Those splatters take a lot of work
An exhibit at MOCA will show how complicated it is to conserve (and create) a Jackson Pollock painting.
When a museum puts a Jackson Pollock on view, some visitors will inevitably contend that their preschool children could easily dribble, splatter and fling paint on a canvas, creating a masterpiece with equal aplomb as the abstract expressionist artist.
It’s a notion that will be dispelled in public view during the conservation of Pollock’s “Number 1, 1949” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
“Everyone thinks anyone can replicate a Jackson Pollock painting,” said private conservator Chris Stavroudis, recalling a Three Stooges bit in which they spit paint on a canvas. “There’s a lot more to the process.”
MOCA is collaborating with the Getty Conservation Institute to bring that process out of the laboratory and into a gallery, providing a rare peek at the science and art behind protecting a painting.
“When a public viewing was suggested, I thought it was a great opportunity to knock up a few levels of transparency,” said Tom Learner, head of science at the institute, where he spent two years working on Pollock’s “Mural” in 2014. “MOCA doesn’t have a staff conservator, so this was a perfect fit.” What can visitors expect to see ? “Right now, they’ll see me vacuuming dirt and dust,” Stavroudis said of the first phase, cleaning decades of environmental exposure. A computer will allow him to zoom in on tiny details, such as a bee stuck in the painting and the outline of where several 2-inch nails were accidentally dropped on the canvas in the lower right corner of the 9-foot-wide canvas.
“It’s very common during the cleaning to remove dirt and varnish Pollock applied later.” said Learner, adding that the cleaning process does not dissolve the paint and pigments beneath it.
The team also studies whether to fill cracks or otherwise restore some of the white, black, gray and mustard-colored tendrils of paint — work that will be anything but child’s play.