With no hint of figuration beneath its richly encrusted surface, Shimmering Substance is one of Pollock's first completely nonrepresentational works. The artist squeezed the paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, then manipulated it with a palette knife, or maybe a finger, to create open loops that swirl to the edges. The painting is from his Sounds in the Grass series of seven canvases executed in a palette much lighter than in any of his previous work. The allusion to light and nature was perhaps a response to the rural environment of East Hampton, where he had moved the previous year. Shimmering Substance has the character of a sun-dappled summer day.
Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934-1954, November 22, 2015–May 1, 2016.
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Jackson Pollock
American, 1912–1956 86 works onlineIn 1947 Jackson Pollock arrived at a new mode of working that brought him international fame. His method consisted of flinging and dripping thinned enamel paint onto an unstretched canvas laid on the floor of his studio.
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Impasto
An Italian word for “mixture,” used to describe a painting technique wherein paint is thickly laid on a surface, so that brushstrokes or palette knife marks are visible.
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