While bordering on abstraction, Gothic still contains hints of figuration, which materialize as a jumble of faces, hands, and swinging, jutting limbs. Pollock told one critic that his composition was based on Pablo Picasso's 1907 masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which he would have seen at MoMA. Pollock's black lines create an almost architectural scaffolding that recalls the cluster of totemic figures and arching forms in Picasso's proto-Cubist brothel scene.
Gallery label from Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934-1954, November 22, 2015–May 1, 2016.