Jackson Pollock
No. 151950

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Artist or Maker: Jackson Pollock
United States, 1912-1956
Title: No. 15
Place Made: United States
Date Made: 1950
Medium: Oil on masonite
Dimensions: 22 × 22 in. (55.88 × 55.88 cm)
Credit Line: Museum Associates Purchase Award
Accession Number: M.51.5.7
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: Comprising tangled skeins of paint, No. 15 demonstrates Jackson Pollock’s “drip” technique that characterized the artist’s gestural, expressive style, a hallmark of Abstract Expressionism, which emerged in the United States in the climate of Cold War politics and social and political conservatism. Upending the conventions of traditional easel painting, Pollock flung, poured, and splattered
commercial house paint onto unstretched canvases, Masonite, or paper laid on his studio floor. Although the compositions may appear frenetic, Pollock’s paint application is surprisingly controlled, achieving a balanced distribution of color and line, evenly framed by a more sparsely painted edge.

Wall label, 2021.
Selected Bibliography: King, Jennifer, ed. Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2020.