Number 18 (section)

Down near the bottom of the canvas sits a small clue: the handwritten "J Pollock 50." This is a slice of Number 18, made by Jackson Pollock in 1950, right in the middle of his most celebrated stretch of work. Instead of standing at an easel, he spread his canvas flat on the floor and circled it, dripping and flinging and pouring paint from above. He liked to say he became part of the painting while he worked, moving around its edges as if he were standing inside the picture itself. The finished piece is a tangle of black, cream, red, and yellow threads scattered over a quiet gray ground.

Pollock helped push forward Abstract Expressionism, a style that flourished in New York after World War II. His drip paintings baffled plenty of people early on, since there were no faces, landscapes, or objects to grab onto. A few critics laughed them off, while others sensed raw energy and feeling locked into the paint. No single reading is the correct one here. Your gaze just drifts, tracing one line until it tangles with the next. Whether it strikes you as messy or oddly peaceful, the work holds a record of the artist in motion, a burst of action that still hums on the surface.