1943, Jackson Pollock, Guardians of the Secret -- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
From the museum label: Prior to the pioneering works he created by pouring, dripping, and flinging paint onto canvas, Pollock executed a group of powerful semi-abstract compositions such as this. Incorporating elements of myth and symbolic languages, they nevertheless hint at the abstract style to come. The doglike animal at the bottom of this canvas and the totemic figures on the right and left reflect the artist's study of Jungian psychoanalysis as well as his interest in Native American culture. If these figures are the "guardians" to which the painting's title refers, the central rectangle—painted with enigmatic black pictograms—seems to hold its "secret."
1943, Jackson Pollock, Guardians of the Secret -- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
From the museum label: Prior to the pioneering works he created by pouring, dripping, and flinging paint onto canvas, Pollock executed a group of powerful semi-abstract compositions such as this. Incorporating elements of myth and symbolic languages, they nevertheless hint at the abstract style to come. The doglike animal at the bottom of this canvas and the totemic figures on the right and left reflect the artist's study of Jungian psychoanalysis as well as his interest in Native American culture. If these figures are the "guardians" to which the painting's title refers, the central rectangle—painted with enigmatic black pictograms—seems to hold its "secret."