Understanding Jackson Pollock's Shimmering Substance

In order to fully understand Jackson Pollock’s Shimmering Substance, you must first understand Jackson Pollock’s life and how his ideas came to be. At an early age Jackson Pollock and his family were abandoned by his father. This may be the root cause of Pollock’s depression that he faced throughout his entire life. At the age of eleven Pollock moved to Phoenix, Arizona. During his time in Phoenix Pollock discovered Native American Art. The Native American art that Pollock discovered was extremely spiritual and came from the artist’s soul and mind. The may be a strong connection between Pollock’s future artwork and the Native American pieces that he saw at a young age. After living in Phoenix Pollock went to t he Manual Arts High School in
This piece was created during 1946, which is known by most people as the beginning of the Cold War. The Cold War was a dull time in America because we were exceptionally scared of communism and we were solely focused on beating Russia in an arms race. Despite this being a desolate time for most Americans, these were some of Pollock’s happiest years. At the time of creating the Shimmering Substance Pollock had recently married his wife, Lee Krasner, who single handily ended his depression. We can see that Lee’s existence in Pollock’s life made him into an entirely new artist. Unlike his previous solemn art pieces, the Shimmering Substance has bright colors and swirls, which were never before seen in Pollock’s work. Shimmering substance channeled primal forces into radically new artistic expression, which was part of Pollock's next step in coming to terms with the inner turmoil that compelled him to paint. The radical primal forces that were channeled into this painting came from Pollock’s understanding of Native American art, which came from the soul. After marrying Lee Krasner, Pollock moved to the East Hamptons where he spent a lot of time looking at the nature around him. This nature in combination with his new found joy lead to the magnificent, brightly colored piece or artwork known as Shimmering
Frankenthaler, who is classified as a Color Field Painter, influenced Pollock’s “all over compositions”, which was a hallmark of his pieces. In Frankenthaler’s piece, Basque Beach, we can see the “all over composition” technique comes into play. Frankenthaler created her artwork by creating large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process. In color field painting "color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself. This Color Field technique along with her “all over composition” technique can be seen in her piece Basque Beach. In Basque Beach, the color field technique can be seen through the consistent use of solid colors connected to each other to create the image of no negative space, which goes ahead and shows the “all over composition” technique. Pollock adapted both of these techniques into his own techniques in which he used to create his artworks. Without Helen Frankenthaler, I doubt that Jackson Pollock would have ever been able to great such an aesthetically pleasing piece of art like the Shimmering