Number 27

Jackson Pollock

1951

This portfolio of six screenprints by Jackson Pollock was first shown alongside a large series of his black enamel paintings,known as the “black paintings,” at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York in 1951.The prints are small-scale reproductions (one-quarter size) of six of these paintings, made in collaboration with Pollock’s brother Sanford McCoy in McCoy’s commercial screen-printing shop.To create them Pollock first had photonegatives of the paintings produced, which were then transferred to screens and printed in an edition of twenty-five portfolios. Priced at $200 each, the portfolios were intended to provide a less expensive option for potential collectors who could not afford to buy one of Pollock’s paintings. Both the prints and the paintings sold poorly, however, due in part to the reemergence of figuration in Pollock’s work, which was seen by some critics as a regression following the success of his nonrepresentational drip paintings of the late 1940s. Although he created the black paintings using a similar technique—working from above with the canvas on the floor and letting the paint stain the canvas—they include arms, eyes, and other recognizable imagery. This print portfolio was not Pollock’s first exploration in printmaking. He notably experimented both with lithography in the 1930s and with intaglio prints at Stanley William Hayter’s print studio Atelier 17 in the 1940s. Unlike those earlier prints, which Pollock created by hand, this series reflects a contradictory impulse, defined by the distancing of the artist’s hand through commercial reproduction. Consequently, the reduction in scale and the limitations of the screenprint medium resulted in a loss of detail and failed to replicate the tonal variations and stained effect of the original enamel-soaked canvases. Still, as a very early example of the incorporation of the commercial medium of screenprint in a fine art context, Pollock’s portfolio anticipates the widespread engagement with this process in the 1960s in the work of such artists as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. [Permanent collection text, 2018]

Artist Jackson Pollock (American, 1912–1956)
Title Number 27
Date 1951
Medium Screen print
Edition description 5/30
Dimensions unframed | 21 x 27 in.
matted | 30 x 40 in.
Credit line University purchase, Yeatman Fund, 1952
Object number WU 3856.4

Technique screen printing
Work type print

Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction in the 1950s: Building the Collection at Washington University in St. Louis
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/04/2012 - 08/27/2012

Opening Exhibition of Mark C. Steinberg Memorial Hall
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 04/29/1960

Frederick Hartt and American Abstraction in the 1950s: Building the Collection at Washington University in St. Louis 2012

1952
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York

Inscription LR in black pen: "Jackson Pollock 51 5/30"

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