Death of Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock died on August 11, 1956, in Springs, New York.
The artist known as “Jack the Dripper” was born Paul Jackson Pollock in Cody, Wyoming on January 28, 1912.
Raised in Arizona and California, Pollock grew up with a fondness and appreciation for Native American culture due to his frequent surveying trips with his father. In 1930, Pollock moved to New York City where he studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League.
While Pollock had little interest in Benton’s rural American subject matter, he was greatly influenced by his teacher’s rhythmic painting style. In the coming years, Pollock’s observations of Indian sand painting, Mexican muralists, and surrealists influenced his artistic style.
In 1938, Pollock began working with the WPA Federal Art Project, a New Deal program that hired artists to create murals, paintings, sculpture, posters, and more. He remained with the WPA on and off until 1942. After that he signed a gallery contract with Peggy Guggenheim and held his first exhibition that was described as “volcanic. It has fire. It is unpredictable. It is undisciplined. It spills out of itself in a mineral prodigality, not yet crystallized.”
Pollock’s most famous paintings came from his “drop period” between 1947 and 1950. Pollock found he preferred to lay large canvases on the floor so he could walk around his work, viewing and painting from all directions. His technique included dripping house paint on the canvas and moving it around with hardened brushes and sticks. Employing this technique, Pollock used color, line, shape, texture, brushstroke, and light to express emotion.
Pollock became particularly famous after he was featured in a four-page spread in Life magazine in August 1949 that asked “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” Then in 1950, Pollock abandoned his drip style and his paintings were darker in color and sought to find a balance between abstract and figural. Pollock eventually returned to using color and figures.
Pollock produced his last two paintings, Scent and Search in 1955. He spent his last year making sculptures. Then on August 11, 1956, Pollock died in a single-car crash while driving under the influence of alcohol.
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Great information on someone I knew very little about.
How this guy was ever taken seriously, I’ll never understand. Anyone who’s honest will admit that squirting and throwing paint around is about as “artistic” as anything created by a two-year-old with a box of crayons.
“ … It is undisciplined. It spills out of itself in a mineral prodigality, not yet crystallized.â€
I imagine the supercilious, pompous person who dusted off his thesaurus to write this review fancied himself to be extremely high-minded—on a lofty level of existence and thought the “average Joe” could never comprehend. But I do agree that his work was “undisciplinedâ€.
Modern art is nothing if not pretentious.
It amazes me how profoundly different Pollock was from Benton. Apparently he either had very little respect for his teacher, or all he learned was technique, not the “art of seeing” which Benton mastered so well.
Folks no need to be so critical of his work. Just consider it the lighter side of artistry.