No matter why you want to know something about an artist, one thing is useful in any case: a summary that answers the most important questions about the artist and which you can always take on when working with the artist in order to follow basic data or facts.
This can be pretty helpful, especially if you want to be able to think about it while dealing with the artist.
Here are the most important facts about Jackson Pollock , at a glance:
Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, a Sunday child, and died on August 11, 1956 in a car accident, he was only 44 years old.
The complete name of the artist is Paul Jackson Pollock.
Jackson Pollock was an influential representative of the so -called New York school of abstract expressionism . His famous 'Drip Paintings' of the 1940s made him a symbol of American abstract painting and were revered as a "weapon against socialist realism" .
Throughout his life, he was described as awesome, rebellious and tortured by self -doubt.
Place of birth, parents, school years
Jackson Pollock comes from the town of Cody in the US state of Wyoming, a small town with a few thousand inhabitants, for example in the middle of the USA (slightly north-west). Cody was founded in 1896 by Buffalo Bill, who was actually called William Frederick Cody.
Jackson Pollock was the youngest of five children from Leroy Pollock and his wife Stella May (born McClure). His childhood and youth were characterized by the fact that he often moved between California and Arizona and led his parents an unfortunate relationship. His father worked as a worker, stonemason, bricklayer, street workers and auxiliary geometers in the first 16 years.
Pollock's oldest brother Charles and the three-year-old Sanford (called Sande) also became artists and gave him an idea of a Bohemian lifestyle. Through excursions with his father, Pollock met art and culture of the First Nations.
First traces of artistic talent
It can be assumed that Jackson Pollock showed a "knack for art" very early, at least a hand for handicrafts because he attended the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles (a high school where handicrafts were taught).
In letters to his older brother, Jackson Pollock expressed his affection for theosophy and art, which was supported by Charles Pollock. He encouraged him to become an artist and raved to him from the Mexican wall painters Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco .
In response to this, Jackson moved to his brother to New York two years later, where he wrote to Thomas Hart Benton on the Art Students League . Benton admired the uncertain and reserved Pollock and selected him as his favorite student.
Professional activity and training as an artist
First of all, however, it was obviously “earning money” (only a few had parents who could pay them further), Pollock worked from 1927 to 1929 (from his 15th to 17th year of life) as a land vermeter in California.
Then he probably had his entry fee for the art studies, Pollock studied from 1929 to 1931 at the Art Students League in New York. At that time there were so -called “regionalists” as a teacher, realistic and naturalistic painters who liked to see and gave themselves “close to the people”. So z. B. Pollock's teacher Thomas Hart Benton, who had the young Pollock works of old masters (Rubens etc.) painted.
A common basic lessons for the beginning artists, who, however, quickly gets boring. So also Pollock, he did not want to participate for long and had his own head at a young age - he left the species Students League and went to Mexico.
There he learned from the Mexican painter and graphic artist Jose Clemente Orozco , the founder of contemporary Mexican painting and one of the main representatives of so -called "muralism" .
The way to your own style
Between 1930 and 1935, Jackson Pollock also traveled a lot, to the Western states and the Navaho Indians in New Mexico, and tried as a painter, from long-established American political-ideological motifs to symbols. In 1935 Pollock moved to New York, in 1936 he visited an event of an also famous contemporary Mexican painter, the "Experimental Workshop. Laboratory of Modern Techniques in Art" by David Alfaro Siqueiros .
At that time, Pollock came into contact with a freer style of painting for the first time, he learned the so -called dripping technique and an artistic watering technique and was allowed to paint with spray guns.
Pollock liked that, and he got to know the American painter, surrealist and abstract expressionists Robert Motherwell and his future wife, the painter and collage artist Lee Krasner . Krasner was four years older than him, she promoted Jackson Pollock and entered into a studio community with him.
From 1938 to 1942 Jackson Pollock worked for the WPA Federal Arts Project , in 1941 he was allowed exhibition in the McMillen Gallery Robert Motherwell and Lee Krasner .
At that time Pollock was fascinated by the work of Pablo Picassos , which determined his painting until the early 1940s. Teachers Benton and the Mexican Muralists were also still felt in Pollock's early work, but their influences were increasingly released, the more Pollock dealt with European modernism, with cubism and surrealism and the free color gradients of the Catalan Joan Miró .
At the beginning of the 1940s, Pollock changed again, the large-scale, expressive pictures with Indian motifs became abstract, Pollock dealt with CG Jung and took over the idea that the unconscious was the source of art .
He also studied the art magazine Dyn, published by the surrealist Wolfgang Paalen. In 1941 all these influences concentrated in the image "Birth" (birth), which for the first time had the pastless color application and the continuous rhythm of his later main work. In the period that followed, Pollock became more and more abstract, in the pictures "Die Wölfin" and "The Guardians of the Secret" from 1943, he painted the first of his individual signs that seem to be freely scattered across the screen.
Documentation on Jackson Pollock (in English)
Psychotherapy and search for the unconscious
During the period from 1939 to 1942, Jackson Pollock underwent psychotherapeutic treatment for his alcohol addiction (since prohibition was canceled in 1933). His therapists, Dr. Joseph Henderson and later Dr. Violet Staub de Laszlo (1941/42), were followers of CG young and brought him closer to the principles of psychology.
Since Pollock did not like to speak, he brought drawings to his sessions, on which he represented his dreams, torments and obsessions. In his conviction, they helped him that the source of his painting would come from the unconscious. Because of his firm belief that all people would share a common unconscious, Jackson Pollock was inspired by CG Jung's archetype teaching .
When he read an essay by John Graham in the Magazine of Art in 1937, who said that universal signs could be found art of Central Africa "Birth" (around 1941, Tate Gallery, London) in the McMillen Gallery.
The artistic breakthrough
In 1942 Pollock exhibited in New York at the "International Surrealist Exhibition" and got to know the legendary art collector Peggy Guggenheim . From now on she became Pollock's most important support, who will later owe his financial success.
In October 1945, Pollock Lee Krasner married that she is said to have had a positive impact on the difficult artist, who was already in psychotherapeutic treatment due to his alcohol problems in the early 1940s.
Lee Krasner significantly supported Jack Pollock by giving critics, collectors and artists, including Herbert Matter, Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning. Pollock made her preference for the artist Henri Matisse to use colored instead of toned painting "Stenographic Figure" In addition, she established contact with the director of the Guggenheim Museum, James Johnson Sweeney, which decisively promoted Pollock's career.
Pollock continued to paint his concentrated fantasy pictures, in which his gathered artistic experience of recent years expressed himself, in a few years (1946 to 1951) he now created a closed and innovative overall work of not very many screen images, which should make him one of the most important artists of the 20th century.
In addition to the paintings, Pollock created a few hundred works on paper (watercolor, pencil, collage, gouache, ink), which had their place in his exhibitions, but only really got into the perception of the art world long after his death - probably exactly when all paintings by Pollock had found permanent owners and the trade with the "money bringer Pollock" was in void.
The "breakthrough to fame and wealth" came for Pollock in 1949 when he became the best-known young painter of the American population in one fell swoop through a four-page report in the Life magazine. The political mood was also ripe for Jackson Pollock's works: The Cold War was currently developing, Pollock was a welcome ambassador for the democratic-free "wild" of America.
Peggy Guggenheim and the importance of "Mural" for the Drip Paintings
Peggy Guggenheim became an early supporter of Jackson Pollock. In July 1943, they concluded a contract that secured a monthly income of $ 150. first solo exhibition in her New York gallery "Art of This Century" (founded in October 1942) .
It was one of her artists who showed her the pictures of Jackson Pollock-Piet Mondrian was so impressed by his painting "Stenographic Figure" that he described it as the strongest work that he had seen in the United States until then. Other supporters were Howard Putzel, their assistant, and SWEENEY.
Guggenheim commissioned the then completely unknown artist Jackson Pollock to create "Mural" Due to her friend and consultant Marcel Duchamp, he did not paint the picture directly on the wall, but on a 2.5 by 6 meter canvas so that it could be moved.
Since Pollock's studio was too small for work, the two secretly broke a wall and dragged the rubble out of the apartment in buckets. The well -known collector remembered that the still unknown Pollock had been sitting in front of the painting for days, sunk without inspiration and deep depression.
During the Second World War, Jackson Pollock was unable to produce a figural composition as a symbol of the current time. Instead, he created a number of Biomorpher signs that reminded of barmist in prehistoric cave paintings.
When art critic Clement Greenberg saw the work of art for the first time, he recognized his enormous potential and called him the leading painter of the United States that time. In 1951 Peggy Guggenheim donated the masterpiece of the University of Iowa.
"Mural" is his first abstract work of art, which led to the famous Drip Paintings between 1946 and 1950.
Pollocks Drip Paintings
The unconventional but withdrawn painter was presented on August 8, 1949 in the popular magazine Life and one asked if he was the greatest painter in the United States. His most famous works were created in the period between 1947 and 1950 and are Drip Paintings .
Pollock and his wife Krasner decided at the end of 1946 that they want to deal exclusively with the drop and pouring of colors, so Pollock turned away from the figural elements and all-over designs .
Thomas Hart Benton, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and the less well -known artist Janet Scobel and Indian sand painting were influences for the painter Jackson Pollock. working in a new way with synthetic resin paints, also alkydlacks He described the use of house colors instead of artist colors as "natural growth from a need".
Pollock used resin brushes, rods and even injections to drip and water colors on the image carrier without touching it. His technique of watering and dropping of color - Drip Painting - is considered one of the origins of action painting (Harold Rosenberg in ArtNews, 1952).
Through them he was able to work more directly and let the color flow. He put the image carrier onto the floor, used the movements of the entire body and put the color drops from all directions onto the canvas. In 1948, Pollock decided to give the viewer more associations to give his pictures numbers; His first work was "Number 1a" (Moma).
1950 was his fertile year for Pollock, in which he created fifty paintings, including "Lavender Mist: Number 1", in the Washington National Gallery of Art.
The photographer Hans Namuth watched the artist in his creative process and left an impressive series of recordings that collected the dancing movements of the painter, including for "One: Number 31" and "Autumn Rhythm: Number 30" . Following the filmmaker's suggestion, Pollock painted on a piece of glass outdoors, "Number 29" and was filmed. After the shoot, Pollock was excessive again for the first time in a long time with the alcohol and fell into the house.
Famous works of art by Jackson Pollock
From 1946 Jackson Pollock had developed the Dripping technology in his sense. He no longer drips (drips), but puts his canvases on the floor, lets the color flow on it from top, pouring, pouring and pouring, sprinkling and filling color on the canvas.
In this mixture of the color orders, very own structures, patterns and rhythms, the action painting was invented, with this style Pollock writes down into art history . Famous works of art of the "Action Painting" of a Jackson Pollock:
- "Birth", 1941, today Gallery of Modern Art, London
- "Blue (Moby Dick)", 1943, Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki, Japan
- "Mural", 1944, (a 6 x 2.5 m mural as an order work for Peggy Guggenheim)
- "Eyes in the Heat", 1946, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
- "Shimmering Substance", 1946, Museum of Modern Art, New York
- "Sterntschnuppe", 1947, stay unknown
- "Magic Forest", 1947, The Guggenheim Collection
- "No. 5, 1948", of course also from 1948, privately owned
- "No. 8", Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York
However, Pollock was still alcoholic, more depressed and irritated , and from 1950 this was also evident in his style: the big pictures were dominated in black and white or brown and black lines, a concise example of this creative period is "The Deep" (the depth) of 1953 .
The Deep is one of the last paintings of Pollock, he hardly painted after 1951, with a short cut with figurative painting from 1953, but around the end of 1954 Pollock stopped painting, and then soon, as a result of a tragic car accident.
20 of the most famous works by Jackson Pollock
What kind of art does Jackson Pollock do?
Pollock paints and draws, and he paints and draws almost exclusively , that was even more normal for a modern artist in the mid -20th century than today, where a contemporary artist regularly tried out in many forms of expression. The "bandwidth" was much lower at the time, film and photography were hardly discovered for art, other media such as video and computers - which also shaped numerous modern works on Musaartgallery.com - were still facing the world.
However, the Jackson Pollock was also enough to express his creativity, at least he dealt with developing a completely new form of painting, away from the pure brush, towards all possible physical expressions in order to put the color on the screen, "Action Painting" in the literal sense.
Jackson Pollock also had his own idea for his pictures: they are not for nothing "full of contrasts", who tried to express the relationship between "body" and "soul", which he felt in a conflict -rich Pollock, in a conflicting relationship with his environment.
Jackson Pollock's nickname
Pollock's physical, sometimes in the feeling of violent painting style, was many art judgers who were used to properly known painters with their brushes in front of their relay, to say the least. At that time the avant -garde was probably just as rare as it was today, or the press was already liked to reproduce the (supposed) opinion of the "man from the street" with a view to the sales figures.
In any case, the "Time Magazine" baptized in his article "The Wild Ones" from February 20, 1956 Jackson Pollock for "Jack the Dripper" , according to the self -chosen pseudonym of the serial killer Jack the Ripper (Jack the Aufschlitzer), who dealt with human bodies in 1888 in London as well as Jackson Pollock and Wise to bring a painting onto the canvas.
What art style does Jackson Pollock stand for?
Jackson Pollock stands for no art style, but has developed an art style that "action painting" as a special form of American abstract expressionism of the so -called "New York School" (New York School) .
Jackson Pollock's "discoverer"
As early as 1943, the advanced gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim Jackson Pollock, who was familiar with European art - signed Jackson Pollock - the art expert from Jewish descent had to flee to New York from France in 1941 and had opened a gallery there in 1942, in which she emigrated from Europe and promoted American artists with fresh ideas.
Pollock received an exclusive contract and a monthly salary of $ 150 that secured his livelihood and was able to exhibit his works in her gallery "Art of this Century" (art from this century) in New York.
Other important supporters and companions Jackson Pollocks
The artist (and later wife) Lee Krasner has probably the first Pollock's genius that "promotion with love" is the reason for many art scientists that the unstable Pollock learned to use its skills in a result -oriented manner.
During his early days, Pollock was also encouraged by more well -known painters of the "New York School", which is just grouping, for example by Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell.
Outstanding in the life's work of Jackson Pollock
A lot is outstanding in Jackson Pollock's life's work, but the most outstanding is that the mentally not very solid man still managed to think of a completely independent work without holding on to role models.
This means that Pollock has done a lot for contemporary American art, which until then has not yet been able to get the right validity in the artistically more progressive Europe. The North American modernity of the abstract expressionists was finally able to captivate their umbilical cord, works by Jackson Pollock, also reached the large museums, also in Europe, he is invited to Documenta II (1959) and receives an exclusively dedicated space Documenta III (1964)
Important exhibitions by Jackson Pollock - which still take place today
Pollock was not only on Documenta (1959 and 1964), but was also one of the three US artists in 1950 who were sent to Venice for the Biennale. In his no longer long life, Pollock was still to be seen on some important international exhibitions in contemporary art, but the "Hype around Jackson Pollock" only developed properly after his death: it has been shown in the United States around 50 times in Germany, 20 times in Great Britain and Italy and 15 times in Spain in individual exhibitions.
from Silanoc (derivative work: SP5UFE) [CC-BY-SA-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons
Its re -enacting into today's world is powerful and is far from over, between 2000 and 2012 there were almost 30 solo exhibitions of the works of Jackson Pollock's works all over the world, from Berlin to Paris to Venice, from New York City to Canada and Australia to Russia and Asia.
Paintings of him are contained in the collections of around two dozen countries, often in several museums of a country, who wants to show contemporary art, needs a "Jackson Pollock".
In 2013 and 2014, Jackson Pollock works on 13 group exhibitions that took place in three continents, the interest is unbroken.
Of course, there would be much more to tell Jackson Pollock when such a “look” can take on, e.g. B. that one of his pictures was the "most expensive picture of the world" for a long time, and the sad story of his death, which is not solely on the fact that Jackson Pollock has now become a myth.
Jackson Pollock can still provide sensations today, the last time in 2005, but unfortunately this story has to be reserved for a longer article that deals with Jackson Pollock's life and work.
