Jackson Pollock ostensibly established himself as an artist unafraid to break from tradition, yet his painting Number 9 (1949) returns to the most rudimentary and essential elements of art. Rather than using line as a vehicle by which to convey forms, Pollock makes the line the subject itself, challenging viewers’ perceptions of what constitutes art and the narratives being communicated through it. Each line expresses emotion, telling its own story. These emotions are laid bare, at their rawest and perhaps most sincere, as the electric energy of the artist’s movement, the pent-up emotion released, is felt in every brushstroke.
Behind the seemingly unreadable complexity of the lines’ intersections is color, which stitches the painting together. Strands of gray overlap explosive primary hues of red, blue, and yellow, like fireworks contained beneath webs of the neutral chroma. In the confinement of the bright primary colors, there is a sense of contained chaos, of a voice clamoring to be heard. Lines strain past the limits of the canvas. Their movement is a reflection of Pollock’s own motions in flinging paint onto the canvas, lending the painting immense physicality and dynamism, which is accentuated by the contrast between colors. In the absence of conventional perspective, there is nonetheless body rather than flatness, with the overlapping layers of crisscrossing streaks of paint providing dimension. Furthermore, and somehow, a sense of balance is found, so that there is a visual flow among lines.
Threads of gold that interweave through gray, black, and white suggest the bending of light, of refraction that illuminates. Each small passage of primary colors below the neutral intersecting lines is all the more visible for their juxtaposition, making them stand out more than if the painting had been comprised solely of primary colors, without neutral shades amongst them. By returning to the most basic element of art, the line, Pollock avoids ostentation and the core messages about impermanence, resistance, and hope that could otherwise be lost. Ultimately, the painting stands as a reflection of life that is relevant to our times.
Like his forebears, the Impressionists, Pollock layered wet paint onto wet paint in thick coats, painting rapidly to create a rougher, more tangible texture, giving a sense of immediacy and urgency to Number 9. The chaotic, elaborate intersections of lines mirrors how human emotions can burst at the seams, especially when contained.
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During the coronavirus pandemic, containment inside walls made it feel increasingly urgent for many of us to use our voices to overcome the bounds of loss we experienced. Emotions were unbound, conveyed through unique forms of self-expression—online ghazals multiple writers contributed lines to, continuous poems that became mosaics of meaning, kneaded by many hands sowing pain into beauty, together. Amidst adversities, light could shine more radiantly, and losses allowed for every gain to be more appreciated; contrasts between then and now afforded opportunities for enlightenment, to see what had been missed before.
Initially, Number 9’s largeness is its most apparent quality, a quality that emphasizes the extremism of its linearity. However, in its interspersed passages of bright, primary colors, the subtler beauty of the painting is notable. Like the sun’s rays shining from small crevices between tangled tree branches, braids of yellow and blue cut through clouds of gray and white hues. Our eyes are pulled to the understory, curiosity piqued by the smaller details that underlie the broader narrative, emotions peeking underneath the surface, like seedlings of hope.
Analogously, the magnitude of the pandemic and its aftermath has often appeared overwhelming in its vastness, extending across the world, carrying complex implications. Each individual, however, has a story to tell. Through each voice combining, like the lines in Pollock’s painting, an entire masterpiece can be created, a greater symphony.
Reckoning with the inconceivable magnitude of the losses brought about by the pandemic, I felt frustrated and powerless. There was so much grieving. Lives, dreams, and familiar patterns of living slipped away. How could I, one person, help to heal these gaping wounds? How could I share all that I had inside? Art, I came to find, is a most powerful balm. While my heart was heavy and words seemed inadequate, I wrote anyway. It was an act of resistance, battling my own self-doubt, the whisper questioning whether anything I could create would matter. It was daunting to reach out in a time of solitude and open my heart, submitting the prose and poems I’d woven from it. I feared rejection, a greater sense of isolation. Inspiration, however, had other plans. I couldn’t be silent, when, under layers of sadness, a flame of hope still burned, joy ignited by the arts, a constant, despite change.
Watching theatrical performances online, looking at art, and listening to music touched my soul, transcending the circumstances I faced. My determination to share with others the happiness the arts could bring, and the slices of light I uncovered in simple moments at home, transcended my inhibitions. Contributing writing to anthologies, including Pandemic Evolution, composed of responses to art created during the pandemic, I was amazed by the luminescent angles, strikingly different interpretations, of one snapshot in time. So many souls, each tapping into their own unique creativity to break down walls, could truly weave together their own individual works of art, but also impactful was when all the flashes of light could coalesce, enkindling a stronger spark of hope still. Even though I’d felt powerless to make a difference, by connecting with others through the enriching world of art, I began to understand the power of the human spirit. These times wouldn’t last forever, but the incandescent testaments to our will to rise, our ability to stand again, always would. We are each part of the movement of life, of art, effecting change, just as Pollock was actively involved in the process of painting, physically putting himself into his work by throwing drizzles of paint onto the canvas, without being a passive participant in sculpting beauty from an empty frame. As in Pollock’s case, deconstructing what inhibits, like rules about what can be done in art, or fears that hold us back from artistic self-expression, can be what ultimately emancipates.
In challenging the restrictiveness of rules governing art, freedom was found in the uninhibited gesture of the painting. Lines were drawn, boundaries created. A painting had to be “finished,” not seem incomplete, like Impressionistic sketches. The line was a means to creating shapes, a coherent narrative within the frame, not a subject in itself. Paintings were supposed to reflect nature, art imitating life as traditionally, closely, as possible. Anyone brazen enough to oppose these notions was criticized, ridiculed, ostracized. Thinking differently could impose a kind of social isolation. Being misunderstood was its own form of solitude.
Nevertheless, Pollock bucked the trend, refusing to distance himself for imagining a different mode of expression, a new breed of art. In his diverging pathways of lines, he challenged us to confront human nature, conflicts and contradictions in life, with all its unexpectedness, and times that don’t always make sense, eluding human understanding. We are met with reflections of the inscrutable depths of who we are. Abstract as Pollock’s painting may have seemed, it ultimately was the truest form of realism, in its evocation of the human need for liberty, in which self-actualization is possible. None of the lines in Number 9 could be neatly restrained, instead, escaping parameters, in a manner emblematic of Pollock’s own liberation from the Academy’s traditional standards of art.
However, underneath the radical appearance of the painting is a sense of impermanence that hearkens back to ancient times, the very basics that make up art’s essence. The jagged lines that seem to snake into oblivion, fading into corners, and new mazes of color, imply transience. Inspired by sand art that was destroyed after being created, Pollock brought elements of ritualistic tradition to his otherwise unconventional work, serving as a reminder of the age-old message of time being fleeting, and thus, of the importance of savoring life’s beauty, comprised of the many pathways led by fate, intersecting with others’ life journeys, sometimes in ways that are inexplicable, but no less significant. Form and function, an overarching purpose, are discovered despite chaos, or perhaps, because of. Color bursts forth like flames of hope, sunlight from clouds, to illuminate these paths towards understanding, authenticity, growth, and enduring truths in pivotal times of rapid, constant change.