Clip & save - Art Notes - Jackson Pollock - Brief Article

the artist

Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, the youngest of five brothers, all of whom had careers in the visual arts. Jackson was not very talkative, and he was continually expelled from schools for his rebellious behavior. Only when he decided to become an artist did he find lasting satisfaction. He went to New York where he enrolled in the Art Students League (an art school) under the guidance of the well-known painter, Thomas Hart Benton. Benton recognized Pollock's talent and became a lifelong friend.

Pollock was strongly influenced by the powerful rhythms in Benton's painting, but continued to search for the best way to express himself. Along the way, he studied the ideas to be found in the work of such experimental artists as Albert Pinkham Ryder, and Mexican painters, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco.

At the time he started out on his career, the Great Depression of the 1930s was underway and there was no work for artists. Between 1935 and 1943, he found it necessary to join 5,000 other unemployed artists and work for the government. The government expected artists to paint traditional, realistic pictures, but in his spare time Pollock continued to experiment with his own personal ideas.

Pollock eventually rejected the idea of painting realistic objects and developed a style where he completely covered large canvases with abstract lines. He avoided having a center of interest. While these ideas made his work look very original, he didn't invent all-over painting. Students who are interested in this approach to painting should look at work by such modern artists as Piet Mondrian, Mark Tobey, Joan Miro and Francis Picabia.

Moreover, instead of applying paint with brushes or palette knives, Pollock chose to pour it out of paint cans directly onto very large sheets of canvas that he had tacked to the floor of his studio. In this way, he rarely touched the surface of the canvas. And, instead of painting from only one position, he walked around the canvas pouring paint from any of the four sides, occasionally stepping on the canvas to reach particular areas more easily.

The intent behind his painting style was that it should be spontaneous and should arise from his unconscious mind rather than being carefully planned in advance--something like improvisational music (jazz, for example). In fact, he believed that abstract art should be enjoyed as music is enjoyed, rather than be used for copying appearances.

A motion picture made while he was working, shows him more like a creative performer, focusing all his attention on the act of painting. He poured and dribbled paint boldly and, in doing so, took great risks, because if any single action had failed, the entire painting would have been ruined.

In addition to his paintings, the artist made large numbers of drawings. Some of them showed his ability to draw realistically, while others look very much the work of the Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso.

The search that led Pollock to his mature style took a number of years to develop. It finally appeared in the late 1940s, and most of his best work was done between 1950 and 1956. His career ended tragically in a car wreck in 1956, at the age of 44.

this painting

Many of Pollock's pictures were painted in black on unprepared, cream-colored canvas, but this one includes large amounts of color. However, careful observation will show that much of the color has been applied on top of underpainting that was black, or at least very dark. This layering is used create a thick web of lines and is apparent in many of Pollock's best paintings. Perhaps the most interesting thing about these lines is that they help explain how the artist worked, as well as being a finished picture.

In the final layers of the painting, Pollock departed from the black foundation by adding numbers of different, bright colors: white, yellow, red and blue. Some of these overlying colors were allowed to smear and spread into other colors to complete the painting.

The addition of so much color makes the painting much like some of Pollock's earlier paintings that he had completed several years before. While some art critics at the time believed that this painting was about to become a failure and was only saved by the addition of the color, other people disagree. Nevertheless, it is true that the painting is different from numbers of others that Pollock painted during the last years of his life.

Just about all of the lines in this and most of the best of Pollock's paintings have been poured with a swinging motion of his arms and body. He allowed small quantities of paint to fall on some parts of the canvas to make thin lines while, in other parts, large quantities of paint produced broad lines. And in some areas, it is easy to see that at times he swung the buckets of paint violently to create large curving lines, while elsewhere he must have been nearly standing still.

Knowing these things will enable students to read how Pollock worked. They should then be better able to understand why the style is also called "Action Painting." Students should realize, however, that numbers of Abstract Expressionist artists did not work in this very physical way.