Jackson Pollocks Drip Paintings - Essay Example

Describe the development and significance of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings.

As a prominent figure of movement in abstract expressionism during the mid-20th century, Jackson Pollock is chiefly known for his peculiar technique in drip painting which had undergone thorough investigation over time by art experts who intended to determine which style or pattern in the field of visual arts could have been employed or adopted on his works. While some critics have acknowledged that Pollock’s drip paintings were altogether a revolutionary treatment of aesthetics in art, others necessitated further research and study on his craftsmanship as depicted through the fashion of dripping what appears to be a mix of house paints lashed at random across huge canvases on the floor. The artist was found to have utilized an inexpensive tool stick made of wood rather than the conventional brush to dip in rich paint and generate his creation of a seemingly intricate combination of lines and curves of varied colors in a twining scheme splotched and drizzled all over the canvas surface with the certain scheme (Taylor et al, 2002).        

By the turn of the century, however, the drip work came to be recognized with “fractal patterns” that are characteristic of nature, according to evaluating specialists who managed to perceive reflections of nature via the organic colors and complex orientation of the patterns themselves. Beyond the aesthetic approach, thus, Pollock’s pieces of abstract drip painting are claimed to signify the essence of natural elements. This is quite evident in the manner that colorful curvilinear fractals, including the structure in which they have been brought, play the role of familiarizing the audience's sense of sight with the image details that occur to convey a theme where a ‘state of being’ may be pondered on from abstract to concrete. Moreover, for scientists, such work of art can be of ample significance to the geometric examination of the systems of nature whereas for psychologists, analysis of the artist’s progress enables the acquisition of knowledge in reference to the limitations of human beings since the fractals of Pollock could manifest his areas of strength as well as of weakness. One may readily imagine from the look of the drip painting an embodiment of biology as an exhibition of plant framework or a sinewy network of the human brain.     

Pollock’s endeavor with drip painting was regarded as ‘Fractal Expressionism’ when his creative process was discovered to have evolved out of layering the dripped strokes of paint from time to time in order to produce the unique effect of fractal expressions (Taylor). Hence, by pouring multiple layers of paint on canvas a couple of separate times within a period, the desired outcome of fractal geometry is achieved. Apparently, it is a development to the final object that is derived through a time series of the same task or routine so as to put distinction on the sharpness or boldness of paint shade between one degree to the next.   

What is Surrealism? What influenced its formation, and what were the Surrealist painters attempting to accomplish?  

Surrealism pertains to the radical movement in the fields of art, literature, and even film of the 20th century in which the principal objective of a surrealist is to express the aesthetic capacity of the unconscious or the subconscious mind. It is characterized by the application of incongruous imagery and the principle of rendering illogical juxtapositions of objects in space which highly deviate from the formal traditional concept of structure and order. Surrealists were primarily influenced by the Dada movement formed in 1915 by an international group of pacifist intellectuals and artists who decided to reform the prevailing culture of thought and living during World War I (Dadaist Roots). To the Dadaists, the powerful evil of industrial capitalism and social injustice at the time ought to be contradicted in a language of art or form of communication that is absurd, nonsensical, and irrational to represent an unfavorable state of reality for which the surrealists later took interest, having realized the great cause herein.

For the surrealist painters, the goal of making surreal art must be headed towards an “infinite expansion of reality as a substitute for the previously accepted dichotomy between the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’”. In the article “Making of The Doors: The Influence of Surrealism”, the author further states that “the surrealist believed that through the exploration of the psyche, through the cultivation of the miracles of objective chance, through the mystique of eroticism, through the diverting of objects from their familiar functions in surroundings, through a more cosmic perspective of life on this earth and finally through the alchemy of language that would learn to express this more dynamic reality, a man might be able to satisfy his thirst for the absolute within the confines of his counted number of heartbeats.”