Born
on 29 January 1912: Jackson Pollock, US Abstract
Expressionist painter who died on 11 August 1956.
— Pollock was the commanding figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement.
He began to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students’ League, New York,
under the Regionalist painter Thomas
Hart Benton. During the 1930s he worked in the manner of the Regionalists,
being influenced also by the Mexican muralist painters (Orozco,
Rivera,
Siqueiros)
and by certain aspects of Surrealism.
From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the Federal Art Project. By the mid 1940s
he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the ‘drip and splash’
style for which he is best known emerged with some abruptness in 1947. Instead
of using the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the
wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead of using brushes
he manipulated it with ‘sticks, trowels or knives’ (to use his own words),
sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of ‘sand, broken glass
or other foreign matter'. This manner of Action painting had in common with
Surrealist theories of automatism that it was supposed by artists and critics
alike to result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious
moods of the artist. Pollock's name is also associated with the introduction
of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or
identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional
idea of composition in terms of relations among parts. The design of his
painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas — indeed in
the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the
image. All these characteristics were important for the new US painting
which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
During the 1950s Pollock continued to produce
figurative or quasi-figurative black and white works and delicately modulated
paintings in rich impasto as well as the paintings in the new all-over style.
He was strongly supported by advanced critics, but was also subject to much
abuse and sarcasm as the leader of a still little comprehended style; in
1956 Time magazine called him ‘Jack the Dripper’. By
the 1960s, however, he was generally recognized as the most important figure
in the most important movement of this century in American painting, but
a movement from which artists were already in reaction (Post-Painterly Abstraction).
His unhappy personal life (he was an alcoholic) and his premature death
in a car crash contributed to his legendary status. In 1944 Pollock married
Lee Krasner (1911-84), who was an Abstract Expressionist painter of some
distinction, although it was only after her husband's death that she received
serious critical recognition.
— Breaking the ice
It was Jackson Pollock who blazed an astonishing
trail for other Abstract Expressionist painters to follow. De Kooning said,
“He broke the ice”, an enigmatic phrase suggesting that Pollock
showed what art could become with his 1947 drip paintings. It has been suggested
that Pollock was influenced by Native American sand paintings, made by trickling
thin lines of colored sand onto a horizontal surface. It was not until 1947
that Pollock began his “action” paintings, influenced by Surrealist
ideas of “psychic automatism” (direct expression of the unconscious).
Pollock would fix his canvas to the floor and drip paint from a can using
a variety of objects to manipulate the paint. The Moon-Woman Cuts the
Circle (1943; 110x104cm) is an early Pollock, but it shows the passionate
intensity with which he pursued his personal vision. This painting is based
on a North American Indian myth. It connects the moon with the feminine
and shows the creative, slashing power of the female psyche. It is not easy
to say what we are actually looking at: a face rises before us, vibrant
with power, though perhaps the image does not benefit from labored explanations.
If we can respond to this art at a fairly primitive level, then we can also
respond to a great abstract work such as Lavender Mist. If we cannot, at
least we can appreciate the fusion of colors and the Expressionist feeling
of urgency that is communicated. Moon-Woman may be a feathered harridan
or a great abstract pattern; the point is that it works on both levels.
— In 1947, influential art critic Clement Greenberg wrote the following
in the English magazine Horizon: "The most powerful painter in
contemporary America and the only one who promises to be a major one is
a Gothic, morbid, and extreme disciple of Picasso's Cubism and Miró's post-Cubism,
tinctured also with Kandinsky and surrealist inspiration. His name is Jackson
Pollock." Raised in the American West, Pollock became the most important
of the New York School Abstract Expressionists and is credited with completely
transforming modern art. Prone to heavy drinking and possessing a volatile
personality, the artist developed a reputation (especially among European
artists) as a "cowboy," the kind of rugged individualist found only in the
American West.
Jackson Pollock was born on a farm in Cody, Wyoming, on January 28, 1912,
and grew up in Wyoming, Arizona, and California. Pollock's first exposure
to modern art came in the form of a journal entitled Dial, copies
of which he obtained from his brother Charles, who had begun painting a
few years earlier. Pollock's first paintings were created emulating those
of his brother's. While studying painting at Manual Arts High School in
Los Angeles, Pollock read the writings of Krishnamurti and Rudolf Steiner
and was introduced to theosophy. He also saw the work of Mexican muralists
Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siquieros, both of whom came to have a profound
and lasting influence on Pollock's work. When Pollock was 17, he dropped
out of high school and moved to New York City. From 1929 to 1931 he received
instruction at the Art Students League, where he was mentored by Thomas
Hart Benton, who introduced the young painter to both Renaissance art and
"American scene" realism. It was around this time that Pollock first became
familiar with the work of Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco. Pollock
also spent a few years traveling the country by train and car, sketching
the American landscape. Of his time with Benton, Pollock later told the
New Yorker that his teacher "drove his kind of realism at me so
hard I bounced right into non-objective painting." From 1938 to 1942 Pollock
existed on the money he received from painting murals for the WPA Federal
Arts Project, and his work began to be included in exhibitions in New York
as well as the middle and far west. Pollock also entered Jungian analysis
for treatment of his alcoholism and in 1938 was briefly institutionalized
at Bloomingdale Asylum in White Plains, New York. Pollock's early work borrowed
imagery from Picasso, the muralists, and Jungian symbolism.
Pollock's first one-man show took place in 1943 at Peggy Guggenheim's Art
of this Century gallery, which subsequently hosted three additional exhibitions.
Guggenheim provided Pollock with a monthly advance on the future sale of
his paintings, an arrangement that allowed him to paint full-time. Pollock
would be the subject of 10 solo exhibitions over the course of the next
11 years. From 1943 to 1947, in pieces such as She Wolf, Guardians
of the Secret, and There Were Seven in Eight, Pollock's painting
focused on totems and symbols in human animal form that were directly inspired
by Jungian analysis. In 1945 Pollock moved into a house at the Springs in
East Hampton, Long Island; he and painter Lee Krasner were married on October
25. Krasner's work was also categorized as Abstract Expressionist, but for
many years her career was overshadowed by her husband's. A devoted wife
and passionate promoter and defender of her husband's work, Krasner introduced
Pollock to several important artists, such as Hans Hofmann (Pollock and
Hofmann were among those who congregated at the Cedar Bar in New York).
Pollock worked in an upstairs bedroom of the house at the Springs for one
year before relocating to the barn, which he moved and transformed into
a studio. Between 1947 and 1950 Pollock developed the working method that
characterized the style he would be most remembered for: placing unstretched
canvas on the floor, he placed a stick or trowel into a can of enamel paint
and dripped the paint onto the surface from above. Through the development
of extraordinary control in his hands and wrists, Pollock was able to manipulate
seemingly endless and intricate webs of curls and splatters. The artist
often began with recognizable shapes and figures that he slowly obscured
through the application of many layers of abstract patterns. From 1948 to
1950 Pollock was represented by the Betty Parsons gallery, which presented
his work on four separate occasions. On August 8, 1949, Life magazine
published the sarcastically titled "Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest
living painter in the United States?" The article brought the artist to
the attention of mainstream America.
With curator Peter Blake, Pollock designed a museum in which all of the
walls would consist of drip paintings. The museum never found a patron,
but Pollock did receive a commission to create a wall-size painting for
Marcel Breuer's new home. Although Parsons raised the price of Pollock's
paintings, it would be several years before they began to sell with any
regularity. His only consistent patron was Alfonso Ossorio, who bought two
of Pollock's paintings and shared his Manhattan townhouse with Pollock and
Krasner.
In the early 1950s Pollock began painting much larger pieces and rejected
titles in favor of numbers to mark individual works. One of seven painters
representing the U.S. at the 25th Venice Biennale International Exhibition
in June 1950, Pollock also had several exhibits in locations such as Milan
and Paris. That year Hans Namuth began work on the photographs and films
that later became a primary source for Pollock scholars, providing a rare
firsthand account of the painter's creative process. In order to take advantage
of the better lighting conditions, filming took place outside on weekends.
Pollock painted Number 29, 1950 on a plane of glass; Namuth placed
his camera beneath the glass for a most unusual view of the artist's process.
The experience drove Pollock over the edge, and when filming had completed,
he ended two years of sobriety. On the eve of the most important exhibition
of his life, Pollock flew into a drunken rage and turned over the dinner
table. The pressure Namuth's film had placed on the artist sent Pollock
into a rapid descent that eventually led to his death. Additionally, the
staged nature of the film coupled with Pollock's scripted narration may
have led the artist to believe that he had rendered himself inauthentic.
Disappointed by what he saw as the poor representation he was receiving
from Betty Parsons, Pollock took his work across the street to the Sidney
Janis gallery. In November 1952, the latter gallery hosted an exhibit that
featured Number 10, Number 11, and Number 12,
examples of Pollock's larger-scale work. In 1951 and 1952, respectively,
Pollock's work was featured in two shows hosted by the Museum of Modern
Art in New York: "Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America" and "Fifteen
Americans." The works exhibited at the Janis gallery in 1954 included Sleeping
Effort, The Deep, and Portrait of a Dream, paintings
created in 1953 that represented a further advancement in Pollock's style:
the integration of brush strokes and recognizable shapes. Between 1953 and
1956 Pollock finished fewer than 10 paintings, afflicted by jealousy and
finding it harder to paint as his wife came into her own as an artist.
Abstract art was often met with hostility, as Michigan Congressman George
Dondero declared modern art to be Communist and an affront to American values.
Nonetheless, Pollock's reputation benefited equally from derision as well
as from praise. Earlier in his career, Pollock claimed not to know where
his work came from. However, as he developed the drip painting process some
referred to as "action painting," he found himself defending his skill against
attacks from critics who claimed that the paintings appeared to be randomly
constructed. Pollock always claimed that he was drawing on his unconscious
for inspiration, but this admission did not presuppose that he lacked control
over the application of the paint. It was nearly impossible for critics
to ignore the physicality of Pollock's methods, but the artist saw these
techniques as nothing more than the means through which he arrived at a
particular aesthetic statement.
Pollock struggled with alcoholism throughout his life. He considered himself
to be the greatest painter in the world, but even this knowledge did nothing
to allay the deep melancholy that had haunted him since childhood. Pollock
often became violent when drunk and sometimes sped his car down Long Island's
country back roads. His decision to agree to allow photographer Hans Namuth
to film him apparently drove the artist over the edge, and in November 1950
he ended two years of sobriety in a drunken rage. After walking away from
car crashes in 1951 and 1954, perhaps it was inevitable that his drunk driving
would lead to his demise. As his relationship with Krasner worsened, Pollock
engaged in an affair with aspiring artist Ruth Kligman. In July 1956 Krasner
left for Europe. On the evening of August 11, 1956, Pollock and Edith Metzger
(a friend of Kligman's) were killed while driving an Oldsmobile he'd acquired
by trading in two paintings. Kligman survived the accident.
Pollock was a force of nature who changed the face of modern art. The artist's
legacy is forever determined by the documents left behind by Hans Namuth,
which provided the public with a sense of the intense physicality of Pollock's
approach to painting. These documents later inspired the performance art
of Yves Klein and Herman Nitsch, and the work of sculptors including Richard
Serra, Eva Hesse, and Bruce Nauman. Pollock's work was also highly influential
on the hand-painted films of filmmaker Stan Brakhage. The non-representational
painting of Pollock and others of his generation such as Willem de Kooning
led to a change in perception regarding American art, and in the latter
half of the twentieth century the United States replaced Europe as the international
center of modern art.
— LINKS
— Self-Portrait
(1933) — Male
and Female (1942, 186x124cm) — The
Moon-Woman (1942, 175x109cm) —
Stenographic Figure (1942, 102x142cm) — Blue
(Moby Dick) (1943, 48x61cm) — The
She-Wolf (1943, 106x170cm) — Eyes
in the Heat (1946, 137x109cm) — The
Key (1946, 150x213cm) — The
Tea Cup (1946, 102x71cm) — Shimmering
Substance (1946, 77x62cm) — Full
Fathom Five — Number
8 detail (1949) — Easter
and the Totem — Number
13A: Arabesque (1948, 94x297cm) — Harbor
and Lighthouse (1936)
— Lavender
Mist: Number 1, 1950 (221x300cm) _ Action painting: Pollock was the
first “all-over” painter, pouring paint rather than using brushes
and a palette, and abandoning all conventions of a central motif. He danced
in semi-ecstasy over canvases spread across the floor, lost in his patternings,
dripping and dribbling with total control. He said: “The painting has
a life of its own. I try to let it come through.” He painted no image,
just “action”, though “action painting” seems an inadequate
term for the finished result of his creative process. Lavender Mist is 3
m long, a vast expanse on a heroic scale. It is alive with colored scribble,
spattered lines moving this way and that, now thickening, now trailing off
to a slender skein. The eye is kept continually eager, not allowed to rest
on any particular area. Pollock has put his hands into paint and placed
them at the top right-- an instinctive gesture eerily reminiscent of cave
painters who did the same. The overall tone is a pale lavender, maide airy
and active. At the time Pollock was hailed as the greatest American painter,
but there are already those who feel his work is not holding up in every
respect. Lee
Krasner (1908-84), who married Pollock in 1944, was not celebrated at
all during his lifetime (cut short in 1956 by a fatal car crash), but it
was actually she who first started covering the canvas with a passionate
flurry of marks. The originality of her vision, its stiff integrity and
its great sense of internal cohesion, is now beginning to be recognized.
Cobalt Night (1962; 237x401 cm) is even larger than Lavender
Mist and has the same kind of heroic ambition. |
Born
on 28 January 1761: Marguerite Gérard, French
Romantic
portrait and genre-scene painter who died on 18 May 1837. 
