Renegade painter Jackson Pollock single-handedly pioneered the
frenzied, drippy style of freeform painting that has ever since stood
as the public's dominant image of 1950's Modern art.
Pollock began his career as a student of Regionalist painter Thomas
Hart Benton. But by the late 1940's, Pollock was quickly moving away
from depicting real objects, instead favoring increasingly abstract
compositions.
This soon led to Pollock completely casting aside his
easel, in favor of spreading the unstretched canvas across the floor.
That way he was free to step on them, dribble paint on them or add
such foreign matter as sand or broken glass.
Concentrating on expressing bare, unrestrained emotion in his work,
Pollock's paintings were exuberant, wild compositions intended to
strip away all context of reality. In doing so, Pollock enabled the
viewer to experience only the raw energy conveyed by his artistic
choices.
And despite the seemingly random nature of his work, those creative
choices were actually quite carefully considered; they only looked
like they were created with frenetic wildness. In actuality, Pollock
crafted his compositions in a controlled, deliberate fashion.
When he was creating at all, that is.
A deeply disturbed person, Pollock's art output varied wildly as he
battled with alcoholism at various points in his career. During his
most prolific period, however, he had moved to a Long Island farmhouse
with his wife, painter Lee Krasner, and had largely conquered the
addiction that had crippled his career thus far.
During this relatively short but prolific period, critics hailed
Pollock's work as one of the great breakthroughs in Modernist
painting, ranking the significance of his innovations on a similar
plane as those of acknowledged master Pablo Picasso.
Art experts called Pollock's work "action painting," an offshoot of
Abstract Expressionism. But much of the general public barbed this new
style of art with titles like "splatter painting." Nonetheless,
Pollock's work continued to gain credibility and praise among critics
and collectors.
Largely due to the pressure and scrutiny brought on by his fame,
Pollock's demons finally caught up with him. In 1956 he died in an
alcohol-related car crash.
As it often is with popular fine-art styles, the general public was
slow to understand the true importance of Pollock's work.
Nonetheless,
his freeform aesthetic was by the late 1950's emulated as surface
ornamentation for the gamut of mass-produced objects, including
furniture, graphic design, and even a line of picnic coolers.
Over the years, Pollock's work has continued to gain stature among
collectors, with his developments generally hailed as key
breakthroughs in Modern art.
Today, he is almost universally
acknowledged as one of the most important artists of the 20th Century,
and arguably the most significant painter in American history.
In 2006, Pollock's painting "No. 5, 1948" was auctioned to an
undisclosed bidder for $140,000,000, giving it the distinction of
being the world's most expensive painting.
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