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Jackson Pollock

Magic Lantern, 1947

Now On View

Description

Maker

Title

Magic Lantern

Year

1947

Medium

Oil, enamel, and carpet tacks on canvas

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Supports

Dimensions

108.9 x 55.2 cm (42 7/8 x 21 3/4 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signed lower center and on reverse:Pollock 47

Type

Credit

Gift of Mrs. Peggy Guggenheim

Object Number

54.005

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

The New York School

November 7, 2003 - January 25, 2004

The fact that good European moderns are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. This idea interests me more than these specific painters do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Miró, are still abroad.
(Pollock, in Arts and Architecture [February 1944], p. 14)

Modern and Contemporary Galleries

One of the earliest of Pollock’s poured paintings, Magic Lantern reveals his tight control of a technique through which he covered a canvas with looping skeins of color. The free-form automatist drawings of the Surrealists inspired Pollock in his development of a personal language of abstraction. Improvising with gesture and materials, he used a variety of available paints to create the hard, dense surface of this compact image, scattering it with carpet tacks to intensify its physicality. Unlike his later poured paintings, Magic Lantern has an intimate scale that encourages close examination of its construction. It was given to the RISD Museum by Peggy Guggenheim, the legendary American collector who had encouraged Pollock by exhibiting his work in her Art of this Century Gallery in New York during the 1940s.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Magic Lantern with the accession number of 54.005. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.