Which artwork uses oil on fiberboard as its medium?

• A. No. 5, 1948
• B. The Gulf Stream
• C. Fountain
• D. Spiral Jetty

Answer: (A)

Understanding an artwork’s material and support helps you pin down how the work was made and how its surface will behave. No. 5, 1948 is the piece that uses oil on fiberboard. This painting, created by Jackson Pollock, employs oil-based paint applied directly onto a rigid fiberboard panel rather than on canvas. The fiberboard provides a stiff, non-warping surface that suits Pollock’s dense, layered drips and swirls, allowing the paint to settle and interact with the surface in a way that emphasizes texture and depth.

The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer is oil on canvas, not fiberboard, so its support differs even though it’s also oil paint. Fountain by Marcel Duchamp is a readymade sculpture, not a painting with oil on fiberboard. Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson is an earthwork sculpture, involving earth and rock in a natural landscape rather than oil paint on a panel.