The Key belongs to Jackson Pollock’s Accabonac Creek series, named for a stream near the East Hampton property that he and his wife, the painter Lee Krasner, purchased in late 1945. Marking a crucial moment in his evolution as an artist, this quasi-Surrealist painting was created on the floor of an upstairs bedroom and worked on directly from all sides. Although there is a general suggestion of landscape, here the process of painting became primary, expressing the power of spontaneous action and chance effects. The resulting abstraction, with its expressive, gestural appearance, prefigured the allover compositions of Pollock’s celebrated drip paintings, which debuted the following year.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Frank O’Hara, “Jackson Pollock,” Great American Artists (George Braziller, 1959), pl. 26 (ill.).
Bryan Robertson, “Jackson Pollock” (Harry N. Abrams, 1960), 52, 144, pl. 48 (color ill.).
Yoshiaki Tono, “Jackson Pollock, or the New Rite of Hate-Love for Image,” “Mizue” 672 (April 1961), 9.
Francis V. O’Connor, “Jackson Pollock,” exh. cat. (Museum of Modern Art, 1967), 40, 42, 68, 72.
Harold Rosenberg, “The Art World: A Mythic Act,” “New Yorker” (May 6, 1967), pp. 162–71, repr. in Helen A. Harrison, ed., “Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollock” (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000), 133.
Italo Tomassoni, “Pollock” (Florence: Sadea Editore, 1968; New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1969), pl. 32–3 (color ill.).
James T. Valliere, “Interview with Clement Greenberg,” March 20, 1968, printed in Helen A. Harrison, ed., “Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollock” (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000), p. 255 (photo).
Harold Rosenberg, “Artworks and Packages” (Horizon Press, 1969), 64 (ill.), 67.
Alberto Busignani, “Pollock,” Twentieth-Century Masters (Florence: Sadea/Sansoni, 1970; London: Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1971), pl. 22 (color ill.).
B. H. Friedman, “Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible” (McGraw-Hill, 1972), 95, 100, 104.
Francis V. O’Connor and Eugene Victor Thaw, eds., “Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings, and Other Works” (Yale University Press, 1978), vol. 1, p. 133, cat. 156 (ill.); vol. 4, 240, fig. 32 (photo), fig. 35, fig. 64 (photo), fig. 77.
Stephen Polcari, “Jackson Pollock and Thomas Hart Benton,” “Arts Magazine” 53, 7 (March 1979), pp. 120–24, repr. in Pepe Karmel, ed., “Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles and Reviews” (Museum of Modern Art/Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 199.
Barbara Rose, “Jackson Pollock at Work: An Interview with Lee Krasner,” “Partisan Review” 47, 1 (1980), 82–92, repr. in Pepe Karmel, ed., “Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles and Reviews” (Museum of Modern Art/Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 40–41, 43.
Hans Namuth, ed., “Pollock Painting” (New York: Agrinde Publications, 1980), n.p.
Barbara Rose, “Krasner/Pollock: A Working Relationship,” exh. cat. (New York: Grey Art Gallery, 1981), front cover (photo).
“Jackson Pollock,” exh. cat. (Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, 1982), 73, 260, 301 (photo), 307, 370.
Jeffrey Potter, “To A Violent Grave: An Oral Biography of Jackson Pollock” (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1985), 90, 92.
Angelica Zander Rudenstine, “Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice” (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation/Harry N. Abrams, 1985), 649.
Deborah Solomon, “Jackson Pollock: A Biography” (Simon and Schuster, 1987), 171.
“Annual Report 1987–88” (Art Institute of Chicago, 1988), 20, 35, 71, front cover (photo), pl. 16 (color ill.).
Ellen G. Landau, “Jackson Pollock” (Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 84 (photo), 158 (color ill.), 161, 163.
Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga” (New York: Clarkson N. Potter/Crown Publishers, 1989), 518 (ill.), 520–21, 543–44, 552–53, 614 (photo), 697, 725.
Gail Levin and Marianne Lorenz, “Theme and Improvisation: Kandinsky and the American Avant-Garde, 1912–1950,” exh. cat. (Little, Brown and Company, 1992), 214, fig. 6.6 (ill.).
Michael Leja, “Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s” (Yale University Press, 1993), 283, 290–92, 295, 300, fig. 75 (ill.).
Judith E. Stein, “I Tell My Heart: The Art of Horace Pippin,” exh. cat. (Universe/Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1993), 36, fig. 23 (ill.).
James N. Wood, “Treasures of 19th- and 20th-Century Painting: the Art Institute of Chicago (Abbeville Press, 1993), p. 296 (color ill.).
Jonathan Fineberg, “Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being” (Prentice Hall, 1995), pp. 91–92, fig. 4.3 (color ill.); 2nd ed. (Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 91–92, fig. 4.3 (color ill.).
Regine Prange, “Jackson Pollock, Number 32, 1950: die Malerei als Gegenwart” (Fischer Taschenbuch, 1996), p. 99.
James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein, “The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture” (Hudson Hills Press, 1996), 93 (color ill.).
Claude Cernuschi, “Review: Jackson Pollock at MoMA, On the Surface and Under the Rug,” “Archives of American Art Journal” 38, 3–4 (1998), 33 (photo).
Francis V. O’Connor, “Jackson Pollock: Down to the Weave, A Commentary on A Selection of Key Works,” “Eleventh Annual Pollock-Krasner Lecture,” August 16, 1998, printed in Helen A. Harrison, ed., “Such Desperate Joy: Imagining Jackson Pollock” (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2000), 185–86.
James N. Wood, “Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago,” 2nd ed. (Art Institute of Chicago/Hudson Hills Press, 1999), 143 (color ill.).
James N. Wood and Debra N. Mancoff, “Treasures from the Art Institute of Chicago” (Art Institute of Chicago/Hudson Hills Press, 2000), 289 (color ill.).
Giandomenico Romanelli et al., “L’America di Pollock: gli ‘irascibili’ e la scuola di New York, Jackson Pollock a Venezia,” exh. cat. (Skira, 2002), 239, 241.
Anthony White, ed., “Jackson Pollock’s ‘Blue Poles,’” exh. cat. (National Gallery of Australia, 2002), 78 (ill.).
Cécile Debray, Joanne Snrech, Choghakate Kazarian, Rubén Gallo, and Orane Stalpers, Jackson Pollock: The Early Years, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée national Picasso-Paris, 2024), 25, 148-149 (color ill.), 193.
New York, Art of This Century, “Jackson Pollock,” January 14–February 1, 1947, cat. 12.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Abstract and Surrealist American Art: Fifty–Eighth Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture,” November 6, 1947–January 11, 1948, cat. by Frederick A. Sweet and Katharine Kuh, cat. 182 (ill.).
Vermont, Bennington College, “A Retrospective Show of the Paintings of Jackson Pollock,” November 17–30, 1952; traveled to Williamstown, Mass., Lawrence Art Museum, Williams College, December 1–22, 1952, exh. pamphlet, cat. 3.
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, “15 Years of Jackson Pollock,” November 28–December 31, 1955, cat. 7 (ill.).
São Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna, “Pollock,” “IV Bienal,” September 22–December 31, 1957, n.pag., cat. 9.
Rome, Museo Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, “Jackson Pollock: 1912–1956,” March 1–30, 1958, organized by the International Council at the Museum of Modern Art, cat. 9; traveled to Kunsthalle Basel, April 19–May 26, 1958, cat. 9, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, June 6–July 7, 1958, cat. 9, Hamburg Kunstverein, July 19–August 17, cat. 9, Berlin, Hochschule für Bildende Künste, September 3–October 1, 1958, cat. 8, London, Whitechapel Gallery, November 5–December 14, 1958, p. 11, cat. 8, and Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, January 16–February 15, 1959, cat. 8.
Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, “Jackson Pollock,” September 5–October 8, 1961, cat. 76 (ill.).
Kunsthaus Zürich, “Jackson Pollock,” October 24–November 29, 1961, cat. 76.
New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, “Jackson Pollock,” January 14–February 15, 1964, cat. 79 (color ill.).
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “New York School, The First Generation: Paintings of the 1940s and 1950s,” July 16–August 1, 1965, curated by Maurice Tuchman, cat. 78 (ill.); rev. ed. (1971), fig. 84 (ill.).
New York, Museum of Modern Art, “Jackson Pollock,” November 1, 1988–February 2, 1999, organized by Kirk Varnedoe with Pepe Karmel; traveled to London, Tate Gallery, March 11–June 6, 1999, pp. 47, 49, 321, 323 (photo), 327–328 (photo), pl. 109 (color ill.).
Paris, Musée national Picasso-Paris, Jackson Pollock: The Early Years, Oct. 15, 2024-Jan. 19, 2025, cat. 117.
The artist, New York, from 1946; given to Lee Krasner Pollock by 1956; bequeathed to the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, 1984; sold through Jason McCoy, New York, to the Art Institute, 1987.
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