Jackson Pollock, the artist famous for his messy painting style often dismissed by his critics as "wallpaper," held an artistic philosophy centered on the idea of the subconscious. Pollock was strongly influenced by automatism and surrealism, and made great contributions to the new discipline of abstract expressionism, emerging as possibly its most famous artist. The style of his piece Composition 1948 is entirely nonrepresentational, and consists of a surface pattern inspired by Pollock’s conception of his own internal processes. The work reflects a departure from form and a focus on a technique which represents a sense of both chaos and elegance, though the literal meaning, if any, is ultimately unknowable and open to as many interpretations as there are viewers.

Pollock’s aims in Composition 1948 are accomplished through the process of dripping, dribbling, and splattering paint onto a horizontal canvas. This particular work incorporates white, black, dark green and red, strewn about in interweaving flows and lines. Pollock guides the flow of paint using brushes or sticks that do not touch the canvas, allowing the paint to maintain a very fluid character. While white is the dominant color, the most visible shapes are the pools and streams of black which lie beneath the white foreground. The red appears only occasionally, as a sort of punctuation, an understated ingredient in a mix of cool colors. Any imagery would have to be invented by the viewer; there is nothing to see but the paint, flowing and spreading across the surface. To make an attempt at interpretation: there is a sense here of red as something struggling to be expressed, submerged under a chaotic, busy net of green, with prominent black pools and shadows and a top layer of white that seems to almost negate everything beneath it, holding it all in. Taking the red as the emotional center of the piece, it seems to give off a sense of constriction, buried desires fighting for attention amidst a cold, smothering mass. This is a rather ironic interpretation, as, at first glance, the piece appears as an expression of unbridled movement and uncontrolled fluidity in its seemingly disorganized patterns of paint flows.

The gestural quality of Pollock’s work also creates a kinetic sense. His physical expressions during painting (flinging paint, moving around over the surface) are represented by the resulting marks on the canvas, leaving viewers with an eloquent recreation of both physical and subconscious processes. While Composition 1948 is a relatively small work, not involving as much bodily gesture as Pollock’s larger paintings, the feeling of movement suggests a reverberating dance, both of the artist himself and the paint colors he employs. It is a thorough, comprehensive expression of the self in a moment of creativity. The chaotic, elegant nature of automatic movement is apparent in the streaks and splashes of paint, which communicate literal and subconscious motion to the viewer.

As the underlying goal of abstract expressionism is to express the artist, Composition 1948 succeeds in giving us a pinhole view into Pollock's subconscious. The work communicates a struggle for freedom but also seems to reflect the tortured nature of Pollock’s psyche with its frenzy of drably-colored blobs and trails. Pollock has been quoted as saying "I am nature." In effect, his abstractions are psychic landscapes arising from his belief in the subconscious as the most fertile ground for artistic subject matter.