A Jackson Pollock gets public view restoration

Jackson Pollock’s painting Number 1, 1949, is a swirl of multi-colored paint, dripped, flung and slung across a 5-by-8-foot canvas. It’s a textured work — including nails and a trapped bee  — and in the nearly 70 years since its creation, it’s attracted a fair bit of dust, dirt and grime.

That’s where conservator Chris Stavroudis comes in: His job is to clean the painting using swabs, solvents, and tiny brushes. For the last several months, he’s been hard at work, once a week, in full view of the public, in a gallery at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Some high school students watched Stavroudis wield his swabs — they have to make their own Pollocks for school, and want to know how he painted.

“The canvas was put on the floor and dribbled on,” Stavroudis explains. “He used sticks and dipped them into house paint, enamel paint, and then dribbled the paint off the stick and onto the canvas.”

There are many different reasons for conservation and although many conservators work on behalf of insurance companies to repair accidental damages it doesn’t mean they don’t also insure the works while in their possession.

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