Autumn Rhythm (Number 30). Forgotten but Not Forgiven.

Jackson Pollock (1912-1965). Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950. Enamel on canvas, 105 x 207 in. (266.7 x 525.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Jackson Pollock, an American Abstract Expressionist painter, said that in his Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), painted in 1950, he was trying to record the patterns of an unconscious mind. According to Freud, the subconscious (or unconscious) mind is a "part" of the mind that stores repressed memories. These painful and traumatic experiences are unconsciously retained in our mind. They are forgotten but not forgiven.

Consequently, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) represents an absolutely strong and dramatic subject matter, which cannot be noticed from the very first moment. This monumental canvas demonstrates a chaotic combination of our deepest thoughts, things we regret about, the pain we lock away from our conscious and even words we usually leave unsaid; as one of the Russia's greatest writers, philosophers and psychologists Fyodor Dostoyevsky said: "Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid."

Pollock paints a canvas nearly 3 meters high and 5 meters long, possibly on purpose, emphasizing the enormous size of this traumatic space in our mind, which has no angles or landmarks, just like this painting that forces you to experience the sense of disorientation. In creating the sensation of no apparent order, no resolution and recognizable subject matter, Pollock's painting does indeed resemble the mysterious and irrational workings of the unconscious mind.

FP