JACKSON

POLL

OCK

BY: EMILY

CORCORAN

JACKSON POLLOCK Early Life Life After 1942Influences Unique Technique Paintings DeathLegacy Memories

EARLY LIFE• Born January 28, 1912• Cody, Wyoming • Born with last name McCoy • After parents death became Pollock after being adopted• Grew up in Arizona and Chico, California • Enrolled in Los Angeles’ Manual Arts High School• Expelled after being expelled from another High School in

1928• Moved to New York City to study under Thomas

Hart Benton at the Art Students League of New York

• When moving to New York Jackson dropped his first name Paul

• Studied Under Benton for 2 ½ years • 1935 worked for the WPA Federal Art Project • Easel Painter • Next 2 years lived in poverty with brother and wife

until 1942

LIFE AFTER 1942• 1937 began treatment for alcoholism • 1938 suffered a nervous break down forcing him

to be institutionalized for months• 1939 – 1941 while in treatment psychoanalysts

used his work as treatment for other patients • 1943 given contract by Peggy Guggenheim at

Art of This Century gallery• First one man show• 1944 created first wall sized painting “Mural” • Pollock struggled to find a process by which he

could translate entire personality into painting • Totem Lesson 1 (1944)• The Blue Unconscious (1946)• Eyes in the Heat (1946)• 1945 married painter Lee Krasner• Helped him to stabilize this life

INFLUENCES• The work of the Ukrainian

American artist Janet Sobel• Mexican Muralists•Pablo Picasso & Joan Miró • Surrealist Automatism • Indian Sand Painting • European Modern Art• American painter Albert Pinkham

Ryder• Thomas Benton

UNIQUE TECHNIQUE • Perfected the technique of working with paint • Introduced the use of liquid paint in 1936 at experimental

workshop• Later used paint pouring as one of several techniques on

canvases• “Male and Female” & Composition with Pouring I” • Began to paint with his canvases laid out on the studio

floor • Later developed “Drip” technique • Using only synthetic resin-based paints called alkyd enamels • Pollock used hardened brushes, sticks and even basting

syringes as paint applicators• Used technique of pouring and dripping paint “Action

Painting”• Pollock was able to achieve a more immediate means of creating

art• Paint flowing from chosen tool onto the canvas • Added new dimensions; applying paint from all directions • Time magazine called him “Jackson the Dripper” • Move freely around a room as if he were dancing on the

painting • 1951 and 1952 painted almost exclusively in black enamel

on different sized canvas

PAINTINGS • Drip Period • Full Fathom Five (1947) • Summertime (1948)• Mural Sized (1950)• One• Autumn Rhythm• Lavender Mist• Un-sized Canvas • Number Twenty-three, 1951/“Frogman” (1951)• Echo (1951)• Number Seven, 1952 (1952)• 1952 returned to color

and Mural Scale paintings

• Convergence (1952) • Blue Poles (1952)

•Last series of major works in 1953

•Portrait and a Dream• Easter and the Totem•Ocean Greyness• The Deep

•Last years •White Light (1954)•Scent (1955)

DEATH• Died August 11, 1956 • Single-car crash while driving

under the influence of alcohol • Killing himself, passenger Edith Metzger and Ruth Kligman (mistress) • Age 44• Lee Krasner (Wife) managed

estate and ensured Pollock's reputation remained strong despite changing art-world trends

• Buried in Green River Cemetery in Springs, New York with a large boulder marking his grave

LEGACY “After Pollock’s death, artists

active in the American Art Movements immediately following Abstract Expression such-as “happenings,” Pop art, and Colour Field painting”

• Became a model of a painter who fused art and life

• Started European art movements and artists

• Considered an “iconic” master of mid- century Modernism

• Pollock-Krasner-Foundation established in 1985

• Assists individual working artists or merit with financial needs

“Pollock was described by his contemporaries as gentle

and contemplative when sober, violent when drunk. These

extremes found equilibrium in his art. He was highly

intelligent, widely read, and, when he chose, incisively

articulate. He believed that art derived from the

unconscious, saw himself as the essential subject of his

Painting, and judged his work and that of others on its

inherent authenticity of personal expression.”