Its amazing that we have these two awesome paintings here in New York to study. I've been trying to figure out what makes a Pollock painting work and the best possible way for me to do that is to try making one, my first attempt was carted away by the garbageman yesterday.....I did it all wrong. I started by painting in a background color...that didnt work so I gessoed the canvas, that didnt work either, I opened a bottle of wine and started flinging paint around....that made it start to look kind of cool...and I used it as a backdrop for a photo of my genius but it really had none of the qualities of a Pollock, the only thing it had in common with them was flung paint.
I thought of one of the first things that a painter friend of mine, Augusto Arbizo, asked me when I told him I was going to try and make a Pollock...he said "are you going to use the same colors?"
So I went to MoMA on friday to study their Pollocks and of course every one there has its own concerns , each different than the others. But The giant Mural size "One" really blew me away....and i went across town to the Met where they have another large painting from the same period called "Autumn Rhythm". These paintings are very similar in scale and color and were made around the same time... but they are completely different in what they do and how you enter them. I ended up liking "Autumn Rhythm" at the Met much better than MoMA's "One" and I found that the Met bought the painting right when it was new, when the paint was still wet, Moma waited 17 years later to aquire "One".
The full titles of the above paintings are
"One: Number 31", 1950 Collection MoMA
Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) Collection of the Met
They are both from 1950 and if you click on them they will enlarge.
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