Jessica Liu - Reproduce

Artist 

The artist I’ve been assigned to is Jackson Pollock. He’s a major artist in the abstract expressionist movement and is famous for his drip paintings. Before 1940s, he worked in the Regionalist style and was influenced by Surrealism. Some critics believe Pollock’s style is somewhat linked to his tough early life and his volatile personality, he is a heavy drinker. His “drip and splash” style was introduced in the mid 1940s. As Pollock said in 1956, “My painting does not come from the easel.” Instead of putting the canvas on the easel, Pollock laid out his canvases on the floor or against, the wall. And he seldom used ordinary waiting tools, instead he used sticks, towels and knives. When drawing, he moved around the canvas and dripped and splashed as if he is dancing around the canvas. This style of painting detached line from color and redefined pictorial space.

Work

The work I choose is Pollock’s Number 8, created in 1949 because I think it express Pollock’s style very well. This work is basically composed of six colors: yellow, orange, red, dark olive green and most prominently black and white. The over-all tone is very warm. Although the colors seem to be mixed together, the black and white lines are the most important in this painting. The other four colors appears to be at the bottom while the bold black curve and white dots are on the surface, creating a three dimension effect. Unlike his other works, there is very few thin lines in this painting and a lot more dripped dots. So I guess Pollock did not use a traditional brush to paint this.

Response

It is very warm-toned on the first look, but then I feel the unsettledness and radicalness the wide lines convey. By seeing how the lines go, I can almost feel the radical movements he made when painting and how much strength he put on his “brush”. I also noticed that red, yellow and orange are blended together a little bit to create the background, while black and white are clearly distinct. This makes me think that although the painting seems to be random, there’s still order behind the lines.

Product

I’m really bad with computer so I intended to reproduce the Number.8 using an app called Sketches. It only has several kinds of brushes to choose. I stared with green, the bottom color, and then added yellow, orange and red. Finally black and white. After struggling for more than half an hour, I came up with this… But then I accidentally find a website http://jacksonpollock.org. In this website one can create just like Pollock with clicking and moving the mouse. The picture I created on this website is somewhat protected so I cannot upload it to here.

Reflection

I obviously lack the technical skills to accurately reproduce one of Pollock’s masterpiece. However I do think I capture some of his spirit, although it’s hard to tell from my creation. In order to mimic his precess of creation, I moved around my iPad to draw as well. And I tried to think about nothing and just focused on creating the art because that is what Pollock did. That is also why he named his works with numbers, because he wanted to be focus solely on the art itself.

I feel like what Pollock can create with easy can be very hard to replicate with digital method. In 1950, Hans Namuth, a young photographer observed Pollock work and said that the finished one piece in about 30 minutes. I don’t think one can create the texture and the effect that fast with photoshop. Plus, I thine one can hardy be so emotional and unrestricted with structured digital media.

There website where you can create your own Pollock-styled work: