Number 12, 1949

Jackson Pollock’s Number 12, 1949 brings his poured painting into a compact, upright format. Its paper support measures 78.8 × 57.1 cm, or 31 × 22½ inches, and is mounted on Masonite. Signed and dated at the lower centre, it belongs to a group of paintings on paper that Pollock mounted on board. Christie’s describes fine, fluid lines meeting thicker passages in which paints flow together: changes in density give this relatively small surface its variety. The auction catalogue records the medium as oil on paper. ^[1]

Paper is an essential part of this painting’s identity. MoMA’s 1998 catalogue calls the medium enamel on paper mounted on fibreboard and identifies the work as OT 233. Its entry records the museum’s ownership and credits Edgar Kaufmann Jr.’s gift. The catalogue presents the upright sheet as a finished painting, giving it a place within the account of Pollock’s development alongside works on canvas. Paper carries the complete work, with its own material presence and history. ^[2]

Colour, movement and light

An early response gives a particularly useful entrance into the work. Reviewing Pollock’s exhibition in December 1949, Amy Robinson singled out Number 12’s reds and its “tiger-striped hues.” Her comparison evokes an insistent alternation of colour, while leaving the painting open to associations beyond a named subject. She contrasted its reds with the green, white and silver relationships of another numbered painting in the exhibition. Colour was already a way of distinguishing these works from one another, even when their titles offered little descriptive help. ^[3]

Robinson also described the exhibition’s interwoven lines becoming substantial masses and forms emerging and receding through them. That was her account of the show as a whole. Read alongside her specific mention of Number 12, it suggests a productive rhythm of attention: follow a line, then notice how several lines gather into a denser area. Her review recognised pattern within the apparent freedom of Pollock’s gestures. ^[3]

Bernice Rose later drew attention to another quality of this particular painting: reflectivity. In Jackson Pollock: Drawing into Painting, she cited Number 12 and Number 15, both of 1949, within an argument about light, shimmer and the viewer’s sensations. For Rose, Pollock’s space grew from material relationships between ground, colour and linear structure. A surface could seem to advance or dissolve without becoming a conventional view into a landscape. Her account encourages attention to the painting’s changing optical activity as well as the routes traced by its lines. ^[4]

Rose connected this concern with Shimmering Substance and its continuation through White Light. Number 12 therefore has a place within a longer investigation of how paint generates a sensation of light. This is a critical interpretation of its surface; Rose’s passage supplies no chemical analysis establishing metallic pigment in Number 12. Its interest lies in the relationship she proposes between tangible paint and an unstable experience of space. ^[4]

From Parsons to Venice

Number 12 appeared in Pollock’s Betty Parsons Gallery exhibition of 21 November–10 December 1949. Francis V. O’Connor’s exhibition chronology explicitly includes it in that show’s numbered roster. The setting brought paper and canvas paintings together, alongside Peter Blake’s model for a museum devoted to Pollock’s work. A small painting on paper could thus be encountered within a display that also considered how Pollock’s art might inhabit architecture. ^[5]

The numerical title needs its year. A different work, Number 12A, 1948: Yellow, Gray, Black, belonged to the earlier group shown at Parsons in January–February 1949. The 1998 chronology explains that Parsons added A to titles of unsold 1948 paintings when presenting them beside newer work. The suffix helped distinguish overlapping numbers. As with Number 1A, 1948, it records an exhibition and naming history rather than a preliminary version. ^[2]

In 1950, Alfred Barr selected Number 12 for the United States Pavilion at the XXV Venice Biennale, together with Number 1, 1948 and Number 23, 1949. The pavilion paired a John Marin retrospective with work by six younger artists. Pollock’s contribution formed part of that deliberate presentation of American painting across generations. Number 12’s inclusion gives it a specific place in his early international exhibition history, as one of only three works representing him there. The selection itself provoked disagreement: Emily Genauer attacked the younger group for displacing painters she considered more accomplished. Her objection concerned the pavilion’s representation of American art, rather than Number 12 alone. ^[5]

A painting within the history of drawing

MoMA returned to Number 12 in Jackson Pollock: Drawing into Painting, shown in New York from 4 February to 16 March 1980. The exhibition assembled eighty-five drawings and five paintings under Bernice Rose’s direction. Its checklist includes Number 12 as entry 38, among the works on paper, separately from the five works gathered under the heading Paintings. That organisation gives an illuminating second context for a work familiar as a poured painting: the museum could also study it within Pollock’s sustained activity on paper. ^[6]

The adjacent entries included the distinct Number 12A of 1948 and several other mounted paper works from 1949. Their placement made differences of date, support and medium available for comparison. Number 12’s enamel and board mounting remained part of that record. The exhibition offered a way into Pollock’s drawings through a finished painting, extending its usefulness beyond a chronological survey of celebrated canvases. ^[6]

Another MoMA exhibition changed the question again. Drawing on Chance: Selections from the Collection, held from October 1995 to January 1996, included Number 12 among works investigating processes involving accident and contingency. Laura Hoptman’s accompanying essay organised the exhibition around such activities as automatic drawing, pouring, rubbing and assembling images. She situated Pollock in a history connecting Surrealist experiments with later approaches to making marks. In this setting, Number 12 entered a conversation across artists and generations, rather than appearing solely as one moment in its maker’s development. ^[7]

Hoptman stressed paper’s availability and responsiveness as reasons for its importance to experiments in process. This curatorial setting invites a fresh question about Number 12: how does a finished arrangement retain the interest of paint arriving and spreading? The exhibition’s emphasis on chance describes a field of artistic investigation. It leaves room to consider selection, adjustment and the artist’s judgement of when a work is complete. ^[7]

The museum gift and later sale

Edgar Kaufmann Jr. gave Number 12 to MoMA in 1952. The museum later deaccessioned it, offering it through Christie’s to benefit its Acquisitions Fund. Christie’s reported an auction price of $11,655,500 for the New York sale on 11 May 2004; its results report does not specify the price basis. The former MoMA ownership is an important chapter in the painting’s history, while the available sale record leaves its present private owner unidentified. ^[1]