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"abstract expressionism"

Restoring a masterpiece, solving a mystery

The New York Times ran a fascinating story this week about the restoration of a landmark painting by Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950. The piece explains how conservators at the Museum of Modern Art, led by Jim Coddington ’74, restored the giant canvas that the Times characterized as a “masterpiece of Astract Expressionism.”

As they began the painstaking work of removing decades of grime from the painting, Coddington and his colleagues made a shocking discovery: some areas of the canvas were marked by synthetic resin, a kind of paint that Pollock had not been known to use. Furthermore, the resin had been applied using a sort of brushstroke that was unlike Pollock’s style. As Coddington told the Times, the sections showed a “fussiness that has nothing to do with the way Pollock applied paint.”

The evidence strongly suggested that these portions of the canvas had been painted over by someone else, possibly in an attempt to cover up some small cracks. But how could he be sure?

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