Pollock’s Abstract Images in Paintings Prior to His Drip Paintings

Although Jackson Pollock is most famous for his drip drawings, these occurred late in his career, starting around 1947. Prior to that he produced some “surrealist inflected” paintings and “gestural abstraction.” Troubled Queen in 1945 is considered Pollock’s masterful transitional work from the regionalist figurative paintings of his early years to the passionate “drip paintings” for which he is best known. As stated by Elliot Bostwick Davis et al (mfashop.com/9020398034), “As Troubled Queen shows, Pollock had begun to work in a very large scale by this time; his paint was dragged over, dripped on, and flung at the canvas. His subject matter was no less highly wrought: emerging from the churning coils and jagged lines of this life-sized canvas are two facelike forms, one a leering mask, the other a one-eyed diamond shape. Their nightmarish presences reflect not only Pollock’s agitated psyche but also the years of violence that had torn the world apart through war.” Thus, Troubled Queen shows that Pollock included images in his painting prior to his “drip paintings,” rendering it feasible that he continued to include images in his “drip paintings” using that new technique. We have coined the term “Polloglyphs TM” to name the images that are encrypted in his “drip paintings” and that tell a story about Pollock’s inner being, camouflaged yet hiding in plain sight. Here, in order to establish the basis for Polloglyphs in his later “drip paintings,” we have deconstructed the multiple images in Troubled Queen by first showing the image on a white background and then transposing it upon the painting. In this way, the observer can begin to see how images were incorporated into Pollock’s pre-drip paintings. These are not Rorschach ink blots with fractal edges that are fooling the eyes and only in the mind of the viewer, but images purposely put on canvas as the observer can see. Clearly, there is a “troubled queen” in Troubled Queen. Beyond that there are images of war possibly inspired by Picasso’s famous Guernica painted in 1937 and first seen by Pollock in 1939. A character is also seen to her left. Pollock had a trick that can be used to better visualize and uncover his images by rotating this painting 90 degrees counterclockwise. In this case, a small angel of mercy with her sword can be seen in the upper left quadrant. Another character, possibly a soldier with a hatchet and gun with bullet in the barrel can also be seen. Several other images can also be deciphered including a Picasso-like rooster and many others. Together, these images suggest a theme of war during the midst of World War II and may have triggered Pollock’s long standing feelings of inadequacy as his psychiatrist and his draft board found him unfit to serve as a soldier and he was exempted from serving. We encourage the observer to look carefully at Troubled Queen and to develop an opinion on which if any of the images are seen and to ponder as well what they may mean. Funding No Funding