Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock – Studies with Thomas Hart Benton, impressed by the work of Picasso

Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming on 28 January 1912. The son of a farmer, he grew up in deep America, but at his father’s request received a good education and also came into contact with art and culture. Jackson Pollock shared his interest in painting with his eldest brother Charles who had made a name for himself before Jackson as an Expressionist. Pollack attended the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, and worked afterwards as a land surveyor until 1929 before enrolling at the Art Students League in New York and studying under Thomas Hart Benton, one of the most important exponents of American Regionalism. In the 1930s, Jackson Pollock himself worked in this anti-modernist style and was influenced by the art of the muralist Diego Rivera as well as certain aspects of Surrealism. His encounter with the work of Picasso, in particular his anti-war picture Guernica, was a kind of initial spark that made him realise what he could achieve with his art, if only he did it the correct way. 

Via indigenous imagery to modern Action Painting

Jackson Pollock was familiar with the culture of the indigenous people of North America through his father and drew from their visual worlds as inspiration for his work, creating large-scale, expressive painting against this backdrop. In discourse with C. G. Jung, he searched for the unconscious as the origin of art; he wanted to create what could not be created but only perceived. In 1949, a four-page report in the widely read magazine Life made him with one stroke the most famous young artist in America. He had by then already developed his famous Action Painting in which he simply hurled his inspiration, his innermost being, onto the canvas without plan, structure and concept. At the beginning of the 1950s, Pollock renounced colour for a time, and designed large-scale compositions in black and white, only to return in 1953 to the brush, colour and figuration. With a series of pictures showing the artist at work, the German-born photographer Hans Namuth made a significant contribution to the myth of Jackson Pollock that continues to this day. 

The new era of modern art ended with alcoholism

Jackson Pollock’s glittering career lasted only a few years before he irrevocably drowned his talent and his life in alcohol. Life slipped away from the artist; he created very few works, and his wife, the painter Lee Krasner, fled from his affairs and outbursts to Europe. Jackson Pollock died on 11 August 1956 in a car accident he caused himself while under the influence of alcohol. Seated next to the artist as his cabriolet turned over were his former lover Ruth Kligman and her friend Edith Metzger – only Kligman survived, badly injured. The few years the artist was able to keep his demons in check were however enough to permanently change the world of art. Time magazine celebrated Pollock as Jack the Dripper - a play on his painting method by which he sometimes simply let the paint drip onto the canvas - whilst art critics mention him in the same breath as Leonardo da Vinci and his role model Pablo Picasso.