Jackson Pollock

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Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his technique of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface (‘drip technique’), enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles.

It was also called ‘action painting’, since he used the force of his whole body to paint, often in a frenetic dancing style.

This extreme form of abstraction divided the critics: some praised the immediacy and fluency of the creation, while others derided the random effects.

In 2016, Pollock's painting titled Number 17A was reported to have fetched US $200 million in a private purchase. A reclusive and volatile personality, Pollock struggled with alcoholism for most of his life.

In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.

Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related single-car accident when he was driving.

In December 1956, four months after his death, Pollock was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

A larger, more comprehensive exhibition of his work was held there in 1967.

In 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London.

Early life (1912–1936)

Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1912, the youngest of five brothers. His parents, Stella May (née McClure) and LeRoy Pollock, were born and grew up in Tingley, Iowa, and were educated at Tingley High School. Pollock's mother is interred at Tingley Cemetery, Ringgold County, Iowa. His father had been born with the surname McCoy, but took the surname of his adoptive parents, neighbors who adopted him after his own parents had died within a year of each other. Stella and LeRoy Pollock were Presbyterian; they were of Irish and Scots-Irish descent, respectively. LeRoy Pollock was a farmer and later a land surveyor for the government, moving for different jobs. Stella, proud of her family's heritage as weavers, made and sold dresses as a teenager. In November 1912, Stella took her sons to San Diego; Jackson was just 10 months old and would never return to Cody. He subsequently grew up in Arizona and Chico, California.

While living in the Vermont Square neighborhood of Los Angeles, he enrolled at Manual Arts High School, from which he was expelled. He had already been expelled in 1928 from another high school. During his early life, Pollock explored Native American culture while on surveying trips with his father. He was also heavily influenced by Mexican muralists, particularly José Clemente Orozco, whose fresco Prometheus he would later call "the greatest painting in North America".

In 1930, following his older brother Charles Pollock, he moved to New York City, where they both studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Benton's rural American subject matter had little influence on Pollock's work, but his rhythmic use of paint and his fierce independence were more lasting. In the early 1930s, Pollock spent a summer touring the Western United States together with Glen Rounds, a fellow art student, and Benton, their teacher.

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Career (1936–1954)

Pollock was first exposed to liquid paint in 1936 at a New York City experimental workshop by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Paint pouring was one of many methods on canvases of the early 1940s, such as Male and Female and Composition with Pouring I. After moving to Springs, New York, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the floor and developed what was later referred to as his "drip" technique.

Pollock worked on the WPA Federal Art Project from 1938 to 1942. Pollock was struggling with his ingebriated alcoholism from 1938 to 1941, and later with Dr. Joseph L. Henderson, who went through Jungian psychotherapy from 1938 to 1941. Henderson compelled Pollock to draw drawings, provoking him to do so. In his paintings, Jungian concepts and archetypes were expressed. Pollock may have suffered with bipolar disorder, according to some historians. In July 1943, Pollock signed a gallery with Peggy Guggenheim. Mural (1943) was given the opportunity to create the 8-by-20-foot (2.4 by 6.1 m) Mural for the entrance to her new townhouse. Pollock did the artwork on canvas rather than on the wall at her friend and advisor Marcel Duchamp's suggestion, so that it could be portable. "I took a look at it and thought, 'Now that's great art,' and I knew Jackson was the best painter this country has produced," Clement Greenberg wrote after seeing the large mural. Pollock's talent was described as "volcanic" in the catalog that opened his first exhibition. It has fire. It is hazy. It is undisciplined. It's a mineral profusion that has not fully developed."

Pollock's most popular paintings were created during the "drip period" from 1947 to 1950. "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" he asked in a four-page spread in Life magazine on August 8, 1949. Pollock's work was on display in Paris and Europe thanks to the mediation of Alfonso Ossorio, a close friend of Pollock, and art historian Michel Tapié, the young gallery owner Paul Facchetti, from March 7, 1952. Pollock abruptly left the drip style at a time of his fame. Pollock's drip paintings were inspired by Janet Sobel's art historian Clement Greenberg, who later told Pollock that Sobel "had made an impression on him" on him.

Pollock's work after 1951 was darker in hue, with a collection painted in black on unprimed canvases. These paintings have been referred to as his "Black pourings" and when he displayed them at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York, none of them sold. Parsons later sold one to a friend at half the price. Pollock's drawings display him struggling to strike a balance between abstraction and representations of the figure.

He later returned to color and continued with figurative elements. Pollock had migrated to the Sidney Janis Gallery, a more commercial gallery, during this period; collectors' interest in his art was high. His alcoholism worsened as a result of this pressure, as well as personal annoyance.

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