Sea Change
Date1947
Maker
Jackson Pollock
American, 1912-1956
Label TextSea Change was painted at a transitional moment in Pollock’s career. In 1947, the dripping technique he occasionally exploited as a compositional element became his dominant method. Pollock had begun this work in 1946 as an easel painting executed with a brush, using vivid blues and pinks. In 1947, he laid the unfinished painting on his studio floor, transforming it with scattered gravel, dripped aluminum and glossy black house paint.
If we typically think of Pollock’s technique as a violent, instant manifestation of “expression,” Sea Change makes us reconsider. Recent analysis and conservation reveals that he carefully preserved parts of the original composition, obscured others with dripped paint, and finally balanced the forms with precisely placed blobs of pure color squeezed straight from the tube. Sea Change embodies the artist’s intent to create an entirely new visual idiom.
Sea Change, 1947, was created at the beginning of Jackson Pollock's most iconic period: the "drip-period," from 1947 to 1950. The painting was owned by the art dealer and patron Peggy Guggenheim until its donation to SAM in 1958.
Jackson Pollock is perhaps the best known abstract expressionist painter from the 1940s and 1950s. His painterly style was labeled "action painting" in reference to the electric energy and movement contained in his canvases. His life and work were captured in Hans Namuth's classic 1951 film and featured in interviews published in Life (1949) and Time (1956) magazines. In 1942, Pollock was introduced to Peggy Guggenheim, who played a pivotal role in launching his career. Guggenheim offered Pollock a monthly stipend in exchange for works of art that she would own and exhibit in her gallery (his first show there, at Art of This Century, was in 1943). In 1945, Pollock married fellow painter Lee Krasner and moved to a cottage-studio in Springs, Long Island, where this work was created. He painted furiously for over a decade, altering the course of modern art in the process, before dying tragically in a car crash at age 44. His untimely death, coupled with his signature artistic achievement, catapulted him to mythical stardom.
Jackson Pollock is perhaps the best known abstract expressionist painter from the 1940s and 1950s. His painterly style was labeled "action painting" in reference to the electric energy and movement contained in his canvases. His life and work were captured in Hans Namuth's classic 1951 film and featured in interviews published in Life (1949) and Time (1956) magazines. In 1942, Pollock was introduced to Peggy Guggenheim, who played a pivotal role in launching his career. Guggenheim offered Pollock a monthly stipend in exchange for works of art that she would own and exhibit in her gallery (his first show there, at Art of This Century, was in 1943). In 1945, Pollock married fellow painter Lee Krasner and moved to a cottage-studio in Springs, Long Island, where this work was created. He painted furiously for over a decade, altering the course of modern art in the process, before dying tragically in a car crash at age 44. His untimely death, coupled with his signature artistic achievement, catapulted him to mythical stardom.
Object number58.55
ProvenanceThe artist; to Art of this Century, New York / Collection of Peggy Guggenheim, New York and Venice (in stock of gallery when it closed, sent to Ms. Guggenheim in Venice by Betty Parsons, 1948); to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 1958
Photo CreditPhoto: Eduardo Calderón
I like to use dripping, fluid paint. I also use sand, broken glass, pebbles, string, nails or other foreign matter…. I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.
Jackson Pollock speaking in Hans Namuth's film, <i>Jackson Pollock</i>, 1951
Credit LineGift of Signora Peggy Guggenheim
Dimensions57 7/8 x 44 1/8 in. (147 x 112.1 cm)
MediumArtist and commercial oil paint, with gravel, on canvas
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