Vintage Footage of Picasso and Jackson Pollock Painting … Through Glass

We occa­sion­al­ly like to con­nect the dots around here. So today we’re show­cas­ing two videos that fea­ture Pablo Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock at work — both paint­ing through glass. We start with Picas­so at his ate­lier in Val­lau­ris, France, paint­ing abstrac­tions on a glass pane while a cam­era rolls on the oth­er side. This strik­ing scene comes from Vis­ite à Picas­so, a 1950 film by Bel­gian film­mak­er Paul Hae­saerts, which can be viewed in its entire­ty online.

Next we shift geo­gra­phies. We head from France to the Unit­ed States. But the year pret­ty much remains the same. In 1950, Hans Namuth approached Jack­son Pol­lock and asked the painter if he could pho­to­graph him work­ing with his “drip” tech­nique of paint­ing. A pho­to shoot fol­lowed, but Namuth was­n’t sat­is­fied that he had cap­tured the essence of Pol­lock­’s work. He want­ed to cap­ture Pol­lock in motion and in col­or. Above, you can watch Namuth’s sec­ond effort, a ten-minute film, sim­ply called Jack­son Pol­lock 51. We start you at the 5:48 mark, when Pol­lock starts putting his brush to glass.…

Both films men­tioned above appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

John Berg­er’s Ways of See­ing: The TV Series

Dear Mon­sieur Picas­so: A Free eBook

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unpub­lished Pho­tos of Jack­son Pol­lock