Jackson Pollock took an unconventional approach to painting unconventional pictures. He preferred laying his canvas on the floor instead of setting it on an easel, and rarely touched it with his brush — that is, whenever he happened to use a brush, which wasn’t often. Instead, Pollock would drip paint from knives or sticks or other such objects while he frantically moved around the canvas trying to create the right combination of color, pattern, and texture. With this defiant attitude, Pollock helped define the genre of Abstract Expressionism and make New York City the art capital of the world.
Plagued by alcoholism, Pollock’s life ended at the age of 44 when he crashed his car into a tree just one mile away from his home. He had been drinking that night, and it would prove to be his last. Today is Pollock’s birthday, so to celebrate a life lived instead of mourn a life cut short, we bring you 50 facts about the controversial man who didn’t want to do what all other painters had done before him.
1. When the German-born American painter Hans Hofmann invited Pollock to study with him and work more from nature, Pollock replied: “I am nature.”
2. For a time, Pollock sprayed paint onto the canvas through a syringe.
3. In the summer of 1938, Pollock had a nervous breakdown, which left him in a psychiatric care unit for a few months.
4. While living in Los Angeles, Pollock’s eldest brother, Charles, kept the rest of the family informed with what was happening in the art world by regularly sending home issues of The Dial and American Mercury.
5. Some people would buy Pollock drinks at the bar just to see what kind of bizarre antics he would get up to when drunk.
6. In January 1951, Art News published a list of the best exhibitions of 1950. The top three shows belonged to Pollock.
7. After Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, moved into their Long Island home, Pollock spent the entire winter fixing up the house without painting a single thing.
8. While still a young man, Pollock once traveled by freight train around Oklahoma and northern Texas, where he met vagrants, prostitutes, and did a few short stints in jail.
9. Pollock once had a job cleaning statues for the Emergency Relief Bureau. He also briefly worked as a janitor with his brother, Sanford, at a children’s school where their eldest brother, Charles, taught.
10. When a teenager, Pollock once wrote, “People have always frightened and bored me consequently I have been within my own shell.”
Comments (11)
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2010/11/08/jackson-pollock-more-than-just-a-tool-a-cia-tool/
not the piece i wanted to post but good enough. i think interesting. -vg
Was he a thinker or a doer. Does America love thinkers or doers. Who earns more money… thinkers or doers. Who do people want to thoughtlessly emulate, thinkers or doers. Are you doing what I’m thinking you’re doing ?
“She-Wolf” is included in MoMA’s current “Abstract Expressionists in New York” exhibit. It’s a striking painting. I attended a gallery talk about this exhibit led by the artist Richard Tuttle. He paused for a long time in front of this painting just contemplating it before he said anything, then explained why it is a great painting.
I’ve seen a number of attempts by people to emulate Pollock’s drip-paintings, but none of these attempts have had the ‘presence’ and ‘authority’ of a Pollock drip-painting. They may look easy to imitate, but they aren’t. Of course I do like the greeting card I once saw, showing the child Pollock in his mother’s kitchen, with his mother’s apron covered with swirls and splashes of spaghetti sauce as she cooks dinner. LOL
My two favorite responses by Pollock mentioned in this article are when he says, “I am nature,” and his taking as a compliment a critic saying that his drip-paintings have no beginning and no end. My favorite of his drip-paintings is “Blue Poles.”
Pollack was one of the first true aleatoric artists.
http://www.siennablu.com/HOMEATORIC.html
I respect his approach and the philosophy his art communicates to me almost more than I enjoy seeing his art, and I enjoy it a lot. there’s something restful about chaos allowed to be chaos, unchained madness in it’s natural habitat and at peace with itself. He seemed like such a troubled sort that I wonder how much of what he produced truly pleased him, and if he could distinguish between the pleasure he must he gotten from being accepted and revered by the art community, and the gratification he, as an artist, felt from having successfully brought his vision to fruition. These 50 random facts are wonderful because they give us a deeper insight into the character of this important seminal figure in our culture. I want to know what would happen if Jackson Pollack took a Rorscach test Haha!
Pollock may have been quoted that his paintings had no beginning or end but they indeed had a statement.
[...] of art history. In “observance” of his birth Flavorwire posted an interesting article 50 things you did not know about Jackson Pollock. I am continue to be fascinated by the man. In January 1951, Art News published a list of the best [...]
Pollock is indicative of America and particularly American art, plastic and all surface. Did the so called maverick produce anything of value to art or society… did he produce a Guernica, did he bemuse us with his virtuosity, effortlessly in a myriad of different forms. Did he produce a single thing that you would want to truly save as the submit of our human kinds, creative achievements. No, and nor did or does any North American. It is the melting pit of the modernity.
Ok, so dribbling paint must have seemed achingly modern, but nothing changes the fact that he was an idiot who killed a girl when he killed himself.
Per #49/50 on the list, has anyone ever asked if the saying: “The Real McCoy” meant a Pollock painting was authentic, and not a copy or forgery?
To me, his paintings are his art from nature interpretation of pond surface reflections of winter tree branches/twigs and bushes.
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