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On this birthday of Jackson Pollock (born in Cody, Wyoming on January
28, 1912), I’m reminded of Frank O’Hara’s appreciation for Pollock’s
paintings. From the beginning of Pollock’s experimentation in the late
1940s—dripping paint on an unstretched canvas positioned across his
floor (perhaps inspired by Indian sandpainting) and scraping the
covered surface with odd instruments, sticks, or knives—Frank O’Hara
appeared fascinated by the technique, which both Pollock and O’Hara
viewed as a process toward freedom from restraint or convention.
Pollock’s
action painting, containing dark arcs of paint or lines of spattered
drops lengthening like beaded chains, embraced spontaneity and imitated
coincidence much the way many of O’Hara’s action composition poems
narrating events as they may have happened attempted to speak to their
readers with a seemingly natural, unfiltered voice relating personal
observations or experiences.
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-- Ed Byrne. Click here for the rest of Byrne's piece.
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