Professor Albert Faggard
Art Appreciation 1301
September 23, 2015
Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollock, or “Jack the Dripper”, born on January 28, 1912, would become one of the world’s most influential American painters. He started his art career when he was only eighteen years old. He studied with countless numbers of well-known artists in his lifetime. From the Public Works Project in which he developed his most famous paintings, to being a part of the abstract expressionism art movement, Jackson Pollock was truly a talented and smart young man who got mixed up in something that eventually took his life.
Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming to LeRoy Pollock and Stella May McClure. His father was a government land surveyor and a farmer, …show more content…
As a young child, Pollock and his family were constantly moving about the American West, particularly Arizona and California. Pollock’s father was an abusive alcoholic and left his family when Jackson was only eight years old. Pollock started to look to his oldest brother, Charles, as a father figure for his life. His brother made a living as an artist and many people today believe that Charles was the best in the family. Pollock’s family was residing in Los Angeles when he decided to enroll in Manual Arts High School. Here, Jackson realized that he had a strong thirst for art. Even though Jackson bared a strong desire for art, he was expelled from the school two times before he completely gave up on schooling altogether. Pollock then moved to New York City at the young age of eighteen to dwell with his artistic brother Charles. After moving in with his brother, Jackson Pollock decided to study alongside his brother and his brother’s art instructor, Thomas Hart Benton, a representational regionalist at the Art Students League. While studying with Benton, Pollock became part of the Benton family. Pollock once stated that the Benton family was the family that he never had. Jackson Pollock discovered work with the Public Works Project along with …show more content…
Abstract expressionism started to surface during the 1940s in New York, during the post WWII era. Most of Pollock’s paintings during this time were his famous “drip paintings”. Pollock would lay his canvas flat on the floor, dab his brush in paint, and let the paint either drip off the end, or he would perform a throwing motion towards the canvas. He would also let the paint drip straight from the can. Jackson Pollock used all different types of painting instruments besides a brush. He used knives, sticks, and even fabrics of different texture. Jackson Pollock used the “All-Over” method as well as the drip style. This particular style allowed artists to paint color all over their canvases, but the image did not show any distinctive marks or lines. Some other artists during the abstract expressionism movement besides Jackson Pollock were: Willem de Koonig (1904-1997), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), and Lee Krasner (1908-1984). Most of these artists, including Jackson Pollock, were often influenced by politics. This era of painting was meant to incorporate not only the works of the artists who occupied their canvases with different varieties of color and abstract form, but also those artists who pounced on their paintings with dynamic and forceful gestural expressionism. During the same year of Jackson Pollock’s death, the Museum of Modern Art located in New York City, Jackson was honored