After 1952, dripping and pouring paint were no longer the primary means of expression for Pollock. The totemic forms at the left and right in Easter and the Totem reflect his renewed interest in using a brush to paint quasi-figurative images. The bright colors and expansive spaces anchored by large swaths of black suggest the influence of Henri Matisse, who was the subject of a large retrospective that Pollock would have seen at MoMA the previous year. The push and pull between abstraction and figuration is a thread that weaves through Pollock's entire career. As he said, in the last year of his life, "I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time."

Gallery label from

Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934-1954, November 22, 2015–May 1, 2016.

Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 6' 10 1/8" x 58" (208.6 x 147.3 cm)
Credit Gift of Lee Krasner in memory of Jackson Pollock
Object number 425.1980
Department Painting & Sculpture

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Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

American, 1912–1956 86 works online

In 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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