Horizontal Composition

Jackson Pollock, a leading exponent of Abstract Expressionism, is best known for his "drip" or "action" paintings of 1947–1951. To produce these works, Pollock spread large canvases on the floor of his barn studio and used brushes, sticks, and even turkey-basters to pour, fling, and drip the paint onto the surface. This technique, which evolved from Surrealist automatic drawing, results in a borderless composition of interpenetrating lines; a space in which there is no differentation between top and bottom, inside and out. Horizontal Composition, an extremely elongated painting, apparently cut from a larger composition, seems to extend into infinite space. Three colors are poured onto a rust-colored background, forming a finely entangled web. Blue and black swirls interwine and bleed into one another, and are delicately threaded with a white enamel overlay. The careful distribution of light and dark conveys a sense of depth and vitality.