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The grey rainbow

Jackson Pollock • Painting, 1953, 182.9×244.2 cm
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About the artwork
This artwork was added since it is referred to in the materials below
Art form: Painting
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1953
Size: 182.9×244.2 cm
Artwork in collection: Smart and Beautiful Natalya Kandaurova
Artwork in selections: 25 selections

Description of the artwork «The grey rainbow»

The name of this painting can be translated rather as "the Ashen rainbow", which is understandable, considering at what period of the artist's life the work was written. At this time Pollock started drinking again after two years of sobriety and began increasingly to fall into a state of dull anguish, and depressive despair. His marriage was unraveling, but in painting he never created anything new (despite the fact that his paintings began to sell well), risking to bump into repetition and self-replication. "Grey rainbow" at first glance, surprisingly accurately conveys the state in which Pollock was in the last years of his life.

And only after careful consideration it is possible to detect that the painting hides a few surprises. First, the picture seems just a jumble of black and white lines on a featureless grey background. However, a closer look suddenly becomes clear that the colors on the canvas is not so simple and straightforward. First, it turns out that the white color is actually very muted orange or beige, which looks to be a completely white only the background of deep black. And in the gray bluish color visible brushstrokes. Moreover, despite the categorical title of the work, a rainbow on the canvas really is. Bright smears in the bottom part of the picture at first are lost on the General background, but as soon as they catch the eye, it becomes apparent that they constitute the basis of the plot.

"Grey rainbow" is one of the few made in the "drip" technique paintings of Jackson Pollock, received a separate name, not a number. And this name perfectly reflects the features of a gloomy nature, which the artist called his work "arrested in space memories".

Author: Eugene Sidelnikov
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