The surface of One: Number 31, 1950 was puzzling. Unlike Full Fathom Five, the 1947 painting in which Pollock had embedded nails, buttons, and keys, and other objects, the inclusions in One: Number 31, 1950 (like the fly that apparently settled in the black paint and got stuck there) seem the result of chance. More curious were the areas inconsistent with Pollock’s style—fussily applied, in tiny brushstrokes. This “spurious overpainting,” as Coddington puts it, was evidently added by an enigmatic restorer whose identity remains unknown. Judging by photographs,
conservators date the additions to some time between 1962 and ’68.
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