Echo: Number 25, 1951

Jackson Pollock, 1951 · Gallery 405 · Floor 4

So... Jackson Pollock bought turkey basters by the dozen. That's according to his wife, Lee Krasner. Ya know, the kitchen kind. But first, it's 1951, and the drip paintings have made him famous. Canvas on the floor. Paint poured and dripped into those enormous tangles of lines. That March, they're in Vogue. Cecil Beaton photographed models in ball gowns standing in front of them. And just as people are getting used to what a Pollock looks like, he starts making these. Black enamel on bare canvas. Whole stretches of cloth left showing. This is Echo. Krasner said he handled those things like a giant fountain pen. He had to control how much paint came out while moving his hand. So he's basically drawing. With something you'd normally use to make dinner. And look what's turning up. Upper left. That big eye. Little strokes across the top, like lashes. By June, he's writing to his painter friend Alfonso, saying some of his old images are coming through. He thinks this will bother two groups of people. Ya know, the crowd who thought the whole point was you weren't supposed to recognize anything. And then "the kids who think it simple to splash a Pollock out." He shows the black paintings that November. Some of the people who'd come around to the drips now have a whole new Pollock to deal with. But Krasner knew something they didn't. She'd watched his paintings being made. A lot of them, she said, had started with things you could recognize. Heads. Parts of bodies. Creatures. Then he'd keep working, and they'd disappear into the paint. She asked him once why he didn't stop while you could still make out what was there. "I choose to veil the imagery," he said. Cover it up, basically. But with these, she said, he mostly left it showing. Why? She didn't know. Wasn't sure he could've told you either.

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