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(jazz music)

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- [Steven] We're in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art,

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looking at an enormous
painting by Jackson Pollock.

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This is 17 feet wide and he
originally titled it "Number 30"

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but then later "Autumn Rhythm."

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So the museum is creating a compromise

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and they're calling it
"Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)".

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- [Beth] This is a complicated painting.

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And for some reason to me today

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in the midst of the pandemic,

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less than two weeks before
a presidential election,

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I feel like I might be projecting
some of my own darkness

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into this painting that I
know is painted in 1950,

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just five years after
the end of World War II.

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- [Steven] A lot of the discussion

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about the abstract expressionists

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of which Pollock was one
of the leading figures

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deals with the issue of
an angst and anxiety.

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These were issues that were
dominant in the post-war moment.

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1950 was the Cold War.

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The atomic bombs were threatening

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in a way that had never happened
before in human history.

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The enormity of the Holocaust

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had been revealed only
a few years earlier.

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- [Beth] And there were
the trials of Nazis

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that went on for years
after the end of the war.

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I can imagine there
was a sense for artists

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that a new language was needed to express

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this post World War II era

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and that the old systems of naturalism

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coming out of the Renaissance

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was not a language that was viable

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given the new circumstances.

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- [Steven] I think a number of artists

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didn't feel that
naturalism, that figuration,

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the representation of the
human body was going to cut it.

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They were looking for something
that was more profound,

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that was able to grapple
with existential issues,

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issues of human existence and
the potential extinguishing

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of human existence.

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- [Beth] If you think about
the decade or two before this,

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we have surrealism and this
interest in the unconscious

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and delving beyond the
conscious everyday mind

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and looking for a greater, deeper truth

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about human existence, about
the way our minds work.

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- [Steven] Well, there was this idea

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that goes back to the surrealist.

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It goes back even to Dada,

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that the conscious rational
mind got in the way,

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that it was antithetical
to the creative impulse,

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that if we could somehow
step out of the way

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and allow something more elemental,

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more unintentional to come to the fore,

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that would somehow be more
truthful and more universal.

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What we're seeing is a
high point in modern art,

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where artists were stepping
away from the representation

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of nature,

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something that had been
central to the making of art,

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this interest in something that
was not abstract in nature,

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but it was purely abstract.

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It's radicality can't be overstated.

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This was completely upending
the traditions of image-making.

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He's turning away from the
representation of nature

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and looking into himself,
his own physical movements,

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his own emotional state at
this specific moment in time.

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- [Beth] So we're not looking at,

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for example, analytic cubism,
which is an abstraction

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from nature where Picasso takes a guitar

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and disassembles it into geometric forms,

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but here, he's not starting from nature,

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but starting from the
place of an individual

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in a moment in time.

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- [Steven] And in a particular place,

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this was made in his studio, a small barn

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in the back of the
house at Jackson Pollock

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and Lee Krasner's property

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out in the Springs in East Hampton.

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It's a relatively small space.

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This is an enormous canvas,
he unrolled it on the floor.

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He didn't prime it, he didn't add gesso.

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He didn't seal the surface.

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He painted directly on the raw canvas,

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but I can't say even that he painted it,

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he didn't touch the canvas with his brush.

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He moved over the canvas
and let paint fall on it.

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- [Beth] So there is a kind of rawness.

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For centuries, whenever an artist painted,

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not only did they prime the canvas,

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but they most often prepared drawings,

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organize the composition,
thought it through.

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There was a real intentionality
and consciousness.

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That was an important part of
the value of a work of art.

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- [Steven] And here he's
flipping that value on its head.

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Pollock used house paint,
that black is an enamel.

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It's a break with the refinements
of fine art materials,

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bringing art into the real world.

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And that's a reminder
that Pollock had been,

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especially earlier in his career,

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interested in social issues.

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This is an enormous canvas
that might remind us

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of large scale mural paintings.

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- [Beth] So he's looking back

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to the great Mexican muralists

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like Siqueiros and Diego Rivera,

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and thinking about the
enormous scale of those murals

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and in art, that was not a
small paintings for a collector,

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but large paintings for the masses.

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- [Steven] What Pollock is after here

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is a kind of spontaneity,
it's an immediate invention.

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He's drawing on his tremendous skill,

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but he's then letting loose,
and probably the best analogy

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is to a highly accomplished jazz musician.

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Somebody who can play the
saxophone or the piano

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with extraordinary skill,

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but then allows themselves to riff,

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allows themselves to play
and allows the unconscious

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and the moment to come to the fore.

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- [Beth] And the emotion of the moment

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becomes the guiding principles.

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- [Steven] And I want
to go back to a point

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you made a moment before

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he's not painting on unprimed canvas,

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simply to break with tradition.

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He wants the paint to seep in
and stay in the canvas itself,

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not to ride on its surface always.

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And so there was a specific
quality that was achievable

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because the paint was in direct contact

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with the weave of the cloth.

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- [Beth] And there's so many ways

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that we experienced the paint here.

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We see areas where it
did seep into the fabric.

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We see dots that look like splashes.

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We see other dots that have
a feeling of a night sky.

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We see areas where the paint
has pulled up and dried

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and cracked.

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We see areas where the paint
is soft and atmospheric,

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areas where it's sharp and
linear, where it's matte,

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areas where it's shiny.

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There's so much to explore
when you got up close.

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- [Steven] But then you can also pull back

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and you can see these
long trails of paint.

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And you can imagine the
artist moving around

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and rhythmically with
large arching motions,

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flinging that paint into the air

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and allowing gravity to pull it down.

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The surface of this painting
then becomes of register

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of Pollock's movement through
time and through space.

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It becomes a kind of stage.

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And in one sense, it's a shame

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that the painting is
vertical hanging on the wall

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because it was made
horizontally, he was over it.

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And sometimes when I walk up to a Pollock,

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I'll look at it from the
side and tilt my head

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so I can look across it the way he saw it,

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more as an arena to act in
than a canvas to look at it.

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(jazz music)