Behind the Art
What is art? By definition it is, “An occupation requiring knowledge or skill” (Merriam). Many people would argue that late artist Jackson Pollock’s work would not go under this category. But Pollock’s paintings were not random splats and splashes, but carefully planned and expertly executed works of art.
In order to understand Pollock’s work, it’s important that you know a little about him. Jackson Pollock was born in Wyoming in 1912. His family moved around the southwest before settling in Los Angeles. At age 18 he dropped out of high school and moved to New York, where he struggled for more than a decade to make it as an artist.
Pollock was a very complex and emotionally distraught man. By this time in his life, Pollock had already become a full-blown alcoholic. His brother Sanford, who taught as an apprentice at the school where Pollock was studying, wrote to a family friend,
Jackson has been having a very difficult time with himself. This past year has been a succession of periods of emotional instability for him, which is usually expressed by a complete loss of responsibility both to himself and to us. Accompanied, of course, with drinking. It came to the point where it was obvious that the man needed help. He was mentally sick. So I took him to a well-recommended doctor, a psychiatrist, who has been trying to help the man find himself. As you know troubles such as his are very deep-rooted, in childhood usually, and it takes a long while to get them ironed out. He has been going some six months now and I feel there is a slight improvement in his point of view (Landau 17).
Pollock branched out to explore the expression of himself thr...
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...y of his own mind and the ideas that he believed in. Although Pollock was a psychologically complex man, he was a genius of his time, showing us not only a new way to paint but also a new way to think. “Jack the Dripper” is one to be remembered and missed.
Works Cited
“About Jackson Pollock.” 1 May 2003. <http://www.jacksonpollock.com/index.html>
Landau, Ellen G. Jackson Pollock. NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1989.
Lehrer, Jim. “Jack the Dripper.” January 11, 1999. 1 May 2003. <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june99/pollock_1-11.html>
Merriam Webster Dictionary. 1 May 2003.
<http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary>
Moore, Barbara. “Jackson Pollock.” 2003. 1 May 2003. <http://www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/
Varnedoe, Kirk, and Pepe Karmel. Jackson Pollock. NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1999.
You learn early on in the story that Jackson Jackson has not had the best life. He flunked out of college in Seattle, was married two or three times and has fathered a few children and is now homeless. Jackson admits that “Being homeless is probably the only thing I've ever been good at” and refers to himself as an “effective homeless man”. Also we learn that Jackson has some kind of mental disorder “an...
Jackson Pollock." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 379-380. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.
Jackson Pollock was an American abstract artist born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912. He was the youngest of his five brothers. Even though he was born on a farm, he never milked a cow and he was terrified of horses because he grew up in California. He dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen and proceeded to move to New York City with his older brother, Charles, and studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Thomas Benton was already a great artist at the time in which Pollock studied with him. Benton acted like the father figure in Pollock’s life to replace the original that wasn’t there. Benton was known for his large murals that appear on ceilings or walls. “Jack was a rebellious sort at all times,” recalls his classmate and friend, artist Harold Lehman. He grew his hair long and helped pen a manifesto denouncing athletics, even though “he had a muscular build and the school wanted to put him on the football team,” says former teacher Doug Lemon. Pollock always was upset with himself in his studies because he had troubles drawing things like they were supposed to look. From 1938 to 1942, Jackson joined a Mexican workshop of people with a painter named David Siqueiros. This workshop painted the murals for the WPA Federal Art Projects. This new group of people started experimenting with new types of paint and new ways of applying it to large canvas. People say that this time period was when Jackson was stimulated with ideas from looking at the Mexican or WPA murals. Looking at paintings from Picasso and the surrealists also inspired Jackson at this time. The type of paint they used was mixing oil colors with paint used for painting cars. Jackson noticed that the shapes and colors they created were just as beautiful as anything else was. Jackson realized that you didn’t have to be able to draw perfect to make beautiful paintings. Jackson started developing a whole new way of painting that he had never tried before and his paintings were starting to look totally different from before.
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