So, a painting from 1947

called Full Fathom Five, the title suggested by a friend and

it comes from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Full Fathom Five,
a very important painting for Pollock because it's one of
the first examples of dripping and of course dripping is what we know
Pollock for best, Jack the Dripper. However, it's a painting
that started on the easel. And if we look at this
painting quite closely, we can see the low areas of the painting. In other words,
initial, early paint
applications do not appear dripped. Rather they appear at times poured, but
also slathered on with a pallet knife. And I imagine in some places like this,
brushed. After that, after the structure of the
painting was done, it was kind of ensnared in this lattice of this black alkyd
enamel
paint, which we'll get into more in a bit. That was done on the floor and
it was finished. But let's backtrack a bit, because some
of the most prominent features of this painting are not paint at all. And they are
these interesting objects that are kind of dotted along
this very encrusted paint film. There are things like a paint cap, the cap
to a paint tube, nails, brads, and tacks. This is a washer for a nut or bolt.
Here's a stogie. Pollock was a smoker. There's coins in here somewhere. There's all
kinds of detritus that
Pollock kind of inserted into the wet paint, painted over, dripped over,
and as this paint dries it acts as an adhesive and
binds all these objects to the surface. Why? Well, again, in my understanding this
is something that Pollock was doing to complicate the surface
texture of a painting. Recall that very early on he'd
been working mixing sand and grit into his paint. Using his hand prints to
squeeze paint around. Using his fingers to draw into
the paint to manipulate the texture. Alternating, in some cases, oil squeezed
out of the tube with brushed or poured paint. All these different textures of paint
or
of, well not paint, but stuff mixed into the paint
complicating the name of the game. Complicating what painting can do,
what painting looks like. And it's along this same
vein of exploration of the possibilities of paint that,
to my understanding, led Pollock to put the painting on the floor to
see what else you can do with paint. You can draw on it, you can push it
around, you can mix stuff into it. Well you can pour it, you can splash it. These
are things that certainly Pollock
became aware of under the influence of David Alfaro Siquieros, Mexican Muralist
painter, among many other
sources that we've already heard about. But combine those sources with
a man who's painting and trying to push the boundaries of painting,
trying to really push the envelope, how much can you put in a painting. Full Fathom
Five, 1947.