Black Pouring over Color

Indebted both to Eastern calligraphy and European Surrealism (Miró was an artist whom Pollock particularly admired), the dancing, meandering black line in the present work can be construed as a map of the unconscious, and suggests the "borders of the mind" against which the artist continually pushed. Although this work comes late in Pollock's short and turbulent life, in its zestful modulation of color and bold rhythms it retains all the immediacy and vigor of his greatest "poured" paintings from the 1940s. Though the black line appears to spring directly from the artist's subconscious, it is in fact highly choreographed; a perfectly balanced arrangement that spreads out geometrically--like a dark blossom--to all four corners of the composition. Equally, the celestial background that suggests a new dawn breaking is a carefully poised construct, with its constituent parts diametrically counterposed along the horizontal band of yellow and red pigment that forms the axis at the center of Black Pouring over Color.