Jackson Pollock painting sells for $181 million at auction

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After just seven minutes, the hammer came down at $157 million—or $181.2 million with fees—making Number 7A, 1948 the most expensive Pollock ever sold at auction.

“It is with this work that Pollock finally frees himself from the shackles of conventional easel painting and produces one of the first truly abstract paintings in the history of art,” according to the lot essay. “In Number 7A, 1948 we witness the reinvention of painting, opening the door to a pure form of expression suitable for the modern postwar world.”

Born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1912, Pollock began painting in earnest when he moved to New York City in 1930. His early influences ranged from Thomas Hart Benton’s Regionalism to Mexican muralists, and he was particularly inspired by Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, which he saw in 1939.

That same year, Pollock started Jungian psychoanalysis while seeking treatment for alcoholism. Through these sessions, as well as a burgeoning interest in Surrealism, he developed a fascination with investigating the subconscious. He was also drawn to automatism, an artistic technique that involved surrendering conscious control of the creative process.

“I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them,” Pollock once said. “ It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age—the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio—in the old technique.”

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