A series of images captured from the floor of Jackson Pollock's studio made for a successful NFT release last week, selling out in a matter of hours, with a total of $525,000 in transactions.
Those of us who have put on those little booties and walked the space know how special the studio floor is, evoking the movement of the most famous of action painters as he created some of the best-known abstractions of the 20th century. His studio is part of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs.
A company called Iconic, which integrates traditional art institutions and emerging digital networks, digitized details of the floor for limited-edition NFT artifacts paired with physical limited-edition prints of the same images to form what the company has termed a "phygital set." The collection highlights areas of the floor where paint escaped beyond the edges of the canvases. "Beyond the Edge" is the title of the series.
"The studio floor is the museum's primary artifact," according to Helen Harrison, the director of the center. "The paint residue on it relates directly to the colors and gestures in Pollock's most famous paintings." By capturing it in high-resolution digital imagery, we can "appreciate that relationship in ways that aren't possible with the naked eye."
Chris Cummings, the founder and chief executive officer of Iconic, said the studio floor is "the document of a boundary-pushing artistic process that changed the course of art history." He sees its preservation as "essential not only for its historical significance, but also as an enduring source of inspiration for future generations of artists, scholars, and creatives." Those who helped in this effort with their purchases came from "more than 25 countries across the globe."
The Pollock Krasner House will receive proceeds from the sale, which consisted of limited editions of four different NFTs and prints. The individual pairs of digital artifacts and prints were priced at $1,500 and .8 ETH (Ether cryptocurrency). First access was given to people with an Iconic Art Pass membership by crypto wallet on July 19, and then some were sold publicly online by credit card last Thursday.
Although Iconic would not disclose the exact breakdown, a company representative confirmed that the center would receive more than 50 percent of the earnings. The money will be used in the maintenance and preservation of the studio. Artist proofs from the collection will be displayed at the center in the fall and will become part of its permanent collection.
The studio was an outbuilding on the property when Lee Krasner and Pollock purchased it in 1946. They moved it to its present location and replaced the cement floor with a wooden one. Placing his canvases on the floor of that studio gave Pollock the mobility and access to them that inspired the development of his drip-painting technique the following year.
The method consisted of flinging, pouring, and dripping thinned enamel paint from above. As the Museum of Modern Art noted, "This direct, physical engagement with his materials welcomed gravity, velocity, and improvisation into the artistic process, and allowed line and color to stand alone, functioning entirely independently of form."
"On the floor I am more at ease," the artist once said. "I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides, and literally be in the painting."
Because he was in constant motion and lost in his process, with the painting having "a life of its own," his compositions often continued beyond the canvas.
As a result of his success, Pollock and Krasner had money to winterize the studio in 1953. They covered the floor in Masonite, which is how it sat until the late 1980s. When the original floor was revealed, it still held the artist's gestures (and cigarette butts), remarkably preserved in paint from more than three decades before.
This palimpsest contains areas that can be readily identified as overages from particular works. In this series, external areas or continuations of "Number 3," from 1950, "Blue Poles (Number 11)," from 1952, and "Convergence," from 1952, were isolated. A fourth perspective is a more general section emblematic of his working process.
Another upcoming release in the series is a group of "ordinals" ("unique NFTs, where metadata is stored on the chain within the digital bitcoin asset, rather than off-chain in a separate file, as is the case with regular NFTs," according to Iconic). This collection, in collaboration with the Magic Eden NFT marketplace, will interpret "aspects of the studio floor or Pollock's creative process." More information will be announced in August.
Another "phygital" collection will come after that, featuring the work of three digital artists who will use the floor as a creative inspiration. Lucrece is the first artist to be announced.
"Our mission is first and foremost to preserve and interpret the property," Ms. Harrison said. That includes "encouraging the use of our artifacts to inspire creativity. It keeps the space alive."
This article has been modified to reflect updated information from Iconic and clarify aspects of the "Beyond the Edges" collection.
