Pollock matters

Abstract

"Pollock Matters explores, for the first time, the personal and artistic interrelationship between American Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and noted Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter. Featuring visual and documentary evidence in over 100 illustrations, this book demonstrates a critically important chain of influence between these two creative individuals not considered in previous studies of their respective careers. The book reveals the crucial role that Herbert Matters' technical innovations played in Pollock's radical artistic conception of "energy made visible." Also presented, with scientific analyses of their paints, are a previously unknown body of small drip paintings labeled by Herbert Matter as "Jackson experimental (gift + purchase).""--Jacket.

Contents

Director's preface / Nancy Netzer -- Introduction / Claude Cernuschi and Ellen G. Landau -- Action/re-action : the artistic friendship of Herbert Matter and Jackson Pollock / Ellen G. Landau -- Jackson Pollock's vitalism : Herbert Matter and the Vitalist tradition / Jonathan D. Katz -- Cutting Pollock down to size : the boundaries of the poured technique / Claude Cernuschi and Andrzej Herczynski -- Abstract expressionism and fractal geometry / Claude Cernuschi, Andrzej Herczynski, and David Martin -- Scientific examination of the paint on nine Matter paintings / Richard Newman and Michele Derrick -- Analyzing Jackson Pollock : scientific methods and the study of the Matter paintings / Nicholas Eastaugh -- What it says on the tin : a preliminary study of the set of paint cans and the floor in the Pollock-Krasner studio / Nicholas Eastaugh and Bhavini Gorsia -- Fingerprinting Jackson Pollock? / Peter Paul Biro -- Appendix 1 : notes on conservation of the Matter paintings -- Appendix 2 : chronology of the relationship of the Matters and Pollocks / prepared with the assistance of Nancy Cohen, Jeffrey Head, and Michael R. Weil, Jr.