8. Jackson Pollock – No. 28 1950
Jackson Pollock painted this mural-size monochromatic canvas early in the summer of 1950. Having moved from Manhattan to eastern Long Island, in 1947 the artist returned to the drip and pour techniques for which he is now famous. Like almost all his New York colleagues, Pollock began his abstractions with drawings of figures, which were subsequently abstracted or obliterated. Executed on the floor of his studio on a canvas roll that he later cut and stretched, the composition was worked on from all four sides of the rectangle, pouring enamel paint from a hole in the can, dropping from a stick, and paint flinging, creating works that critic Clement Greenberg called “polyphonic.” Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related single-car accident when he was driving, putting an early end to those many artistic voices.