Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)

Black enamel poured, flicked and dripped across unprimed cotton in an all-over web, thin runs of teal and brown beneath, the whole surface holding tension without a focal point or a horizon. Pollock made it in his Long Island barn in 1950, his best year, working on the floor and moving around the canvas rather than standing at an easel. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is the drip painting most often reproduced to explain Abstract Expressionism — the moment the record of the body's movement became the subject of painting.