Jackson Pollock: “Action Jackson”

Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, USA in 1912, the youngest of five brothers. The family didn’t have much money and had to move from one farm or ranch to another around the American West. Even though there was plenty of work for everyone, Jackson’s mother encouraged her children to do art.

When Jackson Pollock was eight years old, he lived in an area of California near Native American communities. He heard stories, saw dances and watched artists create sand paintings. He included some of these symbols and ideas in his later paintings.

When Jackson got a little older, his father travelled for his job as a land surveyor for the government. Pollock and his brothers sometimes went with him on trips. Here is a photo of Pollock with his father at age 14 or 15 at the Grand Canyon in Arizona in 1927.

Pollock studied art in high school in Los Angeles, California, but had trouble getting along with the teachers and students. At age 18, Jackson moved across the country to New York City. He joined his older brother Charles studying at an art school there.

Pollock’s art teacher in New York, Thomas Hart Benton, inspired some of Pollock’s early paintings. Benton liked painting western themes. On the left is a painting by Pollock’s teacher. On the right is a painting by Jackson Pollock. How are these two paintings similar? How are they different?

At this time the Great Depression was happening. For many years, banks and companies were shutting down and many, many people couldn’t find jobs or food for their families. Like many artists at this time, Pollock had a hard time making enough money to live and make art. He worked for his teacher, cleaning the art studio and helping with Benton’s paintings.

Pollock felt frustrated when his paintings didn’t turn out the way he’d seen them in his mind. Sometimes he was angry and hard to be around, but his teachers and fellow artists kept working with him because they respected his talent. Pollock’s teacher Benton once said of him, “Pollock was a born artist.” But Pollock wasn’t sure what kind of an artist he wanted to be.

Representational vs. Abstract: At this time, many artists were re-creating the old rules of art. In the past art always depicted a person, place, or thing. We call this “representational art.” Now some artists began to use the basic elements of art— such as line, shape, texture, and color—to express a feeling, thought, or energy, without illustrating a person, place, or thing. This became known as “abstract art.” Pollock visited museums, galleries, and other studios to study the work of other artists—he was influenced by Pablo Picasso, Janet Sobel, José Orozco, and David Siqueiros.

Lee Krasner was another young artist in New York City at the time. She also respected Pablo Picasso, and during World War II her paintings were in the same art show as paintings by Jackson Pollock. When she saw Pollock’s paintings, Krasner immediately wanted to meet him, and soon did. She said later, “I had a conviction when I met Jackson that he had something important to say.” Pollock and Krasner fell in love and affected each other’s artwork in important ways.

In 1945, World War II ended. Pollock and Krasner got married and moved from New York City to a farmhouse on nearby Long Island. By this time, Pollock had been having problems with alcohol and depression off and on for years. They hoped the farm would be a peaceful place to live and work on their art.

Next to their farmhouse was a barn. Now at the time most painters painted on a canvas that was stretched onto a wooden frame and set up on an easel, just as many do today. (Krasner was using an easel in the photo you saw of her.) Pollock liked to paint in the barn, but by 1947 he had started painting with the unframed canvas right down on the floor. You can see this painting at the Seattle Art Museum.

This way he could walk around all sides of the canvas, moving energetically, dripping or flinging or pouring paint, often ordinary house paint, down onto the canvas instead of touching a paintbrush to the canvas.

He said, “I feel nearer, more a part of the painting since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides, and literally be in the painting, similar to the Indian sand painters of the West.”

Pollock called this style of painting “action painting.” Others called it “drip painting.” It is this style that he’s famous for. He explained his action painting once as “…energy and motion made visible—memories arrested in space.”

Other artists had used dripping or pouring, but Pollock had created something new. Some people who saw his paintings liked it; some didn’t. Some thought his action paintings were just random splatters of paint without skill or intention. But Pollock said, “I can control the flow of paint; there is no accident.”

Whether they appreciated his paintings or not, people were talking and writing about Pollock. In 1948, an article about Pollock appeared in LIFE magazine, which was read by many Americans. Pollock and his drip paintings became very famous.

Being famous meant more people wanted to buy his paintings. He could sell them for more money, but Pollock felt pressure and stress from all the attention and people wanting new paintings. He grew depressed and angry. From 1951 on, he painted less and less.

In 1956, Pollock died in a car accident. He was 44 years old. Lee Krasner continued to promote Pollock’s art until her death in 1984. Many people who talk and write about art call Jackson Pollock one of the great artists of the twentieth Century.

Now we’ll read a story about the creation of one of Pollock’s paintings…and then we’ll paint!