Exploring Jackson Pollock's 'Number 50': A Journey into Drip Painting and Abstract Expressionism

Let's talk about Jackson Pollock's 'Number 50'. Dive into the world of action painting, a subset of Abstract Expressionism, developed mid-century by Pollock, where he set out to explore a blend of chance and precision in abstract art.

🎨🖌️ Dive into the dynamic world of Jackson Pollock’s ‘Number 50’, a 1950 masterpiece of drip painting. This piece is not just paint on canvas; it’s an iconic example of action art and abstract expressionism. 💫🌌

Pollock’s method? Using house paint and a stick to let each drip and swirl take its own course, creating a symphony of controlled chaos. But how much control did Pollock really have? 🤔🎨 Each splatter and line raises questions about artistic intent versus randomness.

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Reflect on the nature of art itself: the choice of colors, the angle of the drip, and the artist’s movement around the canvas. It’s a dance of chance and precision. 🕺💃

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Ever written about art and received unexpected feedback? Share your experiences and thoughts on this captivating form of expression. Let’s delve into the depths of drip painting together! 🤓✍️

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Gego — Gertrud Goldschmidt — Retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York to Open on March 31, 2023

In this post, I write about going to the opening night of the Gego: Measuring Infinity exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

On Thursday night, I saw a new retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim, the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed museum building on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Two artists' had openings — Sarah Sze and the German-Venezuelan artist, Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt).

Do you see it? I was drawn in by the small square

dangling in the left corner of one of Gego's

trippy geometrical pieces — on view at 

the Guggenheim Museum.

       Another example of Gego's geodistic fever dream —
       can you imagine being shrunk and navigating
       you way through this three-dimensional maze?

Gego's work spans decades and includes small-scale paintings from the '50s to trippy geometric mobiles from the '70s. I particularly liked her drawings without paper — such as a wire mashup that appears to be graph paper 📝 and a series of interconnected wires that, when you step back, look like spherical shapes strung together. Thanks to @rguimaraes100 for letting me know about his wife’s associate curatorial work — brava to Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães. You curators do amazingly awesome work: e.g., putting together such an impressive exhibit that spans the Guggenheim's spiral.

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#exhibit #guggenheim #art #show #gegomeasuringinfinity #guggenheim #curator

First image: Sphere; Second Image: Sphere; Third Image: From left, “Sin Título” (“Untitled”), 1977, bronze; “Siete Icosidodecaedros” (“Seven Icosidodecahedra”), 1977, steel and copper; “Sin Título,” 1977, bronze; and “Reticulárea Individual Nº 2” (“Individual Reticulárea No. 2”), 1969, steel, aluminum and iron. Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

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Painting: "Second Theme" by Burgoyne Diller

Burgoyne Diller, "Second Theme"

image: Valerie Carbery Gallery / Burgoyne Diller

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The 181st Street IRT Subway Station in New York City

The station entrance to the IRT Broadway Line in New York

At the 181st Street station on the number 1 local, I see a man humping the platform floor. Two ladies clad in business dress call the police. The police, on arriving at the primal scene inquire, "Sir, will you get the fuck up?"

Detail of the New York City Subway Map

A flock of pigeons flies through the tunnel space. The police carry Onan away. More than one hundred feet below the surface of the street, flanêurs ascend and descend via one of four aesthetically displeasing metallic elevators, brought to life today only by the Dominican men who enter with me listing their accomplishments. “Can you believe it?” one asks. “No, to be honest, I can’t. That’s a brave man. That one. That’s a brave man.” The accomplishments are lost to me. All I know are the sounds. The pleasure in their voices was being.

     The elevator brings us to ground level; the men go quietly; we hurry out to the street. My destination is the Fort Washington Branch of the New York City Public Library. I want to write in a quiet space. To escape the noise. The factotum at the circulation desk points me to an especially quiet place in the back of the library. The patrons are a mix of young teens freshly evicted from the diurnal school duty and retired folks who read newspapers and mind their own business. The Fort Washington Library, like many of the libraries in New York, was a Carnegie gift. It is not my first visit to this particular branch. I remember my last visit here last summer. It is queer to have summer memories during winter. I remember the building that sits atop the tunnel entrance onto the George Washington Bridge. It reminds me of a battered housewife. The rumble of cars and trucks come to the surface of the street with a persistent violence. This is the ugliest building in all of Manhattan. I remember walking past it last summer, while shirtless boys on St. Nicholas Avenue played in the opened fire hydrant. Langston Hughes comes to mind. He was a flanêur of urban American streets. He wrote poetry about memories. About dreams. About IRT trains:

Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy
Sometimes a bone
Is flung
To some people
Love is given
To others
Only heaven.

Would you like to read more? Fetch Greig Roselli's book of essays, Things I Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas) for more good writing, dammit.  

A Station Entrance to the 181st Street IRT Station on the New York City Subway Broadway Line

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Poem: Another Kind Of Cave?

when it seems you have been cut out from
construction paper,
block speckled primary color green,
a carved-out human form,
when it seems as if identity has been placed on the shelving,
— fleshed-out and unread —
what, instead,
walks around in its place is the abstract me
with abstract legs and triangular feet,
a circle standing in for a noggin,
made by a bunch of kindergarten scholars,
a veritable platonic form,
that forgot about its meat on the shelf,
cautiously rotting
So I go and pick up my half-smelly carcass,
filed between a copy of
jane eyre and buddingbrooks,
and slap my self around a bit like a butcher with
a premium slice,
salve a healthy dose of vinegar to spicen up
my languishing corpuscles,
jimmy into my corpse once again as if it were a
union suit
nostalgically lined to my handsome rectangle;

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