually enter the space of the painting. By the twentieth century, modernist artists had become intrigued by the fundamental nature of painting. They believed that illusion was untruthful because a picture is, in the end, merely paint on canvas. For these artists, the transparent surface of the picture plane became an impenetrably flat, opaque field. In the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock was one of a number of artists who regarded the surface of a painting as a field of activity. Pollock placed his canvas on the floor and moved around it constantly as he painted, making choices to balance the rhythms of color and movement. In the abstract works he created in this manner, Pollock asserts the flatness of the picture plane. The paintings represent both the activity of painting as well as deeply personal feelings. Pollock and other artists of his generation had worked through the Depression, World War II, and the Holocaust. In the late 1940s, they also faced the Atomic Age. These artists believed that modern humankind existed in a crisis that could only be expressed in an universal visual language that has come to be called "Abstract Expression." In the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock was one of a number of artists who regarded the surface of a painting as a field of activity. Pollock placed his canvas on the floor and moved around it constantly, making choices as he flung paint to balance rhythms of color and gesture. No. 2, 1949 and similar paintings represent deeply personal feelings. Pollock believed that modern humankind needed a new, universal visual language to express our new understanding of spirituality, psychology, and science in the Atomic Age.