Artist of the Day: Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock 

I remember as a child being introduced to the work of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and likening the randomly appearing drizzles to the drop cloth of a frenetic house painter.

What I didn't know or appreciate at such a tender age is that Pollock was a pioneer of abstract expressionism made famous by the likes of Pollock peers and contemporaries such as William de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

Jackson Pollock's "Number 1" (1948)

It was an intellectual movement likely spurred on by Pollock's wife, an abstract painter of considerable distinction herself, and also seasoned by the painter's boyhood exposure to Native American art growing up in Arizona and travelling throughout the Southwest.

Avoiding any perceivable point of emphasis, Pollock's drip technique" (he would poke holes in the bottoms of tin cans to distribute his pigment) and paint pouring techniques evolved into a signature style. Using household and industrial paints instead of artists' oils, it is little wonder that I and others would compare his work to spilled residue on the protected floors of some remodeled room.

Some called Pollock's style "action painting." It gave rise to an entire philosophy of paint application, in which a given artist would strive toward spontanaity and randomness rather than calculated construction of a tangible image. Pollock named his paintings by number, rather than assigning any formal description or title to them.

 Pollock Patron Peggy Guggenheim

Pollock ultimately attracted the patronage of megaheiress-turned-Bohemian Peggy Gugenheim and  skyrocketed to fame following a 1949 Life magazine feature which posed the question: "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" 

Popular response to the article was highly critical. One person complained that Pollock's paintings were like "a mop of tangled hair I have an irresistible urge to comb out."  

Attempting to translate his avant garde approach to art to the layman, Time magazine nicknamed Pollock "Jack the Dripper" in a 1956 article and allowed Pollock himself to make startling contrasts between traditional methods of painting and the pioneering approach of an abstract expressionist.

"My painting does not come from the easel," he explained. "I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor... On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting. I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting."

 At ease painting on the floor, Pollock liked to literally be in his paintings

As random as his creations may have seemed to the eyes of a child, Pollock claimed that he approached his paintings with a general idea of how he wanted them to appear. Ultimately his canvases expressed a tension between the uncontrollable and the controllable, creatively contrasting the realms betwen order and chaos.

It might be said that Pollock's life imitated his art. He was an alcoholic whose personal pendulum swung deeply into the darm realms of chaos. His premature death in an automobile crash certainly lends credence to that perspective. It also elevated his fame to that of a rock star, whose meteoric rise inevitably leads to a dramatic burnout.

Actor Ed Harris played Pollock in the 2000 film by the same name

Hollywood found Pollock's story dramatic enough to create a feature length film. Ed Harris directed  and played the main role in "Pollock" (released in 2000) after Harris' father noted that his son bore a strong likeness to the painter. Marcia Gay-Harden played Pollock's wife.