JACKSON POLLOCK

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

Contents

Early life

The Springs period and the unique technique

The 1950s and beyond

Death

Legacy

Relationship to Native American art

Critical debate

Cultural references

List of major works

References

External links

Early life

Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912,Piper, David. ''The Illustrated History of Art'', ISBN 0753701790, p460-461. the youngest of five sons. His father was a farmer and later a land surveyor for the government. He grew up in Arizona and California, studying at Los Angeles' Manual Arts High School. During his early life, he experienced Indian culture while on surveying trips with his father. In 1929, 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 rural American subject matter shaped Pollock's work only fleetingly, but his rhythmic use of paint and his fierce independence were more lasting influences.

The Springs period and the unique technique

Photographer Hans Namuth extensively documented Pollock's unique painting techniques.

In October 1945, Pollock married another important 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. Peggy Guggenheim loaned them the down payment for the 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. 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. He 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. This technique has also been described as a a "pouring" technique. He used hardened brushes, sticks and even basting syringes as paint applicators. 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 unique painting style.

Pollock's ''One: Number 31, 1950'' solely occupies an entire wall at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Pollock observed Indian sandpainting demonstrations in the 1940s. Other influences on his dripping technique include the Mexican muralists 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. Studies by Taylor, Micolich and Jonas have explored the nature of Pollock's technique and have determined that some of these works display the properties of mathematical fractals; and that the works become more fractal-like chronologically through Pollock's career. They even go on to speculate that on some level, Pollock may have been aware of the nature of chaotic motion, and was attempting to form what he perceived as a perfect representation of mathematical chaos - more than ten years before Chaos Theory itself was discovered.
In 1950 Hans Namuth, a young photographer, wanted to photograph and film Pollock at work. 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:

Pollock's Studio in Springs, NY.

The 1950s and beyond

Pollock's most famous paintings were during the "drip period" between 1947 and 1950. He rocketed to popular status following an August 8 1949 four-page spread in Life Magazine that asked, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" At the peak of his fame, Pollock abruptly abandoned the drip style.^[1]
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 gallery and there was great demand from collectors for new paintings. In response to this pressure his alcoholism deepened.

Death

Jackson Pollock's grave in the rear with Lee Krasner's grave in front in the Green River Cemetery.

After struggling with alcoholism his whole life, Pollock's career was cut short when he died in an alcohol-related, single car crash less than a mile from his home 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. They are buried in Green River Cemetery in Springs with a large boulder marking his grave and a smaller one marking hers.

Legacy

The Pollock-Krasner House and Studio is owned and administered by the Stony Brook Foundation, a non-profit affiliate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. There are regular tours of the house and studio from May - October.
In 2000 a biographical film titled ''Pollock'' was made about his life. Marcia Gay Harden won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying Lee Krasner. The movie was the project of Ed Harris who portrayed Pollock and directed it. He was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor.
In November 2006 Pollock's "No. 5, 1948" became the world's most expensive painting, when it was auctioned to an undisclosed bidder for the sum of $140,000,000. The previous owner was film and music-producer David Geffen. It is rumored that the current owner is a German businessman and art collector.
An ongoing debate rages over whether 24 paintings and drawings found in a Wainscott, New York locker in 2003 are Pollock originals. Physicists have argued over whether fractals can be used to authenticate the paintings. Analysis of the pigments shows some were not yet patented at the time of Pollock's death, although they may have been available to Pollock through a dealer even so. The debate is still inconclusive.^[2][3]
In 2006 a documentary, ''Who the Fuck Is Jackson Pollock?'', was released which featured a truck driver named Teri Horton who bought what may be a Pollock painting worth millions at a thrift store for five dollars.

Relationship to Native American art

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 primitivist aesthetic; he becomes “part of” the painting, akin to native American sand painters, and he exhibits similarly universalized subject matter to the Native Americans. Essentially a timeless visual language is explored when linking Native American primitive art to Pollock’s modernist art.
Pollock had been influenced by Native cultures from his early days in Arizona, where he witnessed native lore, ceremonies and myths. This provided him with an incentive to visit an exhibition - “Indian Art and the United States” at the Museum of Modern Art in 1941. There he witnessed the art of Native American cultures, notably the method of "sand painting". He attended its demonstration several times. This art form performed by medicine men in a focused or "trance like" state influenced Pollock greatly as he developed his famous pouring method; the medicine men pour colored sands onto a flat surface, which they can approach from all sides as the image unfolds.
Pollock states:
“I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk round it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the methods of the Indian sand painters of the West.”
^[4]
This was also in key with the concept of surrealist automatism, a process in which painting unfolds "automatically". The process is demonstrated in Andre Masson's work; "Meditation on an Oak Leaf", which Pollock admired greatly.
Pollock was familiar with other "in vogue" concepts; of Psychoanalysis and Primitivism, which provided another basis for his connection to Native American art. Pollock created many "psychoanalytical drawings" whilst he was being treated for alcoholism under Jungian analysts. These drawings were used by Pollock to facilitate discussion about his own mental state with his doctors. One could say that the source of these drawings - the unconscious/subconscious is similar to that of Native American cultures, where hallucinogenic states prompted by the use of drugs such as the san-pedro cactus, prompt a journey into the "spirit world". This world is one where full blown hallucinations may combine abstract and figurative images. The resulting portrayals of the spirit world are similar in aesthetic to Pollock's psychoanalytical drawings because they combine both the abstract and the geometric, spanning from the "inner depths" of the mind.
In terms of primitivism:
Pollock was very influenced by the work of Picasso, and the work Guernica, after reading an article by John D. Graham entitled “Primitive Art and Picasso”. A key concept within this article was the exploration of “Ahistorical issues of psychology that link the personal and the primordial”. The idea that all human beings are "wired the same way" provides the basis for the idea that they can all be affected by similar subconscious symbols and imagery. Psycho-analytical drawings of Pollock’s, as a result, contained a strange resemblance to Picasso’s. These drawings, like the art of ancient cultures, featured semi-human monsters, sharply horned masks, and dagger-like tongues, often shifting into different forms and surrounded by patterns or shapes. Primitivism in itself was a popular aesthetic amongst modernists, and Pollock chose a culture "close to home" to explore visually.
As a result, the subject matter between Pollock's art and the art of Native America becomes similar. The focus is on universal symbols and concepts such as animals, cycles of life and birth or gender, and the means of exploring these subjects is a focus on essence rather than naturalistic representation. Pollock was taught by Thomas Benton, who emphasized this focus on essence and analytical drawing. In Pollock's "Birth" the "essence of birth", you might say, is explored through violent transformational and shifting imagery. A collection of invented or derived, unclear, and ambiguous images seem to come together to create something that visually inspires, universally, the essence of the subject. Like Native American art, the images are constantly transforming and shifting, becoming part of others. Native Chavin art is well-known for holding multiple readings depending on how one observes the overall image, perhaps from upside-down. Native art focuses on a constant world of change, seasons, weather, life and birth etc. to inspire these transformations.
The “strong graphic rhythms, zoomorphic imagery, and myths of man-beast transformation in the art of these cultures had made a deep impression [on Pollock]”
^[5]
Although these links can be asserted visually, one can question them. Pollock was not well-known for being definitive in his approach to explaining his work:
Pollock, “While he may well have talked up shamanism or alchemy, and even nurtured some superstitions about ritual and healing,” he never once suggested that this kind of thing shaped the way his paintings were made or should be understood”
^[6]
In 1944, Pollock stated “Some people find references to American Indian art and calligraphy in parts of my pictures. That wasn’t intentional; probably was the result of early memories and enthusiasms”
^[7]
However, one can conclude, despite these statements, that Pollock could not have resisted popular art theory and philosophy, and was still greatly influenced by sandpainting methods and modernist primitivism. Ultimately, The art of Jackson Pollock is definitely linked to the art of the Native Americans:
Each look at images from an altered state of mind – the unconscious/subconscious (the idea of psychoanalysis)
Each follow a “primitivist” aesthetic
They use a similar “automatist” process; being in the work, and of “pouring”
They both focus on “essence” and universal images , with a similar mixing of abstract and figurative, transforming forms
Also, the linking of modernist work and primitive work can show us the idea of a timeless visual language – something “wired into” all human beings.

Critical debate

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, moral."

Clement Greenberg supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds. It fitted well with Greenberg's view of art history as being about the progressive purification in form and elimination of historical content. He therefore saw Pollock's work as the best painting of its day and the culmination of the Western tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet.

Posthumous exhibitions of Pollock's work had been sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization to promote American culture and values backed by the CIA. Certain left wing scholars, most prominently Eva Cockcroft, argue that the U.S. government and wealthy elite embraced Pollock and abstract expressionism in order to place the United States firmly in the forefront of global art and devalue socialist realism.^[8][9] In the words of Cockcroft, Pollock became a 'weapon of the Cold War'.^[10]

Painter Norman Rockwell's work ''Connoisseur''^[11] also appears to make a commentary on the Pollock style. The painting features what seems to be a rather upright man in a suit standing before a Jackson Pollock splatter painting. The contrast between the man and the Pollock painting, along with the construction of the scene, seems to emphasize the disparity between the comparatively unrecognizable Jackson Pollock style and traditional figure and landscape based art styles, as well as the monumental changes in the cultural sense of aesthetics brought on by the modern art movement.
Feminists criticized the machismo surrounding abstract expressionism, seeing Pollock's work in particular as the acting out of the phallocentric male fantasy on the symbolically supine canvas.^[8]
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."^[13]
''Reynolds News'' in a 1959 headline said, "This is not art — it's a joke in bad taste." ^[8]

Cultural references

Pollock's cultural impact can be measured by the number and nature of the references to him and his work in popular culture.

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

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

★ Jackson Pollock is referred to in The Stone Roses' song "Going Down", and several of the band's record sleeves were paintings made by guitarist John Squire inspired by Pollock's work^[15].

★ In an episode of the television series ''Family Guy'' the character Stewie Griffin compares his father's unwashed underwear to a Jackson Pollock painting.

★ In an episode of the television series ''Friday Night Lights'', starting quarterback Matt Saracen tell his crush, Julie Taylor, who also happens to be the coach's daughter, that her dance recital performance reminded him of Jackson Pollock's work.

★ In the Bollywood production ''Bride and Prejudice'', Lalita describes someone as eating "like a Jackson Pollock painting".

★ Pollock is mentioned in the song "The Continuous Life" by 311 on the 1997 album, Transistor.

List of major works

★ (1942) ''Male and Female'' Philadelphia Museum of Art [1]

★ (1942) ''Stenographic Figure'' Museum of Modern Art [2]

★ (1943) Mural University of Iowa Museum of Art [3]

★ (1943) ''Moon-Woman Cuts the Circle'' [4]

★ (1942) ''Stenographic Figure'' Museum of Modern Art [5]

★ (1943) ''The She-Wolf'' Museum of Modern Art [6]

★ (1943) ''Blue (Moby Dick)'' Ohara Museum of Art [7]

★ (1945) ''Troubled Queen'' Museum of Fine Arts, Boston [8]

★ (1946) ''Eyes in the Heat'' Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice [9]

★ (1946) ''The Key'' Art Institute of Chicago [10]

★ (1946) ''The Tea Cup'' Collection Frieder Burda [11]

★ (1946) ''Shimmering Substance'', from ''The Sounds In The Grass'' Museum of Modern Art [12]

★ (1947) ''Full Fathom Five'' Museum of Modern Art [13]

★ (1947) ''Cathedral'' [14]

★ (1947) ''Enchanted Forest'' Peggy Guggenheim Collection [15]

★ (1948) ''Painting'' [16]

★ (1948) ''Number 5'' (4ft x 8ft) Collection David Martínez

★ (1948) ''Number 8'' [17]

★ (1948) ''Summertime: Number 9A'' Tate Modern [18]

★ (1949) ''Number 3''

★ (1949) ''Number 10'' Museum of Fine Arts, Boston [19]

★ (1950) ''Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)'' National Gallery of Art [20]

★ (1950) ''Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950'' Metropolitan Museum of Art [21]

★ (1950) ''Number 29, 1950'' National Gallery of Canada [22]

★ (1950) ''One: Number 31, 1950'' Museum of Modern Art [23]

★ (1950) ''No. 32'' [24]

★ (1951) ''Number 7'' National Gallery of Art [25]

★ (1952) ''Convergence'' Albright-Knox Art Gallery [26]

★ (1952) ''Blue Poles: No. 11, 1952'' National Gallery of Australia[27]

★ (1953) ''Portrait and a Dream'' [28]

★ (1953) ''Easter and the Totem'' The Museum of Modern Art [29]

★ (1953) ''Ocean Greyness'' [30]

★ (1953) ''The Deep''

References

★ Karmel, Pepe, ed. Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles, and Reviews. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1999.

★ O'Connor, Francis V. Jackson Pollock [exhibition catalogue] (New York, Museum of Modern Art, [1967]) OCLC 165852

★ Taylor, Richard; Micolich, Adam; Jonas, David: Fractal Expressionism, ''Physics World'', October 1999

★ Marika Herskovic, ''American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,'' (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4

★ Marika Herskovic, ''New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,'' (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6
1. The Tempest by Jerry Saltz (repinted on artnet.com)
2. The Case of Pollock’s Fractals Focuses on Physics by Randy Kennedy - New York Times - December 2, 2006
3. Seeing Is Believing? Is this a real Jackson Pollock? A mysterious trove of pictures rocks the art world. Cathleen McGuigan, Newsweek Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue
4. Jackson Pollock, "My Painting", in Pollock: Painting (edited by Barbara Rose), Agrinde Publications Ltd: New York (1980), page 65; originally published in Possibilities I, New York, Winter 1947-8
5. (Frank, E in Pollock, 1983, Cross River Press)
6. (Vanedoe, K , in Jackson Pollock, 1998, Museum of Modern Art, New York)
7. (Published in Arts and Architecture in February 1944)
8. Expression of an age
9. Saunders, F. S. (2000), The Cultural Cold War. The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, New York: Free Press.
10. Eva Cockcroft, ‘Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War’ in Artforum vol.12, no.10, June 1974, pp. 43-54.
11. Rockwell, Norman the Artchive
12. Expression of an age
13. BBC2 Late Review: review of Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London, 1998
14. Expression of an age
15. John Squire interview on Xfm

External links

★ National Gallery of Art web feature on Pollock includes highlights of his career, numerous examples of the artist's work, photographs and motion footage of Pollock, plus an in-depth discussion of his 1950 painting Lavender Mist.

★ Jackson Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

★ Pollock collection on the Guggenheim NY Site

★ Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center

★ Pollock-Krasner Foundation

★ Blue Poles at the NGA

★ Fractal Expressionism – the fractal qualities of Pollock's drip paintings.

★ Jackson Pollock Simulator.

★ The Law and Jackson Pollock

★ Jackson Pollock on Museum Web Paris

★ Understanding Abstract Art by Harley Hahn

★ Jackson Pollock, sculpture by Robert Arneson, 1983

★ smARThistory: Pollock's ''One. Number 31, 1950''