Abstract expressions

IOWA CITY - Jackson Pollock's 'Mural” masterpiece will be home when the new University of Iowa Museum of Art opens. The facility, still in the planning stages, moved one step closer with Wednesday's announcement of a developer and site. In the meantime, the massive work of art will be traveling abroad as an ambassador for modern art, art conservation efforts, the University of Iowa and the state of Iowa.

The efforts to ready the 8-foot-by-20-foot oil painting for an international spotlight is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Long showing its age and sagging under its own weight, the painting was shipped to the Getty Center in Los Angeles in the summer of 2012 for two years of technical study, restoration, cleaning and conservation.

'It's a fantastic painting. You're all so lucky to have it here in Iowa in a public collection, and I feel really fortunate to have spent the last two years with it,” Yvonne Szafran, senior conservator and head of the Getty Museum's Paintings Conservation department in Los Angeles, told about 150 people gathered Tuesday night for a UI museum Smart Talk at the Iowa City Public Library.

The painting's odyssey began in July 1943, when Peggy Guggenheim commissioned the unknown Pollock to paint a mural for the entrance hall of her five-story New York City town house. It was finished later that year and was exhibited at New York City's Museum of Modern Art in the spring of 1947, then loaned to the Yale University Art Gallery that summer.

After Yale declined the offer to add the painting to its permanent collection, Guggenheim in 1948 donated it to the University of Iowa, home to a pioneering program in modern art. It arrived in October 1951, where this key work of the 20th century has become a star and is now the most famous painting in Iowa, according to Sean O'Harrow, the UI museum's executive director.

Insured for $140 million, Pollock's self-described 'stampede ...

(of) every animal in the American West, cows and horses and antelopes and buffaloes” has been on the move since the Floods of 2008.

As the Iowa River rose and threatened to inundate the UI art museum that June, 'Mural” and the rest of the university's 12,000-piece collection were evacuated and sent to Chicago for storage. The following March, most of the collection moved to Davenport's Figge Museum, where more than 150,000 visitors came to a four-month exhibition of 'Mural” and other modern pieces from the UI collection. From April 5 to July 15, 2012, 'Mural” was displayed at the Des Moines Art Center.

Then its most amazing odyssey began.

Shortly after the Des Moines exhibition closed, the oil painting - a complex swirl of color that marks the beginning of abstract art in America - traveled to the Getty facilities in Los Angeles for intense scrutiny and conservation. The process was painstaking, as experts used cotton swabs to remove a thin layer of varnish added during a 1973 conservation effort in Iowa.

'That was a standard practice for the time period,” Szafran said of the varnish application, 'not something we would do today. ... Even though it hadn't discolored, it had the effect of really veiling the qualities that Jackson wanted to present. ...

'We knew that we were going to have to take the varnish off,” she said, ' ...

but we weren't sure it was going to make a huge visual difference.”

It did, indeed, make a difference, as the original colors instantly became brighter, and the differences between Pollock's use of glossy and matte finishes sprang forth.

'The varnish came off really nicely, and the paint was really happy,” Szafran said.

She also discussed other aspects of the restoration efforts, from analyzing the paints, their colors and applications, to constructing a new shaped stretcher for the unframed canvas that would follow the distortions from its sagging weight.

John Hudson, 84, of Iowa City, attended the discussion with his wife, Sandra, because he said he admires 'Mural” and is interested in Pollock and the development of art from the mid-19th century to the present, especially the Abstract Expressionism genre in which Pollock worked.

'It speaks to me,” he said.

The couple, who moved to Iowa City from Cambridge, Mass., in 1998, decided to become 'volunteers for art” in their retirement and have served as docents at the UI Museum of Art.

Hudson said he appreciated learning more about the Getty restoration work and the painting's history and myths, including the notion that it was painted in one marathon session, disproved by the Getty's careful, thorough analysis showing many of the paint layers dried completely before the next color was added.

Curiosity about the seminal work not only drew 'hundreds” of art experts from around the world to the Getty to aid in research and restoration, but when the painting went on exhibit there from March 11 to June 1, its 300,000 visitors shattered the museum's attendance record.

'Mural” is now on display at the Sioux City Art Center through April 10, 2015, after which it will be crated and shipped to European galleries before returning to Iowa City for the opening of the new UI Museum of Art.

Another discussion will be held from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Nov. 6 in Room 240 of the UI's Art Building West, 141 N. Riverside Dr., Iowa City. David Anfam from Denver's Clyfford Still Museum and a pre-eminent expert on Abstract Expressionism, will explore the genesis of 'Mural,” its cultural context and legacy. This Bette Spriestersbach Distinguished Lecture is free and open to the public.