Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
Abstract
Critics frequently describe Pollock’s allover painted fields, especially those he began producing after 1947, as absorbing or engulfing the viewer, occasioning a sensation of being immersed within an all-encompassing visual environment. His paintings are said to establish so powerful a continuity between viewer and painting that the distinction between them collapses, generating a feeling of what the psychologist Anton Ehrenzweig notoriously described as “undifferentiated oceanic envelopment.”1 Pollock’s works, he continued, “enveloped the spectator inside the picture plane,” producing a “manic experience of mystic oneness.”2 In them, “pictorial space advances and engulfs [the viewer] in a multi-dimensional unity where inside and outside merge.”3 On this account, Pollock’s art is immediate, commanding an irresistible connection or mysterious identification.
Identifier
10.1086/695874
Repository Citation
Schreyach, M. (2017). The crisis of Jackson Pollock's Mural as a Painting. Getty Research Journal, 9(Suppl. 1), 183-199. doi:10.1086/695874
Publication Information
Getty Research Journal