Jackson Pollock was never the easel type. Instead, to his studio in East Hampton, New York, the artist nailed canvases to the parquet, over which he dripped and splattered household paint to create his wild and abstract topographies, letting gesture and gravity do their work. “On the floor, I’m more comfortable” he once said. “I feel closer, more part of the painting.”
Pollock’s paint-streaked floor was tiled in 1953, ending his most fertile period and inadvertently preserving the swirls, smudges and streaks that spilled onto his canvases – residues of his artistic activity. When Masonite flooring has been ripped off in 1987even his cigarette butts were found embedded in the paint.
Jackson Pollock in his studio in East Hampton, New York. Photo: Hans Namuth. Courtesy of Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.
The surface has since been preserved by the Jackson Pollock Studio, part of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.
“Soil is our main artifact,” Helen A. Harrison, director of the organization, told Artnet News. “But since it is part of the building, it cannot move. It cannot be loaned to other institutions. This is where it is.
But that won’t be the case for much longer: On July 20, in partnership with the Web3 Iconic Moments platform, the Jackson Pollock Studio will bring its key artifact to the blockchain with the launch of a prismatically studio-centric NFT collection. superimposed by the artist. floor.
blue poles from “Beyond The Edge”, Jackson Pollock Studio Collection (2023). Courtesy of Iconic Moments.
Entitled “beyond the edge“, the series offers four perspectives from the floor, each bearing identifying marks and colors of notable Abstract Expressionist works such as Number 3, 1950 (1950), Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952 (1952), and Convergence (1952).
Captured in high resolution, these perspectives are each available in editions of 100, with collectors receiving both an NFT and a hand-numbered museum-quality print. Each of these phygital sets is priced at 0.8 ETH or $1,500.
Harrison herself is stunned by the detail captured by these perspectives, which were shot with a specialized dolly-mounted camera in the studio. AI was then used to stitch the images together.
Locations on Pollock’s studio floor where perspectives were photographed. Courtesy of Iconic Moments and Jackson Pollock Studio.
“They’re pretty committed to themselves,” she said of the outlook. “You can see the ground in ways you can’t see with the naked eye – you can just dig down to a hair embedded in the paint.”
Pollock Studio’s first chain adventure will also include a Web3 puzzle titled The Pollock Enigma (a “brain twister”, per Harrison), which awards impressions and NFTs to whoever successfully decodes it. In August, the collection will expand to include limited-edition artwork and Ordinals created by today’s digital artists.
The “Beyond the Edge” sale will directly benefit the work of Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in the conservation and upkeep of the studio floor. Work in the late 1980s to preserve the ground consisted primarily of clearing it of tar paper residue and strengthening it following an infestation of powdery beetles, but conservation efforts and assessments continue.
Jackson Pollock’s studio floor. Courtesy of Iconic Moments and Jackson Pollock Studio.
For Harrison, such an outing, perhaps more meaningful, brings a moving document of Pollock’s process beyond its own four walls.
“It touches people who can’t come here and see the floor for themselves – gives them insight into the importance of it as an artifact,” she said. “We know where certain paintings were when Pollock was working on them thanks to the colors and gestures that stand out on the ground. It’s a way of linking the artifact to the art.
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