Number One by Jackson Pollock

Number 1 was created by the celebrated American expressionist painter Jackson Pollock in 1948. It features the drip technique, where paint is poured onto a canvass from above.

This painting is one of the first to have been created using this revolutionary technique and it created quite a buzz in the art world when the painting was first revealed to the public.

Pollock himself dubbed the technique and the style that the painting represented Abstract Expressionism and it triggered a wave of paintings in this genre.

Pollock used a brand new way of creating Number 1 as well as a number of other works of art that later followed in the series. The painting is created on a huge mural sized canvass that was laid flat on the floor in Pollock’s studio. He would then pout and fling a series of ropes of paint across the surface of the canvas.

Although the paint strings appear to be random, there was a certain amount of planning behind their formation and placement.

Another thing that makes Number 1 stand out among other paintings in this collection is that at 63 by 103 inches it is one of the largest pieces of artwork to be created using this special technique.

Number 1 is also known as Lavender Mist and was created using a mixture of enamel, oil and aluminium on canvass. Pollock preferred to number the paintings in this revolutionary collection rather than giving them names because he believed that numbers were neutral.

By refusing to give the paintings a title, the viewer was forced to place their own meaning on the paintings and search for ways to interpret the images that they were presented with without any guidelines. Other paintings in this series include Number 12, Number 14, Number 28 and Number 32.

Although today Number 1 is seen as a major work of art and was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, for many years it remained unsold.