Jackson Pollock
1912-1956
Paul Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter and a major force in the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912, the youngest of five sons. He grew up in Arizona and California, studying at Los Angeles' Manual Arts High School. 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.
In October 1945, Pollock married American painter, Lee Krasner, and in November they moved to what is now known as the Pollock-Krasner House and Studio in Springs on Long Island, New York.
There he perfected the technique of working spontaneously with liquid paint. Pollock was introduced to the use of liquid paint in 1936, at an experimental workshop operated in New York City by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Pollock later used paint pouring as one of several techniques in canvases of the early 1940s, such as "Male and Female" and "Composition with Pouring I." After his move to Springs, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor, and developed what was later called his "drip" technique, although "pouring" is a more accurate description of his method. He used hardened brushes, sticks and even basting syringes as paint applicators. Pollock's techniques are thought to be one of the origins of the term Action Painting. In that techniques 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.
Pollock's most famous paintings were during the "drip period" between 1947 and 1950. At the peak of his fame, Pollock abruptly abandoned the drip style. Pollock's work after 1951 was darker in color, often only black, and began to reintroduce figurative elements. Pollock had moved to a more commercial. 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 New York, 1956 at the age of 44. After his death, his wife Lee Krasner managed and ensured that his reputation remained strong in spite of changing art-world trends.
The influence of the Native American art is very evident in the work of Jackson Pollock. Pollock and Native artists work using a similar process; Pollock takes direct images from the unconscious mind like images from the natives' "spirit world"; he uses a primitive aesthetic. Essentially a visual language is explored when linking Native American primitive art to Pollock's modernist art.
Primitivism in itself was a popular aesthetic amongst modernists, and Pollock chose a culture "close to home" to explore visually. Ultimately, the art of Jackson Pollock is definitely linked to the art of the Native Americans.
Pollock's work has always polarized critics and has been the focus of many important critical debates.
Harold Rosenberg spoke of the way Pollock's work had changed painting, "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint.' The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value - political, aesthetic, and moral."
Others such as artist, critic, and satirist Craig Brown, have been "astonished that decorative "wallpaper," essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art history alongside Giotto, Titian, and Velazquez."
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