Jackson Pollock

Biography

Jackson Pollock is a famous 20th century artist credited with revolutionizing the world of modern art with his unique abstract paintings.

Abstractart does not attempt to represent external reality, but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.

Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1912, the youngest of five sons. His father was a land surveyor, a job that required him to move his family throughout the west. Pollock appreciated the Native American culture he found in Wyoming, Arizona, and California. His study of southwest sand painting influenced his use of sand and other materials to create texture in his paintings. Pollock’s father abandoned the family when he was nine years old.

By the time Pollockwas 14 years old he had made an “art gallery” in a chicken coop on the family’s property.Eager to succeed in the art world, he moved to New York City when he was 18. There, he studied under the realist painter Thomas Hart Benton and mastered the expressive powers of line, marking, and abstracted form. In the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, he viewed and wasinspired by Pablo Picasso, the Mexican muralists, surrealists including Joan Miró,Native American pictographs, and old masters Michelangelo, Peter Paul Rubens, and El Greco..

From 1938 to 1942, during the Great Depression, Pollock worked forPresident Roosevelt's Public Works of Art Programpainting realist murals. It was his first experiencepainting on a large scale.

Pollock signed a gallery contract with Peggy Guggenheim in 1943. She commissioned him to create Mural for her townhouse, which measures roughly 8 feet tall by 20 feet long. Pollock painted the work on canvas, rather than the wall, so that it would be portable. After seeing it, one art criticwrote: "I took one look at it and I thought, 'Now that's great art,' and I knew Jackson was the greatest painter this country had produced."The catalog introducing his first exhibition described Pollock's talent as "volcanic. It has fire. It is unpredictable. It is undisciplined. It spills out of itself in a mineral prodigality, not yet crystallized."

In October 1945, Pollock married the Jewish Contemporary artistLee Krasner who rescuedhim from his abject alcoholism, mental anguish, and volatile moods. At their East Long Island home, Pollock converted the barn into a studio where he was inspired by eelgrass marshes and gorgeous watery light. There he perfected his now-famous drip technique in which he would use his whole body to apply house and industrial paint to large canvases. Pollock's most well known paintings were made during the "drip period" (1947 -1950.) In 1956, Time magazine dubbed Pollock "Jack the Dripper", due to his painting style.

My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.

I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added.

When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

—Jackson Pollock, My Painting, 1956

Pollock denied reliance on "the accident"; he usually had an idea of how he wanted a particular piece to appear. His technique combined the movement of his body, over which he had control, the viscous flow of paint, the force of gravity, and the absorption of paint into the canvas. It was a mixture of controllable and uncontrollable factors. Flinging, dripping, pouring, and spattering, he would move energetically around the canvas, almost as if in a dance, and would not stop until he saw what he wanted to see. One art critic coined the term "action painting" based on Pollock's technique.

Although at the peak of his fame in the late 1947- 1951, Pollock grew more detached, dismissive, and unpredictable. Despite his success with his drip style, he abruptly abandoned it.Pollock's work after 1951 was darker in color, including a collection painted in black on unprimed canvases. These paintings have been referred to as his 'black pourings'. These were neither a critical nor a commercial success for him. As his alcoholism continued to worsen, Pollock quit painting altogether.

He later returned to using color and continued with figurative elements and the demand for his work rebounded. However, Pollock continued to resist letting the viewer identify any figurative elements in his paintings. He abandoned titles and instead numbered his paintingsto forceviewers to abandon preconceived ideas and see his workas simply painting.

At age 44, on August 11, 1956, Pollock died after drunk driving and crashing his car into a tree one mile from his home. Edith Metzger, was also killed in the accident while his mistress,Ruth Kligman, was thrown free and survived. For the rest of her life, his widow Lee Krasner managed his estate and ensured that Pollock's reputation remained strong despite changing art trends.

Bibliography:

Wikipedia:

Jackson Pollock, Museum of Modern Art, Pepe Karmel, 1999

Theartstory.org:

Biography.com:

National Gallery of Art:

For Educational Purposes OnlyRevised 08/16