Studio floor 3

This is actually a photograph of Jackson Pollock's studio floor, not one of his finished paintings. The floor itself became a work of art through years of drips, splatters, and spills from his famous action painting technique. All those layers of paint tell the story of countless canvases that were created on top of this very surface, making it a kind of accidental archive of his creative process.

Pollock revolutionized painting in the 1940s and 50s by placing his canvases on the floor and dripping or pouring paint from above, often walking around them as he worked. The studio floor became collateral beauty in this process. After his death, parts of his studio floor were preserved and even exhibited as artworks in their own right. What you're seeing here is essentially the ghost of many paintings, a colorful chaos of turquoise, yellow, black, and red that captures the energy and spontaneity of one of America's most influential abstract expressionists at work.