Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956), known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in theabstract expressionist movement. He was well known for his unique style of drip painting.
During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety, a major artist of his generation. Regarded as reclusive, he had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.[1]
Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related, single-car accident; he was driving. In December 1956, several months after his death, Pollock was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. A larger, more comprehensive exhibition of his work was held there in 1967. In 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London.[2][3]
In 2000, Jackson Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award-winning film Pollock directed by and starring Ed Harris.
Pollock’s work has been the subject of important critical debates. The critic Robert Coates once derided a number of Pollock’s works as “mere unorganized explosions of random energy, and therefore meaningless.” [38]
In a famous 1952 article in ARTnews, Harold Rosenberg coined the term “action painting,” and wrote that “what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. The big moment came when it was decided to paint ‘just to paint.’ The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value—political, aesthetic, moral.” Many people assumed that he had modeled his “action painter” paradigm on Pollock.
Clement Greenberg supported Pollock’s work on formalistic grounds. It fit well with Greenberg’s view of art history as a progressive purification in form and elimination of historical content. He considered Pollock’s work to be the best painting of its day and the culmination of the Western tradition via Cubism and Cézanne to Manet.
Reynold’s News in a 1959 headline said, “This is not art—it’s a joke in bad taste.”[39]
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