What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna

WHAT PAINTING IS 89
he could make, and therefore the shapes of the marks on the
canvas.
Standing just at the edge of the canvas, with his toes tensed, he
leaned forward, letting the paint drool off a long-handed
housepainter’s brush and fall in curlicues and broken strings. To
make larger marks, he braced himself with one leg back and the
other just touching the canvas, held a can of paint in his left hand
and a threeor four-inch brush in his right, and let the paint fall in
thick ropes and sudden gushes. There is a film of him painting,
and watching it carefully, it’s possible to discern several kinds of
marks. The most relaxed are the dribbling gestures, where the
paint falls in a steady stream as if it were being poured. If he
holds the brush almost still, he produces flowers and knots of
paint, and if he moves his arm in gentle loops, the paint falls into
swags and wide curls. A typical gesture is a graceful turn of the
arm, the wrist flexing slowly back, slowing at the end so the
paint could fall all in one place. Often he lifts the brush vertical at
the end, to stop it from splattering. The film shows clearly what
so may people who have doubted Pollock’s skill could not bring
themselves to believe: he was drawing, and the slower marks are
well under control. The loops thread their way between other
marks, if he wants them to; and the dark blobs fall just where
they should. At the same time, other portions of the gestures are
not controlled. He sometimes takes paint from the open can, and
then moves the brush quickly to the spot where he intends to
paint, without caring that it is laying down a trail. Often at the
end of a mark, he is impatient to get more paint, and he turns the
brush hard back toward the can, spraying the canvas with
droplets.
Pollock had several families of gestures he used habitually.
Another is a more violent kind of marking where he flicks the
brush at the canvas, beginning with the hand curled in toward
his chest, and turning it down and out like the obscene gesture
Italians make by flicking their chin. Sometimes, the hand is
curled down and it turns quickly up and out, like someone
impatiently turning the pages of a book. Those movements create
explosive splatters, with curled tails that drop an instant
afterward, from paint that has arced through the air and fallen
more slowly. With an empty hand, not carrying a brush, the
gesture would have been like a punch at the canvas, or like the
gesture children use to flick water at each other, bunching the