Jackson Pollock

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Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major force in the abstract expressionist movement.

1 Early life
2 Early work
3 The Springs period and the unique technique
4 The 1950s and beyond
5 Cultural references
6 List of major works
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Early life

The youngest of five sons, Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, and grew up in Arizona and California, attending Los Angeles' Manual Arts High School where he studied. In 1930, following his brother Charles, he moved to New York City, where they both studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Benton's influence on Pollock's formative work can be seen in his use of curvilinear undulating rhythms and in the use of rural American subject matter.

[edit] Early work

Pollock's early representational work was influenced by Benton, and the Mexican Muralists Siqueiros and Orozco. He worked in Siqueiros's experimental workshop in New York City in 1936. After visiting exhibitions of Picasso and Surrealist Art, his work became increasingly symbolic. He worked on the WPA Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1943. Pollock's first solo show was held at the Peggy Guggenheim The Art of This Century Gallery in New York in 1943.

Pollock had for several years been treated by psychiatrists for alcoholism and depression and this gave him an interest in Carl Jung's theory of primitive archetypes that formed the basis of his work between 1938 and 1944. These works were often enigmatic and were not well received at first.

[edit] The Springs period and the unique technique

Pollock's Galaxy, a part of the Joslyn Art Museum's permanent collection.

Pollock-Krasner house in Springs, New York.

Jackson Pollock gets the big stone and Lee Krasner gets the small stone in Green River Cemetery in Springs, New York.

In October 1945 Pollock married his long term lover Lee Krasner and in November they moved to Springs, in East Hampton, on Long Island, New York. Their home in Springs was typical of the area, a wood-frame house with a nearby barn that Pollock made into a studio. It was there that he perfected the technique of working spontaneously with liquid paint. He began painting with his canvases on the floor, and developed what was called his drip (or his preferred term, pour) technique. He used his brushes as implements for dripping paint, and the brush never touched the canvas. Pollock's technique of pouring and dripping paint is thought to be one of the origins of the term Action Painting. In the process of making paintings in this way he moved away from figurative representation, and challenged the Western tradition of using easel and brush, as well as moving away from use only of the hand and wrist — as he used his whole body to paint. In 1956 Time magazine dubbed Pollock "Jack the Dripper" as a result of his painting style.^[1]

My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting. 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.

Pollock observed Indian sandpainting demonstrations at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1940's; he may have also seen Indian Sand painters on his trips to the West, although that is debated. Other influences on his "pour" technique include the Mexican muralists mentioned above, and also Surrealist automatism. Pollock denied "the accident"; he usually had an idea of how he wanted a particular piece to appear. It was about the movement of his body, over which he had control, mixed with the viscous flow of paint, the force of gravity, and the way paint was absorbed into the canvas. The mix of the uncontrollable and the controllable. Flinging, dripping, pouring, spattering, he would energetically move around the canvas, almost as if in a dance, and would not stop until he saw what he wanted to see.

A group of these paintings was exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1948, and his work began to generate increasingly polarized responses. Pollock was profiled in the August 8, 1949 issue of Life Magazine where the headline asked the question, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" Notwithstanding its facetious tone, the article gave him national exposure, and his solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery that winter was extremely successful.

Hans Namuth was a young photography student in 1950, and he was intrigued by what he called the "difficulty" of Pollock's allover abstractions. Namuth wanted to photograph and film Pollock at work, painting. Pollock promised to start a new painting especially for the photographic session, but when Namuth arrived, Pollock apologized and told him the painting was finished. Namuth's comment upon entering the studio:

A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor. . . . There was complete silence. . . . Pollock looked at the painting. Then, unexpectedly, he picked up can and paint brush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realized the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dance like as he flung black, white, and rust colored paint onto the canvas. He completely forgot that Lee and I were there; he did not seem to hear the click of the camera shutter. . . My photography session lasted as long as he kept painting, perhaps half an hour. In all that time, Pollock did not stop. How could one keep up this level of activity? Finally, he said 'This is it.'

[edit] The 1950s and beyond

Pollock's work after 1951 was darker in colour, often only black, and began to reintroduce figurative elements. Pollock had moved to a more commercial gallery and there was great demand from collectors for new paintings. In response to this pressure his alcoholism deepened.

After struggling with alcoholism his whole life, Pollock's career was cut short when he died in an alcohol-related, single car crash in Springs, New York on August 11, 1956 at the age of 44. One of his passengers, Edith Metzger, died, and the other passenger in the Oldsmobile convertible, his girlfriend Ruth Kligman, survived. After his death, his wife Lee Krasner managed his estate and ensured that his reputation remained strong in spite of changing art-world trends.

Their home and studio are open to the public as the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, New York, www.pkhouse.org. The property is a National Historic Landmark, and a member of the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Pollock's White Light is featured on the cover of Ornette Coleman's innovating album, Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation.

His 1952 painting Blue Poles was sold in 1973 for US$2 million to the National Gallery of Australia, at that time the highest price ever paid for a contemporary work of art.

He was the subject of the documentaries Jackson Pollock (PBS, 1982) and Jackson Pollock - Love & Death on Long Island (BBC, 1999) as well as a dramatic film entitled Pollock (2000) in which he was played by Ed Harris. A ten-minute documentary, Jackson Pollock (1951), was made by Hans Namuth, with music by Morton Feldman.

Pollock's first retrospective was organized in December, 1952 by Clement Greenberg at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. Titled "A Retrospective Show of the Paintings of Jackson Pollock," it was a seminal early survey of Pollock's work dating from 1943-1951, which opened first at Bennington College and then traveled to Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts. A career survey, which was planned before his death but became a posthumous tribute, opened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in December 1956. MoMA has presented two full retrospective exhibitions (1967 and 1998), and a retrospective was held at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1982. A four-volume catalogue raisonne of Pollock's work was published in 1978 by Yale University Press, with a one-volume supplement published by Ursus Books/The Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1995.

Pollock and many of his contemporaries -- William Baziotes, Franz Kline Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, and others -- created a powerful new art movement that rivaled Paris.^[2] In the midst of the Cold War, these artists tested the boundaries of their own society yet also put the United States at the center of the art world.

Some of these artists gained notoriety, fame, and fortune. Some suffered with depression and --like Pollock -- died young. In yet another twist, one abstract expressionist who studied with Motherwell and Baziotes was Harold Shapinsky, who missed the take-off of the movement in part because he had been drafted into the Korean War. It was not until the 1980s that Shapinsky would be discovered by the "East" -- notably Salman Rushdie, Tariq Ali, and Akumal Ramachander, a teacher from Bangalore, India. That discovery is described in Shapinsky's Karma by Lawrence Weschler.

Pollock's painting "No. 5, 1948" sold for $140 million on 1 November 2006 – the highest price ever paid for a painting. Allegedly, Hollywood mogul David Geffen sold the painting to Mexican financier David Martínez.^[3]

[edit] Cultural references

In 2006, a documentary called "Who the $#%& is Jackson Pollock?" was released on November 15.

Mancunian rock band The Stone Roses adorned their eponymous debut album with a Pollock-style painting by guitarist John Squire, with similar paintings appearing on their instruments and early singles covers. Pollock and his work also served as the inspiration behind several songs (Full Fathom Five and Made Of Stone). The song Going Down also features the cryptic line "Yeah, she look like a painting / Jackson Pollock's, Number 5."

In an episode of Daria, Daria's Dance Party, Jane Lane (in preparation for a dance) paints the school gymnasium in honor of Pollock's untimely death.

In an episode of Entourage, Seth Green remarks that he blasted character Eric's girlfriend "in the face like a Jackson Pollock."

Pollock is mentioned briefly in the lyrics "Jackson Pollock throwin' multi-colored thoughts at a rapid pace" of the song 'To Bob Ross With Love' by the Gym Class Heroes.

In the 2000 thriller, the Skulls, starring Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker, Jackson's female counterpart (played by Leslie Bibb) refers to her senior thesis, an animatronic device which via the implementation of various projectiles, spraying, and a prearranged canvas creates a totally random 'work-of-art,' as "Action Jackson," named after Jackson Pollock.

In an episode of Mike Hammer, Private Eye, Hammer gets into his bed, only to find someone else in it. He draws his gun and says "You make another move, I'll Jackson Pollock your brains all over the wall."

In the Red Dwarf episode "The Last Day", the crew are all drunk when Dave Lister recalls the story of his first time being drunk. It was in Paris, where a couple of bottles of cheap wine had caused him to throw up from the top of the Eiffel Tower. The story goes that it landed on Montmartre, over five miles away, where some pavement artist sold it to a Texan tourist as a genuine Jackson Pollock.

Pollock is also referred to in the lyrics to the song "Palace & Main" by Swedish alt-rock group Kent.

A public bench fashioned in his style is dedicated to Pollack on the 200 block of West Second Street in Chico, California. For a time Pollack lived in Chico.

Pollock (and the abstract expressionism movement) is featured prominently in the Kurt Vonnegut book Bluebeard.

[edit] List of major works

Jackson Pollock: Jazz album, put together by MOMA, is a collection of music Pollock used to listen to while painting. The cover comes from a famous documentary showing Pollock's style.

(1942) "Male and Female" Philadelphia Museum of Art [1]
(1943) "Moon-Woman Cuts the Circle" [2]
(1942) "Stenographic Figure" The Museum of Modern Art [3]
(1943) "The She-Wolf" The Museum of Modern Art [4]
(1943) "Blue (Moby Dick)" Ohara Museum of Art [5]
(1946) "Eyes in the Heat" Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice [6]
(1946) "The Key" The Art Institute of Chicago [7]
(1946) "The Tea Cup" Collection Frieder Burda [8]
(1946) "Shimmering Substance", from "The Sounds In The Grass" The Museum of Modern Art [9]
(1947) "Full Fathom Five" The Museum of Modern Art [10]
(1947) "Cathedral" [11]
(1947) "Enchanted Forest" Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice [12]
(1948) "Painting" [13]
(1948) "Number 5" (4ft x 8ft) Collection David Martínez
(1948) "Number 8" [14]
(1948) "Summertime: Number 9A" Tate Modern [15]
(1949) "Number 3"
(1950) "Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)" National Gallery of Art [16]
(1950) "Autumn Rhythm: No.30, 1950" [17]
(1950) "One: No. 31, 1950" at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
(1950) "No. 32" [18]
(1951) "Number 7"
(1952) "Convergence" Albright-Knox Art Gallery [19]
(1952) "Blue Poles: No. 11, 1952" [20]
(1953) "Portrait and a Dream" [21]
(1953) "Easter and the Totem" The Museum of Modern Art [22]
(1953) "Ocean Greyness" [23]
(1953) "The Deep"

[edit] References

^ (1956-02-20) "The Wild Ones" (HTML). Time LXVII (8). Retrieved on 2006-07-27.
^ Serge Guibault (1983). How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. ISBN 0226310388.
^ "Pollock work 'earns record price'", BBC, November 2, 2006.

[edit] External links