Jackson Pollock

Enchanted Forest

1947

Enchanted Forest exemplifies Jackson Pollock’s mature abstract compositions created by the pouring, dripping, and splattering of paint on large, unstretched canvases. In Enchanted Forest Pollock opens up the more dense construction of layered color found in works such as Alchemy by allowing large areas of white to breathe amidst the network of moving, expanding line. He also reduces his palette to a restrained selection of gold, black, red, and white. Pollock creates a delicate balance of form and color through orchestrating syncopated rhythms of lines that surge, swell, retreat, and pause only briefly before plunging anew into continuous, lyrical motion. One’s eye follows eagerly, pursuing first one dripping rope of color and then another, without being arrested by any dominant focus. Rather than describing a form, Pollock’s line thus becomes continuous form itself.

On view

Artist Jackson Pollock
Date 1947
Medium Oil and alkyd enamel paint on canvas
Dimensions 221.3 x 114.6 cm
Credit line Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)
Accession 76.2553 PG 151
Collection Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Type Painting

Copy caption

On view


Other artworks

Jackson Pollock

Untitled

ca. 1946

Not on View