Gift of the Society for Contemporary American Art, 1955.494
The artist Pollock pioneered Action Painting. He often applied paints with sticks, palette knives, and even trowels, rather than brushes. His canvases were too large to fit on an easel so he placed them on the floor or nailed them to a wall. The paintings that resulted had no apparent beginning or end, top or bottom. Their surfaces were a network of drips, splatters, and lines meant to reveal the artist’s subconscious mood. To Pollock, the process, the action, of painting was as important as the finished work.
