American artist Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, in the Cody settlement in Wyoming. Jackson was the youngest of five brothers.
In 1928, when the family settled in Los Angeles, the young man entered a high school of applied trades, but was expelled for alcohol consumption and inappropriate behavior. That same year he was kicked out of another school.
In 1930, Jackson moved to New York City and settled in the apartment of his brother Charles and his wife Elizabeth.
Jackson was characterized by a bad temper: arrogant, proud and arrogant. In addition, the young man abused alcohol and smoking.
The support of the young bully was the artist Thomas Hart Benton, who studied Jackson and his brother Charles in the League of Art Students of New York. Benton painted in the style of regionalism and Mexican muralism, that is, realistically depicted the daily life of Americans and Indians of the Midwest, trying to make the subjects understandable and close to as many people as possible.
Several of Pollock’s early paintings are in a similar style, but the teacher’s influence was slight – Jackson worked mainly in his own direction.
Pollock was fascinated by surrealism, particularly Picasso, his work Guernica. Several of Pollock’s sketchbooks have survived, the sheets of which are scribbled with sketches of Picasso’s Guernica.
For four years, from 1938 to 1942, Jackson worked for the Federal Art Project, a massive government program to support and employ people in the creative professions during the Great Depression. Pollock continued to experiment and moved closer and closer in style to abstractionism.
Meanwhile, Jackson was drinking more and more. For several years he visited a psychotherapist. It was probably then that Pollock determined for himself that the main source of creativity – not the surrounding world, and the internal state of man.
In 1942, a girl came to Jackson’s studio unannounced with the words, “I know all the abstractionists in New York, except you!”. This was Lee Krasner, an artist from a Russian-Jewish family who had once moved from Ukraine to America. Three years later, Jackson and Lee were married.
The origins of drip painting
Jackson Pollock’s drip painting grew out of several components. The first and second were married, and their names were Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim. After the outbreak of World War II, they move to the United States where they each work in their own genre. Max Ernst paints, Peggy Guggenheim runs a gallery business and organizes exhibitions while promoting young artists. Ernst began practicing a new technique he called hesitation and described as follows: “Tie an empty tin can to a rope a meter or two long, make a hole in the bottom, fill it with lighter paint and swing it over the canvas.” The first such painting was “Art Abstract, Art Concrete,” later transformed into “Head of a Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly.” This painting later caught the attention of Jackson Pollock, who asked Ernst how he created it. Pollock became interested in the technique, which he modified and christened himself with the term drip painting.
In 1943 Max Ernst divorced Peggy Guggenheim and in 1950 returned to Europe.
At this time, another woman, Janet Sobel, entered the circles of the New York art world. She meets Max Ernst and Peggy Guggenheim. Her “drip painting” fascinates with its soft colorism. She participates in exhibitions and becomes famous. But by 1946 the family moves out of New York and Janet Sobel falls out of the ranks of artists.
Since 1943, Peggy begins to cooperate with Pollock and pay him 150 dollars a month initially, gradually increasing the payment. On this money the artist exists, and Peggy tries to sell his work. The works almost never sell. In 1946-47, based on the ideas of the artists described above, Pollock’s signature style begins to take shape.
For the rest of his career, Jackson collaborated with Peggy, who promoted the work of Pollock and other famous abstractionists.
Jackson’s works of this period are made according to the classical canons of abstractionism: the refusal to depict real objects, violation of form and perspective, experimentation with color.
Pollock begins to create his works on canvases of unusually large sizes. His work “Fresco” has six meters in length and almost two in width.
By the way, “Mural” was created under unusual circumstances: Peggy Guggenheim ordered it from Jackson for her townhouse in Manhattan.
But it turned out that Pollock couldn’t begin to paint it. Guggenheim grew increasingly irritated and eventually issued an ultimatum: either Jackson would finish the work by January or he could kiss his career goodbye. The evening before the deadline, the canvas was still intact, but when Peggy woke up in the morning, there was Jackson on the doorstep with the rolled-up canvas in his hands – the work had been created overnight.
This beautiful story was captured in one of Pollock’s most famous Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies, “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga.” However, in 2014, the Getty Museum of America and the Getty Conservation Institute refuted this rumor by publishing a study showing that at least several weeks had passed between the application of the various layers on the canvas. Nevertheless, it is likely that most of the work – the final layer – was created in 24 hours.
Pollock struggled with alcoholism. Borrowing money from Peggy, the newlyweds bought a small house on Long Island, and rural nature definitely went in his favor. In the barn he set up a small studio.
Among researchers and fans of Pollock’s work there is a beautiful story that the artist invented the “drip technique”, accidentally spilling paint on the canvas spread on the floor. Strangely enough, it became a breakthrough.
The first exhibition of paintings made in the “drip technique” attracted enormous public attention.
The turning point, after which Jackson Pollock became world famous, was an article in Life magazine, published in August 8, 1949 under the question “Is Jackson Pollock is the greatest living artist of America?”.
Fate seems to have decided to answer that question in the affirmative – Jackson Pollock received fame, money and recognition. In some ways, Pollock was lucky to be born in the right place at the right time: the rise of his career coincided with the rise of the United States as a great power after World War II. The country needed an artist who could bring the national American art to the world level and compete with the European recognized masters. That artist was Jackson Pollock and his abstract expressionism.
Jackson doubted the “drip technique” and could not even answer for himself the question of whether his work was quackery. In 1951, at the height of his popularity, Pollock abandoned the bright “drip technique” and began to write dark ink works that reflected his inner state. It was as if he was trying to prove that his work should not be perceived as superficial, light, decorative and bringing only pleasure.
The first exhibition failed – only one work was sold, and that for half the price.
Jackson had no choice but to abandon his unsuccessful black-and-white attempts and return to brightness. Beginning in 1952, he experimented with colors, balancing between abstractionism and the “drip technique”. But he seems to have exhausted his inspiration. In the last five years of his life, Pollock never produced any significant paintings. The last major work is considered to be the painting “Portrait and Dream” painted in 1953.
Commenting on this work, Lee said that the “dream” represented “the backside of the moon.”
Death increases the value
On a warm August evening, they were going to a party at a friend’s house. Jackson got behind the wheel drunk, which was a common occurrence. He failed to control the car, and the car flew off the road three kilometers from the house.
Jackson Pollock died in a car accident on August 11, 1956.
After Jackson’s sudden death, his image gained popularity: a strange genius artist, who all his life struggled with his inner demons – what is not a romantic hero?
After his death, his paintings soared in value several times over and still top the list of the most expensive works of art.
At the first acquaintance with Pollock’s paintings, many people divorce their hands and say: “And it costs so much money? I can paint like that too!” This is true. However, there is a “but.” You can just as easily press a piano key, and your “C” or “B” will be no different from Mozart’s or Bach’s “C” or “B”. But that doesn’t make you a great composer. What’s more important is how Mozart or Bach combined the notes to create a unified sound. It’s the same with Pollock’s paintings: even a child can splash paint on a table, of course, but only Pollock can do it in such a way that dozens of splashes harmoniously coexist in a composition. This is probably his genius.
Pollock wrote: “My painting is not from an easel. I prefer to attach an unstretched canvas to a solid wall or floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. I find it easier on the floor. I feel closer to most of the painting because that way I can walk around it, work from four sides and literally be in the painting.”
Jackson broke with the dominant European tradition and created an alternative art movement that drew attention to the United States as a new world center for culture and art. Pollock’s works seem to epitomize the whole of America – a huge country where life is hectic and boiling. https://ny-museums.com/museums/museum-of-modern-art/
