Jackson Pollock

For Pollock, contact with the surrealists was crucial to his artistic development. This drawing is a particularly developed example of images that Pollock created and discussed during psychiatric counseling that began in 1938. The drawing refers to the theories of Carl Jung, who viewed the unconscious as a vast reservoir of collective memory that manifests itself as universal myths and symbols, such as the mandala forms that surround the figure on the horse. Pollock’s emblematic jottings were inspired in part by occult mysticism and the imagery of Native American religions, which were also sources for surrealist production