Alchemy

Jackson Pollock’s Alchemy brings liquid paint’s movement together with an unusually substantial surface. Made in 1947, it belongs among his early poured paintings. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice records oil, aluminium paint and alkyd enamel with sand, pebbles, fibres and broken wooden sticks on printed fabric. It measures 114.6 × 221.3 cm; its accession number is 76.2553 PG 150. The material description suggests how much a flat reproduction leaves out. ^[1]

The question of how to look at such a work begins with the artist’s relationship to its surface. In “My Painting,” published in the winter of 1947–48, Pollock described the hard wall or floor as providing resistance. The floor also let him work from four sides and feel physically closer to the picture. His account makes the support an active part of painting: it offers something against which the body and the material can work. ^[2]

Lines with a life of their own

The Venice museum describes Alchemy’s lines as independent events, recording movement through thickness, speed, pooling and dripping. It compares the irregular surface and squeezed white marks to a marked wall, suggesting that, from farther away, the balance of forces gives the painting the presence of an environment. Follow a particular line, then step back to consider the field. ^[1]

The title was supplied by Pollock’s neighbours Ralph Manheim and his wife. It therefore offers an evocative metaphor for transformed materials, without establishing a prior alchemical programme or a fixed symbolic meaning for the marks. ^[1]

Pollock’s own statement helps explain the balance between immersion and judgement. He described becoming acquainted with a painting after working within it, and willingly changing or destroying an image. His phrase “an easy give and take” makes responsiveness central to the process. A mark could prompt another decision; a picture could develop through sustained attention to what had already happened. His painting technique involved both physical action and this continuing exchange with the emerging work. ^[2]

A painting built through different kinds of touch

An embroidery frame gives Alchemy’s making an unexpectedly domestic connection. The museum’s 2015 account cites Pollock’s letter to his mother Stella of 4 September 1947: he could not return her large frame because he was using it for the painting. The same account identifies Herbert Matter’s photographs of Pollock working with Alchemy attached to the frame on the floor. The arrangement supplied a practical structure for his movement around the work. ^[3]

Scientific study has made that process more specific. Francesca Rosi and colleagues mapped fifteen paint formulations using non-invasive spectroscopy. Their account places small blue, yellow and dark-red applications over an initial white layer, followed by black and silver pours, further bright colours and tube marks. Their conclusion also stresses the difficulty of recovering the exact order across the intricate network. A broad sequence can be understood while many individual crossings remain difficult to resolve. ^[4]

The three whites had different compositions and jobs: lead white was brushed or spread with a spatula on unprimed fabric; a rutile-and-anhydrite formulation supplied glossy pours; zinc oxide with anatase appeared in late tube applications. The bright colours were oil based, while black poured areas contained oil-modified alkyd. Similar-looking colours could therefore behave differently. The authors identified 1947 as a transitional year, discussing Alchemy alongside Full Fathom Five. ^[4]

Another early poured painting, Full Fathom Five, offers a revealing companion. MoMA describes its brushed and palette-knifed underlayers, embedded everyday objects and poured upper network. A key, cigarettes and nails belong to its account of a picture begun on an easel and completed on the floor. The comparison opens up the variety within Pollock’s developing method: pouring could join an already worked surface, and the small things caught in paint could contribute to the object’s density. “Drip painting” names an important operation, but each work’s construction deserves its own attention. ^[5]

What cleaning brought back

Alchemy reached the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence on 2 December 2013. Its conservation project was completed in January 2015, with treatment by Luciano Pensabene Buemi and Francesca Bettini. Museum conservation and Italian scientific institutions collaborated on the research. The museum’s account explains that accumulated dirt had dulled the colours and weakened the perception of the layered surface. Cleaning was therefore also a way of recovering relationships within the painting: colour and relief had become harder to read together. ^[6]

Pensabene Buemi’s treatment account explains why removal was demanding. Dirt had lodged in cavities and partly adhered to paint that retained soft components. The paint load had also deformed the fabric. Conservators began with micro-vacuuming loose dust, then used selective aqueous and solvent cleaning while monitoring the surface’s response. The varied materials required local judgement throughout the treatment. A single procedure applied indiscriminately would have ignored the very differences that make the surface distinctive. ^[7]

His report identifies seventeen pigment types and emphasises that the painting had remained unvarnished. Preserving the alternation of matte and glossy passages mattered to its appearance. The aim was to recover that varied response to light while avoiding treatment materials that would alter it. The resulting richness concerns more than stronger colour: light can behave differently from one passage to the next, giving paint its own changing presence across the surface. ^[7]

The 2015 exhibition account reported 4.6 kilograms of painted material and described nineteen colours. It also presented the team’s reading of a considered composition: straight and curved lines, black and silver, blue and red counterbalanced one another. Thin white lines, clearer after cleaning, suggested a grid. That interpretation makes the recovered surface evidence of decisions and organisation, while leaving room for the material’s unpredictable movement. ^[3]

The fifteen formulations, seventeen pigment types and nineteen colours describe different aspects of the palette; they should remain separate counts. ^{[4] [7] [3]}

The research became part of the painting’s public life. Venice’s dedicated exhibition, curated by Pensabene Buemi and Roberto Bellucci, ran from 14 February to 14 September 2015. The painting was exceptionally displayed without its protective case during that exhibition, allowing its relief particular prominence. Exploring Alchemy subsequently presented the conservation project at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, from 10 February to 16 December 2017. These exhibitions invited viewers to understand looking and material study as connected activities. ^[6]

The continuing life of paint

A study published in Analytical Chemistry in 2017 investigated zinc soaps: compounds formed through interactions involving zinc pigments and the oil medium. Francesca Gabrieli and colleagues compared samples from Alchemy with artificially aged models. Their abstract identifies an important role for an aluminium stearate additive in the formation of zinc-stearate-like compounds. In one painting sample, larger aggregates growing towards the support were interpreted as an early stage of internal protrusions. ^[8]

The value of this work lies in detecting chemical developments before their effects become disruptive. Its findings concern particular samples and processes; they do not establish that every possible zinc-related failure had occurred throughout Alchemy. They also give care a longer timescale than the visible results of cleaning. Understanding what lies within paint can help conservators consider its future, even when the changes under investigation are too small or too deeply situated to govern an ordinary viewing. ^[8]

Pollock’s 1950 exhibition at Betty Parsons included the large canvases now familiar as One: Number 31, Autumn Rhythm: Number 30 and Number 32. Francis V. O’Connor’s exhibition history records that group alongside numerous smaller numbered works. That range invites comparison across sizes and formats. The broad category of poured painting leaves plenty to discover in each separate encounter: where the eye travels, what interrupts it and how a picture holds attention over time. ^[9]