Pollock Alchemy Press Release

Press Release
Alchemy by Jackson Pollock. Discovering the Artist at Work
Curated by Luciano Pensabene Buemi and Roberto Bellucci
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
14 February – 6 April 2015
“[Pollock was] I think by far my most honorable achievement.” Peggy Guggenheim, Art
of This Century (1979)
4 September 1947. Jackson Pollock wrote to his mother Stella Pollock apologizing for not
returning to her a large quilting frame: he was using it to stretch a canvas on which he was
working, a painting that came to be titled Alchemy. In the same year, celebrated photographs by
Herbert Matter portray Pollock at work in his Long Island studio, with Alchemy attached to the
quilting frame on the floor. This method of painting, with the canvas flat on the ground would
mark the beginning of Pollock’s dripped or poured paintings.
February 2015. After an absence of more than a year, and following examination, cleaning and
conservation at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, Alchemy returns to the Peggy
Guggenheim Collection to be the focus of a documentary, scientific exhibition: Alchemy by
Jackson Pollock. Discovering the Artist at Work (14 February – 6 April 2015), curated by
Luciano Pensabene Buemi, Conservator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and by Roberto
Bellucci, a Conservator at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence.
Alchemy by Jackson Pollock. Discovering the Artist at Work is the first of three exhibitions
promoted by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection to celebrate both Jackson Pollock and his eldest
brother Charles Pollock. From April 22 through September 14, the museum hosts Jackson
Pollock’s Mural: Energy Made Visible and Charles Pollock: A Retrospective. All three
exhibitions enjoy the patronage of the U.S. Mission to Italy and of the Pollock-Krasner
Foundation, New York.
The exhibition will reveal to visitors an explosion of color unveiled by the long process of
cleaning, which has made possible a dazzling rediscovery of this famous work. Exclusively and
only for the duration of the exhibition, Alchemy will be viewable without glass or plexiglas,
rendering vivid the astonishing relief-like surface of the densely worked image. The visitor will
be guided through every technical aspect of the conservation project, as if moving inside the
layers and materials of the painting itself, exploring Pollock’s working methods and the
processes of conservation, with the aid of an enthralling multi-media installation. Video, 3D
reproductions, touch-screens, interactive devices, as well as documentation and original items
loaned from Pollock’s studio at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, Long Island, will
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni Dorsoduro 701 30123 Venezia
(39) 041 2405 415 guggenheim-venice.it
bring Pollock’s masterpiece to life, with its thickly encrusted paint surface and its palette of no
fewer than 19 different pigments. Thanks to a protracted and detailed study of Alchemy,
illlustrated by a short film produced by the web TV of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche,
the exhibition will offer new insights into Pollock and his painting, furthering our understanding
of the personality of this artist who combined traditional materials and methods with original
and unconventional practices.
Until now, this masterpiece was assumed to have been executed without a plan on the part of
the artist, with random spatters and drops. However, the long process of study and
conservatiopn has revealed a precise conpositional order, a rational plan for the laying on of the
colors a system of counterpoint and symmetries, in which straight lines play off against curved,
brilliant against opaque colors, black with silver, blue with red. Delicate traces of white lay out
the semblance of a grid, as if Pollock had a general framework in mind from the outset,
proceeding then to direct the composition like an orchestra conductor. The team involved in this
highly important project was unanimous in the conviction that the successfiul outcome of this
large painting would have been impossible without a guiding hand of control. A further
discovery was the sheer quantity of paint deployed by Pollock: 4.6 kg of painted material is
huge compared to medieval and Renaissance paintings of similar dimensions, for which 200300 grams is normal.
The exhibition is the first major result of a far-reaching study and conservation project dedicated
to 10 of Pollock’s paintings executed between 1942 and 1947, all of them belonging to the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. They were acquired
by Peggy Guggenheim herself, Pollock’s patron, who exhibited his work on many occasions in
the 1940s at her New York gallery Art of This Century. Together they represent a crucial period
in Pollock’s career, during which his painting developed from relatively orthodox figurativeabstract imagery to highly original works created by pouring, flicking and dripping paint onto
canvas laid flat on the ground.
Alchemy traveled in December 2013 to the painting conservation laboratories of the Opificio
delle Pietre Dure in Florence, for exhaustive scientific analysis and for conservation and
cleaning. During 2014, a team of scholars, scientists and conservators, from a variety of Italian
science organizations specialized in the conservation of cultural patrimony, examined all
technical aspects of the masterpiece. The painting then underwent meticulous and painstaking
cleaning, a process rendered highly complex by the rich and much stratified surface, combining
enamels, alkyds, oil paint, sand and pebbles, in a dense impasto of clotted paint, splashes and
drips. The primary objective of the cleaning was to remove a layer of dust and grime that had
accumulated over many years which had seriously altered the appearance of the painting,
dimming its colors and flattening the three-dimensional character of Pollock’s innovative
painting technique.
The research project, the first of its kind undertaken in Italy, was made possible thanks to a
group of top scientific research institutes, coordinated by the conservation departments of the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, and of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New
York, together with the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, di Firenze. The group included
CNR-ISTM and the Centro di Eccellenza SMAArt of the University of Perugia, CNR-INO and
INFN of the University of Florence, the Visual Computing Lab of the CNR-ISTI of Pisa, and
the Chemistry Department of the University of Turin.
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni Dorsoduro 701 30123 Venezia
(39) 041 2405 415 guggenheim-venice.it
The project has also benefitted from the involvement of American scientists, conservators and
curators who have carried out research on Pollock’s techniques in the past. Conservation was
carried out by Luciano Pensabene Buemi, with the assistance of Francesca Bettini, conservator
in the paintings department of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. Essential contributions were made
by Carol Stringari, Deputy-Director and Chief Conservator, Guggenheim Foundation, and by
Gillian McMillan, Associate Chief Conservator for the Collection, Guggenheim Museum, New
York, as well as by the staff of the Laboratorio Dipinti dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure of
Florence.
With the patronage of Regione del Veneto, Alchemy by Jackson Pollock. Discovering the
Artist at Work is supported by Intrapresae Collezione Guggenheim, by Private Bank BSI and by
Enel. Nec Display Solutions Italia is the main sponsor of the exhibition, with Océ- A Canon
Company as technical sponsor Thanks to Apice, Corriere della Sera and Hangar Design Group
for the collaboration. The educational projects surrounding the exhibition are made possible by
the Fondazione Araldi Guinetti, Vaduz.
The exhibitions of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection are made possible thanks to the support of its Advisory Board
and:
Palazzo Venier dei Leoni Dorsoduro 701 30123 Venezia
(39) 041 2405 415 guggenheim-venice.it