Jackson Pollock

1
Jackson Pollock

• By Emily Corcoran

2
Jackson Pollock

• Early Life
• Life After 1942
• Influences
• Unique Technique
• Paintings
• Death
• Legacy
• Memories

3
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

4
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

5
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

6
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

7
Paintings

• 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)

• 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)

8
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

9
Legacy

• After Pollocks 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

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• 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.