Composition by Jackson Pollock

Composition is a painting created by contemporary American artist Jackson Pollock in 1948.

This work of art prominently features white and black colours on a large canvass and those strong of colour are interspersed with dashes of red and blue.

This revolutionary work of art serves as a very good example of Jackson Pollock’s signature style of gesture painting in which he flung paint onto the canvass in an undulating and very rhythmic way.

Like many paintings of this style that were created by Jackson Pollock around this period, the canvass was placed flat on the floor rather than on an easel so that he could gain access to the four sides and make sure that the paint was distributed around every areas.

In the early part of the 1940s Jackson Pollock put down his paintbrush and searched for other methods of transferring paint onto the canvass. The twisting and turning style that Composition represents reflects the intricate dance between the painter and the painting.

Other works of art in this stirring and highly original series of dip paint paintings include Composition with Pouring and Composition with Pouring II. As the titles of these works of art suggest, although they may appear to be rather random to the untrained eye, the artist himself has put thought into the composition of each one.

This marks a rather unique trend in the world of art and spurred a number of Jack Pollock’s followers to attempt their own works to try and reflect this style.

Composition forms part of the permanent collection that can be viewed today at the innovative and very popular New Orleans Museum of Art.

Many critics of Pollock’s work have suggested that Composition is one of his finest and one thing to note when viewing it is that although white appears to be the dominant colour at first glance, in fact none of the four colours were given preference and have been used equally.