Jackson Pollock
Mural, 1943
Oil on canvas, 97 1/4 x 238 inches
Mural is considered by many to be the most important modern American painting ever made. For Mural, Pollock evoked the myriad stylistic techniques and theoretical methodologies to which he had been exposed. He synthesized these elements in the moment and created a painting that is inundated with personal, cultural, social, political, and art-world references: the work of his early mentor Thomas Hart Benton and the Regionalist style; the landscape of the Midwest and Native American imagery and philosophy; commercial art; the Works Progress Association (WPA); Mexican murals, Soviet Social Realism and Marxism; the influence of refugee artists from wartime Europe; Asian calligraphy; African and other non-Western art; film; the explosion of World War II and America’s response; Picasso’s work, especially Guernica (1937); and Jungian psychotherapy.
Pollock harnessed all of these elements, with their diverse strengths, as he experienced them in a frenetic coming-togetherness, acting and reacting within his own bravura-painting performance.
pictured: A crew from the University of Iowa Museum of Art, the Des Moines Art Center, the Figge Art Museum, and Methods and Materials, a fine art installation company, worked together to get Mural prepared to ship to the Des Moines Art Center, April 2012

(Source: museumuesum)