Number 6 is an early example of Jackson Pollock’s famous “drip” paintings. Made by dripping and pouring painting onto a canvas, the artist makes the act of painting the subject of the work of art.
Here, a dense network of black and aluminum paint is streaked, dripped, and poured onto the canvas, with drips and splashes of green, yellow, red, and orange. There is no single focus in this brilliantly composed canvas, creating a dynamic sense of movement, form, and space. Pollock set out to develop a new means of expression. This new style of painting was constructed of layered webs of line and color, created by laying the canvas on the ground and dripping paint onto it with old brushes and sticks, or pouring paint directly from the can. For this painting, Pollock used Duco and aluminum paints—fast-drying, liquid, industrial paints commonly used on automobiles and appliances.
Placing his canvases on the floor of his studio so that he could work from all four sides, Pollock dribbled the paint with remarkable control. He once described his work of this period as "energy and motion made visible," comparing his method of painting to the act of choreography. While these drip paintings seem chaotic, there is still an underlying sense of order. Everyone who saw him work remarked on his amazing ability to control the paint and anticipate how it would fall. Some viewers see the rhythms of nature in his dense webs, while others connect it to the nervous tension of city life. The way the lines fill the composition suggests speed and energy through the quick, forceful application of the paint. However, the intricate details, such as how the lines rhythmically connect, provide viewers with a lyrical, delicate view inside the dense, lush web of colors and lines.
Pollock belonged to a group of artists known as the Abstract Expressionists who strove to uncover their most personal feelings directly through making art. The movement exploded onto the art scene after WWII, with its characteristic energetic application of paint (dripping, smearing, slathering, and flinging). Another aspect of Abstract Expressionism is control versus chance. Although at first glance it seems that a kindergartner could have painted this work, Pollock and his peers cultivated the interplay of skill and unplanned occurrences to determine the painting’s final outcome. Pollock and his fellow artists sought a way to overturn conventional ways of thinking in the wake of a chaotic war. Through their works of art, they attempted to set new creative parameters using new abstract styles. Pollock stated, “The modern painter cannot express his age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique.”
