Faces, heads, and masks are everywhere in Pollock's work of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Although they partly represent the symbolic vocabulary he sought to project from his unconscious, they also reflect his sharp visual memory of works by other artists, most prominently Pablo Picasso. Mask may have been inspired in part by Picasso's Girl before a Mirror (1932), on view on the Museum's fifth floor, in which a woman's face is depicted at once in mask-like profile and frontal views.
Gallery label from Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934-1954, November 22, 2015–May 1, 2016.