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Masqued Image
Artist
Jackson Pollock
(American, 1912-1956)
Date1938
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 40 x 24 in. (101.6 x 60.96 cm)
Framed: 43 1/4 x 27 1/2 x 1 3/4 in. (109.86 x 69.85 x 4.45 cm)
Framed: 43 1/4 x 27 1/2 x 1 3/4 in. (109.86 x 69.85 x 4.45 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase made possible by a grant from The Burnett Foundation
Object number1985.29
Status
On viewSignedrecto lower edge center "Jackson Pollock"
Copyright© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Category
Label TextOf all the Abstract Expressionists working in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, Jackson Pollock was undoubtedly the most conspicuous. Even within a radical group that took abstraction to new heights, shifting the attention of the international art world from Paris to New York, Pollock’s mercurial personality and unique mode of painting stood out. Pouring, dripping, brushing, and splashing paint from edge to edge, Pollock created a new type of pictorial field, producing images that have evoked comparisons ranging from Walt Whitman to chaos theory.
The Modern’s important early painting Masqued Image, 1938, made before his breakthroughs in abstraction, evokes Pollock’s fascination with Pablo Picasso and Native American shamanism. Loosely resembling the Spanish artist’s famous painting Girl Before a Mirror, 1932 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Masqued Image is a thickly painted medley of disembodied faces. Symbolically, the mask—like the mirror in Picasso’s painting—represents both reflection and an inner search for the self. Masks are commonly used by shamans to communicate with the supernatural and to induce personal transformations. Painted at a time when the artist was attempting to address his alcoholism and to locate an “identity” for himself and his art, Masqued Image remains one of his most personal formative works.
The Modern’s important early painting Masqued Image, 1938, made before his breakthroughs in abstraction, evokes Pollock’s fascination with Pablo Picasso and Native American shamanism. Loosely resembling the Spanish artist’s famous painting Girl Before a Mirror, 1932 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Masqued Image is a thickly painted medley of disembodied faces. Symbolically, the mask—like the mirror in Picasso’s painting—represents both reflection and an inner search for the self. Masks are commonly used by shamans to communicate with the supernatural and to induce personal transformations. Painted at a time when the artist was attempting to address his alcoholism and to locate an “identity” for himself and his art, Masqued Image remains one of his most personal formative works.