Exploring controlled chaos with Jackson Pollock’s One: Number 31, 1950

About the painting

Location: Floor 4, 401, The David Geffen Galleries

One: Number 31, 1950 shows the boundless energy and emotion Pollock felt while creating the painting. He believed that the only way he could truly create was to be immersed in it.

His freehand movements and strokes on the canvas, the dripping of the paint and liquid enamel, combined with the colors and strings of bands of varied lengths, curves, and styles, allowed him to truly express and emote through his art.

The painting has no focal point, no beginning or end; defying all traditional principles of art and embracing the chaos and energy of the emerging modern world.

Method and background

“I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides, and literally be in the painting.” Jackson Pollock, on why he paints with his canvases on the floor.

Pollock would move with his painting, as if he were dancing, and paint with multiple tools, such as dried and hardened brushes, sticks, and turkey basters. He would puncture holes in the paint can itself, let it drip onto the canvas, and let gravity work its magic.

It created a multi-layered, textured, and impasto effect to his painting. He believed that his paintings had a life of their own and that all that he had to do was let it come through on the canvas.

Composition and elements

Pollock used industrial-grade house paints, specifically alkyds (modified oil paints), along with liquid enamel, to create his work. The painting features multiple interwoven bands of color, with a network of lines and curves splattered and dripped across the canvas in shades of tans, blues, grays, blacks, and whites. The dynamic coating, layering, splattering, and use of various paint types and tools result in a unique texture, blending dense, glossy, stained, and scattered elements.

There is no focal point, which leads the viewer’s attention to roam across every corner, curve, and splash of the canvas. The absence of discernible patterns or repetitions imparts a sense of order within the chaos, engaging the viewer in a constant exploration of the work’s intricacies.

Conservation and restoration

Conservators at MoMA began the painting's analysis and restoration in 2013. It had only been dusted until then.

Upon further investigation through X-radiograph, ultraviolet examination, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, they found a layer of overpaint on the cracks that had appeared on the painting.

The conservators at MoMA removed the overpaint and retouched it using watercolors to keep it as close to the original as possible.

Jackson Pollock | The artist

Pollock was heavily influenced by artists like Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and his tutor Thomas Hart Benton. His style evolved throughout his career, and he continued to learn about modern and contemporary art with the help of his wife and fellow artist Lee Krasner. He used his art as a means of expression, and worked with it in his Jungian therapy as well, while he was dealing with his alcoholism. 

His art has been studied by physicists and cognitive neuroscientists, and the term “Fractal Expressionism” has been coined to describe his style. The fractal analysis results showed a number of similarities between his artworks and the fractals found in nature. When observers see his paintings, they have the same neurological response as they would if they were to see naturally occurring fractals or computer-generated fractals.

The revolutionary drip, or action painting method

Jackson Pollock was the most popular artist associated with this method of painting, although Janet Sobel, a Ukrainian-American painter, was the one who pioneered it. Her style influenced Pollock greatly after he saw her work at Peggy Guggenheim’s "The Women" exhibition in 1945. 

The drip method rejects traditional brushstrokes as a way of painting and instead involves taking a more fluid approach. You can squeeze or drip the paint down directly onto the canvas, pour it and let it spread on its own, or splatter it with whatever tool you wish. The effects created change based on the type of paint, the height at which it gets dripped, the speed at which it falls, and the amount of paint/water used in the process. It creates a unique, layered, and textured effect on the canvas, which is a lot more experimental and free-flowing.