Happy 100th Birthday Jackson Pollock
Archive for the ‘Jackson Pollock’ Category
It doesn’t make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement…
January 28, 2012Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
January 30, 2011Jackson Pollock
American painter, the commanding figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement.
He began to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students’ League, New York, under the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. During the 1930s he worked in the manner of the Regionalists, being influenced also by the Mexican muralist painters (Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros) and by certain aspects of Surrealism. From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the Federal Art Project. By the mid 1940s he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the `drip and splash’ style for which he is best known emerged with some abruptness in 1947. Instead of using the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead of using brushes he manipulated it with `sticks, trowels or knives’ (to use his own words), sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of `sand, broken glass or other foreign matter’. This manner of Action painting had in common with Surrealist theories of automatism that it was supposed by artists and critics alike to result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist.
Pollock’s name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of relations among parts. The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas — indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
It doesn’t matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.
October 3, 2010Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, sometimes struggling with alcoholism. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.
Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident. In December 1956, he was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, and a larger more comprehensive exhibition there in 1967. More recently, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London.
In 2000, Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award–winning film Pollock directed by and starring Ed Harris.
It doesn’t matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.
November 13, 2009Jackson Pollock
Lavender Mist 1950
Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality and struggled with alcoholism all of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy He died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related, single-car crash. In December 1956, he was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, and a larger more comprehensive exhibition there in 1967. More recently, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London. In 2000, Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award-winning film directed by and starring Ed Harris.
Every good painter paints what he is.
June 2, 2009Jackson Pollock
Going West 1934-35
Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. In October 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist, but had a volatile personality and struggled with alcoholism all of his life. He died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related, single-car crash. In December 1956, he was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, and a larger more comprehensive exhibition there in 1967. More recently, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London. In 2000, Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award-winning film directed by and starring Ed Harris.
It doesn’t make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
January 28, 2008Happy Birthday Jackson Pollock..you sexy man..
www.http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/CAS/pkhouse.nsf/pages/pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming on 28 January 1912. He was the fifth and youngest son of LeRoy McCoy Pollock and Stella McClure Pollock. The family left Cody when Pollock was less than a year old, and he was raised in Arizona and California. After a series of unsuccessful farming ventures, his father became a surveyor and worked on road crews at the Grand Canyon and elsewhere in the Southwest. Pollock, who sometimes joined his father on these jobs, later remarked that memories of the panoramic landscape influenced his artistic vision.
Even as his art was gaining in assurance and originality, Pollock was experiencing personal turmoil and recurring bouts of depression. He was also struggling to control his alcoholism, which would continue to plague him throughout his life. His brothers Charles and Sande, with whom he shared living quarters at 46 East 8th Street in Manhattan, encouraged him to seek treatment, including psychoanalysis. Although therapy was not successful in curbing Pollock’s drinking or relieving his depression, it introduced him to Jungian concepts that validated the subjective, symbolic direction his art was taking. In late 1941, Sande wrote to Charles, who had left New York, that if Jackson could “hold himself together his work will become of real significance. His painting is abstract, intense, evocative in quality
Pollock’s radical breakthrough was accompanied by a period of sobriety lasting two years, during which he created some of his most beautiful masterpieces. In his barn studio, he spread his canvas on the floor and developed his compositions by working from all four sides, allowing the imagery to evolve spontaneously, without preconceptions. Pollock described this technique as “direct” painting and likened it to American Indian sand painting. He maintained, however, that the method was “a natural growth out of a need,” and that its only importance was as “a means of arriving at a statement.” The character and content of that statement were then and remain controversial, subject to widely varying interpretations–which is why Pollock’s art has retained its vitality in spite of changing tastes.
By 1955, however, Pollock’s personal demons had triumphed over his artistic drive, and he stopped painting altogether. Ironically, his work had begun to earn a respectable income for him and Krasner, who was becoming increasingly estranged from her troubled, alcoholic husband. In the summer of 1956 she took the opportunity of a trip to Europe to re-evaluate their relationship, while Pollock remained at home with a young mistress to distract him from the agonies of self-doubt and inaction that plagued him. In Paris, on the morning of 12 August, Krasner received a telephone call informing her that Pollock had died the night before in an automobile accident. Driving drunk, he had overturned his convertible, killing himself and an acquaintance and seriously injuring his other passenger.
Artist Quote of the Day 