A look at: Jackson Pollock

No matter why you want to know something about an artist, one thing is definitely useful: a summary that answers your most important questions about the artist and that you can always refer to when further researching the artist in order to look up basic data or facts.

This can be quite helpful, especially if you want to be able to think in a focused way while engaging with the artist's work.

Here are the most important facts about Jackson Pollock at a glance:

Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, a Sunday's child, and died in a car accident on August 11, 1956. He was only 44 years old.

The artist's full name is Paul Jackson Pollock.

Jackson Pollock was an influential representative of the so-called New York School of Abstract Expressionism . His famous 'Drip Paintings' of the 1940s made him a symbol of American abstract painting and were revered as a "weapon against socialist realism" .

Throughout his life, he was described as a genius, rebellious, and plagued by self-doubt.

Place of birth, parents, school years

Jackson Pollock comes from Cody, Wyoming, a small town with a few thousand inhabitants located roughly in the middle of the USA (slightly northwest). Cody was founded in 1896 by Buffalo Bill, whose real name was William Frederick Cody.

Jackson Pollock was the youngest of five children of LeRoy Pollock and his wife Stella May (née McClure). His childhood and adolescence were marked by frequent moves between California and Arizona and his parents' unhappy relationship. For the first 16 years of his life, his father worked as a laborer, stonemason, bricklayer, road worker, and assistant surveyor.

Pollock's eldest brother Charles and his brother Sanford (nicknamed Sande), three years his senior, also became artists and instilled in him an understanding of a bohemian lifestyle. Through outings with his father, Pollock became acquainted with the art and culture of the First Nations.

First signs of artistic talent

It is likely that Jackson Pollock showed a “knack for art” quite early on, or at least a knack for crafts, because he attended Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles (a high school where crafts were taught).

In letters to his older brother, Jackson Pollock expressed his affection for Theosophy and art, which was supported by Charles Pollock. He encouraged him to become an artist and raved about the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco .

In response, two years later Jackson moved to New York to live with his brother, where he at the Art Students League Thomas Hart Benton . Benton admired the insecure and reserved Pollock and chose him as his favorite student.

Professional experience and training as an artist

First and foremost, however, "earning money" was clearly the priority (few people at that time had parents who could pay for their further education). Pollock worked as a land surveyor in California from 1927 to 1929 (from the age of 15 to 17).

He must have saved up enough money to study art. Pollock studied at the Art Students League in New York from 1929 to 1931. At that time, the school employed so-called "regionalists" as teachers— realistic and naturalistic painters who liked to see themselves as, and acted as, "close to the people." For example, Pollock's teacher Thomas Hart Benton had the young Pollock copy works by old masters (Rubens, etc.).

A typical basic course for aspiring artists, but one that truly gifted painters quickly find boring. Pollock was no exception. He didn't want to endure this uncreative activity for long and, even at a young age, had a mind of his own – he left the Art Students League and went to Mexico.

There he studied under the Mexican painter and graphic artist Jose Clemente Orozco , the founder of contemporary Mexican painting and one of the main representatives of so-called “Muralism” .

The path to your own style

Between 1930 and 1935, Jackson Pollock traveled extensively, including to the western states and to the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, and experimented with painting, exploring everything from traditional American political and ideological themes to symbolic art. In 1935, Pollock moved to New York, and in 1936 he attended a workshop led by another renowned contemporary Mexican painter, David Alfaro Siqueiros , entitled “Experimental Workshop: Laboratory of Modern Techniques in Art.”

At that time, Pollock first came into contact with a freer style of painting; he learned the so-called dripping technique and an artistic pouring technique , and was allowed to paint with spray guns.

Pollock liked this, and through his teacher he met the American painter, Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell and his future wife, the painter and collage artist Lee Krasner . Krasner was four years older than him; she supported Jackson Pollock and shared a studio with him.

From 1938 to 1942, Jackson Pollock worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project ; in 1941, he was allowed exhibition at the McMillen Gallery Robert Motherwell and Lee Krasner .

Pollock was fascinated by the work of Pablo Picasso , which influenced his painting until the early 1940s. The influence of his teacher Benton and the Mexican muralists was also still evident in Pollock's early work. However, their influences diminished as Pollock increasingly engaged with European modernism, Cubism and Surrealism, and the free color gradients of the Catalan artist Joan Miró .

In the early 1940s, Pollock therefore changed again: The large-scale, expressive paintings with Native American motifs became more abstract, Pollock engaged with C.G. Jung and adopted from him the idea that the unconscious is the source of art .

He also studied the art magazine DYN, published by the Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen. In 1941, all these influences culminated in the painting " Birth," which for the first time exhibited the impasto technique and consistent rhythm of his later major works. Subsequently, Pollock became increasingly abstract; in the 1943 paintings "The She-Wolf" and "The Keepers of the Secret," he painted the first of his individual marks, which appear to be freely scattered across the canvas.

Documentary about Jackson Pollock (in English)

Psychotherapy and the search for the unconscious

Between 1939 and 1942, Jackson Pollock underwent psychotherapeutic treatment for his alcoholism (since Prohibition had been repealed in 1933). His therapists, Dr. Joseph Henderson and later Dr. Violet Staub de Laszlo (1941/42), were followers of C.G. Jung and introduced him to the principles of psychology.

Since Pollock was not fond of speaking, he brought drawings to his sittings depicting his dreams, torments, and obsessions. These reinforced his belief that the source of his painting lay in the unconscious. Based on his firm conviction that all people share a common unconscious, Jackson Pollock was inspired by C.G. Jung's theory of archetypes .

When he read an essay by John Graham in the Magazine of Art in 1937, which stated that universal signs could be found art of Central Africa "Birth" (c. 1941, Tate Gallery, London) at the McMillen Gallery.

The artistic breakthrough

In 1942, Pollock exhibited at the “International Surrealist Exhibition” in New York , where he met the legendary art collector Peggy Guggenheim . She became Pollock's most important patron, to whom he would later owe his financial success.

In October 1945, Pollock married Lee Krasner. She is said to have had an overall positive influence on the troubled artist, who had already been in psychotherapy in the early 1940s due to his alcohol problems.

Lee Krasner played a crucial role in supporting Jack Pollock by introducing his work to critics, collectors, and artists, including Herbert Matter, Arshile Gorky, and Willem de Kooning. Her affinity for the artist Henri Matisse led Pollock to use colored rather than tonal painting in his work "Stenographic Figure" (c. 1942, MoMA). She also facilitated Pollock's connection with the director of the Guggenheim Museum, James Johnson Sweeney, which significantly advanced his career.

Pollock continued to paint his concentrated, imaginative pictures, in which his accumulated artistic experience of recent years was expressed; in just a few years (1946 to 1951) he created a complete and innovative body of work from a relatively small number of canvas paintings, which would make him one of the most important artists of the 20th century.

In addition to paintings, Pollock created several hundred works on paper (watercolor, pencil, collage, gouache, ink) which had their place in his exhibitions, but only really came into the awareness of the art world long after his death – probably precisely when all of Pollock's paintings had found permanent owners and the trade in the "money-making Pollock" came to nothing.

Pollock's "breakthrough to fame and fortune" came in 1949 when a four-page feature in Life magazine instantly made him the most famous up-and-coming painter in America. The political climate was also ripe for Jackson Pollock's work: the Cold War was developing, and Pollock was a welcome ambassador of a democratic, liberal, and "wild" America.

Peggy Guggenheim and the significance of “Mural” for the drip paintings

Peggy Guggenheim became an early supporter of Jackson Pollock. In July 1943, they signed a contract that guaranteed him a monthly income of $150. At her New York gallery, "Art of This Century" (founded in October 1942), she held his first solo exhibition .

It was one of her art advisors who showed her the paintings of Jackson Pollock – Piet Mondrian was so impressed by his painting “Stenographic Figure” that he described it as the most powerful work he had seen in the USA up to that point. Other supporters included Howard Putzel, her assistant, and Sweeney.

Guggenheim commissioned the then completely unknown artist Jackson Pollock to create a mural (1943, University of Iowa) for the foyer of her new double apartment on East First Street. Following advice from her friend and advisor Marcel Duchamp, he painted the picture not directly on the wall, but on a 2.5 by 6 meter canvas so that it could be moved.

Since Pollock's studio was too small for the work, the two secretly broke down a wall and hauled the rubble out of the apartment in buckets. The well-known collector recalled that the then-unknown Pollock had sat in front of the painting for days, uninspired and lost in deep depression.

During World War II, Jackson Pollock was unable to create a figurative composition as a symbol of the times. Instead, he created a series of biomorphic figures reminiscent of stick figures in prehistoric cave paintings.

When art critic Clement Greenberg first saw the artwork, he recognized its enormous potential and called him the leading painter in the USA at that time. In 1951, Peggy Guggenheim donated the masterpiece to the University of Iowa.

“Mural” is his first abstract artwork, which led to the famous Drip Paintings between 1946 and 1950.

Pollock's Drip Paintings

The unconventional but reclusive painter was featured in the popular magazine Life on August 8, 1949, prompting questions about whether he was the most important painter in the United States. His most famous works were created between 1947 and 1950 and are known as drip paintings .

At the end of 1946, Pollock and his wife Krasner decided to focus exclusively on dripping and pouring paint. This led Pollock to abandon figurative elements and invent all-over designs .

Thomas Hart Benton, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and the lesser-known artist Janet Scobel, as well as Native American sand painting, were influences on the painter Jackson Pollock. He began to work in a new way with synthetic resin varnishes, also alkyd varnishes . He described the use of household paints instead of artists' paints as "a natural growth out of need."

Pollock used resin brushes, rods, and even syringes to drip and pour paint onto the canvas without touching it. His technique of pouring and dripping paint—drip painting—is considered one of the origins of action painting (Harold Rosenberg in ARTnews, 1952).

This allowed him to work more directly and let the paint flow. He laid the canvas on the floor, used the movements of his entire body, and applied drops of paint to the canvas from all directions. To offer viewers more associations, Pollock decided in 1948 to number his paintings; his first work was "Number 1A" (MoMA).

1950 was Pollock's most fruitful year, in which he created fifty paintings, including "Lavender Mist: Number 1", which can be found in the Washington National Gallery of Art.

Photographer Hans Namuth observed the artist during his creative process and left behind an impressive series of photographs capturing the painter's dancing movements, including those for "One: Number 31" and "Autumn Rhythm: Number 30" "Number 29" on a piece of glass outdoors and allowed himself to be filmed doing so. After the shoot, Pollock, for the first time in a long time, overindulged in alcohol and stumbled home completely drunk.

Famous works of art by Jackson Pollock

From 1946 onwards, Jackson Pollock further developed the dripping technique in his own way. He no longer just dripped paint, but laid his canvases on the floor, let the paint flow onto them from above, flung and poured, sprinkled and troweled paint onto the canvas.

In this mixture of paint applications, distinctive structures, patterns, and rhythms emerge. Action Painting was invented, and with this style, Pollock inscribed himself in art history . Famous artworks of Jackson Pollock's "Action Painting":

• “Birth”, 1941, now Tate Gallery of Modern Art, London
• “Blue (Moby Dick)”, 1943, Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan
• “Mural”, 1944, (a 6 x 2.5 m mural commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim)
• “Eyes in the Heat”, 1946, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
• “Shimmering Substance”, 1946, Museum of Modern Art, New York
• “Shooting Star”, 1947, whereabouts unknown
• “Enchanted Forest”, 1947, The Guggenheim Collection
• “No. 5, 1948”, also from 1948, in private ownership
• “No. 8”, Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York

However, Pollock was still an alcoholic, often depressed and irritable , and this was reflected in his style from 1950 onwards: the large pictures became black and white or dominated by brown and black lines, a striking example of this creative period is “The deep” from 1953 .

The Deep is one of Pollock's last paintings; he hardly painted after 1951, with a brief interruption of figurative painting from 1953 onwards. Around the end of 1954, however, Pollock stopped painting altogether, and soon after, he also stopped living, following a tragic car accident.

 

20 of Jackson Pollock's most famous works

What kind of art does Jackson Pollock make?

Pollock painted and drew, and he painted and drew almost exclusively ; for a modern artist in the mid-20th century, this was much more normal than today, when a contemporary artist regularly experiments with many forms of expression. The range of possibilities was also much narrower back then; film and photography had barely been explored in art, and other media such as video and computers—which also influenced numerous modern works on musaartgallery.com —were still entirely unknown to the world.

However, that was enough for Jackson Pollock to express his creativity. After all, he was working on developing a completely new form of painting, moving away from the mere brushstroke and towards all sorts of physical expressions to bring the paint to the canvas – “action painting” in the quite literal sense.

Jackson Pollock also had his own idea for his paintings: they are not "brimming with contrasts" for nothing. Pollock, caught in a conflict-ridden relationship with his environment, attempted in this way to express what he perceived as a contradiction between "body" and "soul".

Jackson Pollock's nickname

Pollock's physical, sometimes even violent, painting style was, to put it mildly, unsettling to many art critics who were accustomed to neatly dressed painters with their brushes in front of their easels. Art connoisseurs inclined towards the avant-garde were probably just as rare then as they are today, or perhaps the press already enjoyed reflecting the (supposed) opinion of the "average Joe" with an eye on sales figures.

In any case, in its article “The Wild Ones” of February 20, 1956, “Time Magazine” renamed Jackson Pollock “Jack the Dripper” , freely after the self-chosen pseudonym of the serial killer Jack the Ripper (Jack the Ripper), who in 1888 in London treated human bodies in a similarly rough manner as Jackson Pollock treated the traditional way of putting a painting on canvas.

What art style does Jackson Pollock represent?

Jackson Pollock does not represent an art style, but he developed an art style, “Action Painting”, as a special form of American abstract expressionism of the so-called “New York School” .

The “discoverer” of Jackson Pollock

As early as 1943, the progressive gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim, who was familiar with European art, signed Jackson Pollock – the art connoisseur of Jewish descent had to flee from France to New York in 1941 and had opened a gallery there in 1942, in which she emigrated from Europe and promoted American artists with fresh ideas.

Pollock received an exclusive contract and a monthly salary of $150, which secured his livelihood, and was able to exhibit his works in their gallery “Art of This Century” in New York.

Other important supporters and companions of Jackson Pollock

The artist (and later wife) Lee Krasner was probably the first to discover Pollock's genius; for many art historians, the "promotion with love" is the reason why the unstable Pollock learned to use his abilities in a results-oriented manner.

During his early years, Pollock was also supported by more well-known painters of the emerging “New York School”, such as Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell.

Outstanding in the life's work of Jackson Pollock

There are many outstanding aspects to Jackson Pollock's life's work, but perhaps the most remarkable is that this psychologically unstable man still managed to create a completely independent body of work without relying on role models.

In doing so, Pollock did a great deal for contemporary American art, which until then had not been able to gain real recognition in the more artistically progressive Europe. The North American modernism of the abstract expressionists was finally able to sever its ties to Europe; works by Jackson Pollock reached the major museums, including in Europe; he was invited to documenta II (1959) a room exclusively dedicated to his work at documenta III (1964)

Important Jackson Pollock exhibitions – which are still taking place today

Pollock not only participated in documenta (1959 and 1964), but in 1950 he was also one of three US artists selected for the Venice Biennale. During his short life, Pollock's work was featured in several important international contemporary art exhibitions, but the "Jackson Pollock hype" truly unfolded only after his death: To date, his work has been featured in approximately 250 solo exhibitions in the USA, around 50 in Germany, 20 in Great Britain and Italy, and 15 in Spain.

His influence on the world today is powerful and far from over. Between 2000 and 2012, there were nearly 30 solo exhibitions of Jackson Pollock's works worldwide, from Berlin to Paris and Venice, from New York City to Canada and Australia, and on to Russia and Asia.

His paintings are included in the collections of museums in around two dozen countries, often in several museums within a single country. Anyone wanting to exhibit contemporary art needs a "Jackson Pollock" .

In 2013 and 2014, works by Jackson Pollock were featured in 13 group exhibitions held on three continents. Interest remains strong.

There is of course much more to tell about Jackson Pollock than such a “glance” can capture, e.g., that one of his paintings was for a long time the “most expensive painting in the world”, and the sad story of his death, which is not solely responsible for Jackson Pollock becoming a myth.

Jackson Pollock can still cause a sensation even today, most recently in 2005. But this story will unfortunately have to be reserved for a longer article dealing with Jackson Pollock's life and work.