Jackson Pollock The Greatest Living Painter

Vincent van Gogh is one of the world’s most well-known artists. He was the son of a pastor and was brought up in a religious atmosphere. He thought his true calling was to preach the gospel like his father. He became a preacher in a small coal mining town. This is when he starting becoming very interested in the people and things that surrounded him. He became an artist at the age of 27.

If people were asked to make a mental picture of a painter working on his work of art, most of them would describe it as a person with a big canvas on a stand in front of them painting the subject which they are looking at. There were two major differences in Pollock's approach to his art compared to other artists. The first major difference was that Jackson painted on the floor. The second difference was that he used a stick instead of a brush. They would say that because they are all not exposed to different types and styles of painting. For those people who do not know much about art wouldn't know the meaning of the painting or how it was created. In some instances people say to themselves, "you call this art, my little brother could

(Millhouse, 2011) In the 1980’s Pollock’s Feminism “critiqued the essential myths of individualism, the artist, and the social constructions of femininity and masculinity that define bourgeois culture”. While the 70’s feminism movement aim was to stand next to the existing masculine dominated culture. “Feminism's encounter with the canon has been complexed and many-leveled: political ,ideology,mythological,methodological and psycho-symbolic” (Pollock, 1999). The 1970’s movement was followed by the immediate task which was “the need to rectify the gaps in historical knowledge created by the consistent omission of women of all cultures from the history of art” (Pollock, 1999). The only art that was put on display was significantly male dominated work, if you wanted to see work created by women, you would have to view them “in a basement or storeroom of a national gallery” (Pollock, 1999). Female artists are only known in their own category of female artists while male artists don’t require a separate category . Art that is created by females have been historically dismissed from the art historical canon as craft, as opposed to fine art. The evident of

Solomon, D. (1987). Jackson Pollock: A Bibliography (illustrated ed.). Simon and Schuster. Retrieved March 23, 2017, from https://books.google.com/books/about/Jackson_Pollock.html?id=YaTuAAAAMAAJ

When Pollock was witnessed painting, people would refer to him as ‘dancing across the canvas’. Each painting was like a dance routine and he let the painting guide his hand around and around in circles until it was completed. Pollock did not like for his audience to be able to identify any trace of academic artistic quality. He was even notorious for signing his paintings by pressing the palm of his hand down onto the wet paint. It was efficient for him, especially since in his ‘drip’ paintings he would never lift a brush. What this did to his work then was no longer did he display a replica of a scene or person like most landscape and portrait artists, but instead he displayed his fluent motion.

On a trip to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, my boyfriend, David, and I strolled through the museum while I, being an art history major, recited to him all that I knew about certain pieces. We observed sculptures by Auguste Rodin, works painted by Georgia O’Keeffe, and busts of Roman leaders. David was enjoying all the artwork until we reached the Contemporary art gallery upon where viewing Mark Rothko’s Untitled No. 11 made in 1963, he shook his head in anger at what he thought was a painting far from a masterpiece. His comment was one I’m sure many have said about this particular piece and many other modern pieces of art, “I could have painted that.” I couldn’t help to reply, “Yeah, but you didn’t.” David’s sudden reaction upon viewing the

A second characteristic Pollock had of a secular hero is that he was able to achieve individual fulfillment. Being the oldest of five boys Pollock he saw painting as “A natural growth of need … I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them” (3:22). Although his individual fulfillment did not derive from domesticity or capitalist, his fulfillment derived from his own agency: a quality needed in a secular

But fame was not good for Pollock. Having troubles with close friends and the public he instead, went back to drinking heavily. Concerned for “Pollock's well-being, Krasner called on Pollock's mother to help. Her presence helped to stabilize Pollock, and he began to paint again” (Biography.com). He completed his masterpiece, The Deep, during this period. But as the demand from collectors for Pollock's art grew, so too did the pressure he felt, and with it his alcoholism. “Overwhelmed with Pollock's needs, Krasner was also unable to work. Their marriage became troubled, and Pollock's health was failing (John Seed). By 1956, he had quit painting, and his marriage was basically ruined. Krasner left for Paris to give Pollock space. “Just after 10 p.m. on August 11, 1956, Pollock, who had been drinking, crashed his car into a tree less than a mile from his home. Pollock was thrown 50 feet into the air and into a birch tree. He died immediately”

Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1912, the fifth and youngest son of an impoverished family. His father abandoned the family and he was raised by a strict and tough single mother. In 1928 they moved to Los Angeles, where Pollock enrolled at Manual Arts High School. There he came under the guidance of Frederick John de St. Vrain Schwankovsky, a “painter and illustrator who was a member of the Theosophical Society, a group that promoted metaphysical spirituality” (O’Conner). Schwankovsky provided Pollock with basic training in drawing and painting, introduced him to European modern art, and encouraged his interest in theosophical literature. Those theosophical ideas prepared Pollock for his later interests in Surrealism and psychoanalysis.

In 1939, Jackson Pollock entered psychotherapy for his alcoholism. For him, the doctors saw that producing artwork could serve as a means of therapy for his problem with alcohol. His alcoholism would later come back to haunt him and his works in later years and become the cause of his ultimate demise.

Art, is another form of language that has been used for communication since the cavemen. Art has played an important part in culture and has influenced societies prospective on reality. Artists use different techniques to enhance their own individual message or perspective, whether it be distinctively clear or subtle. Artists such as Frida Kahlo, Edvard Much or Vincent van Gogh, all explore identity, through life experience. The messages and story that these famous artists put into their works makes the finished piece more powerful. All these artists used painting to express their emotion but also as a tool to explore their identity, as individualism, by representing their life's journey through art, using different techniques of portrait montage's.

Norman Rockwell was a 20th century American author, illustrator, and painter. Rockwell is most famous for depicting American everyday life in the Saturday Evening Post. Over the span of five decades, he devoted his talent to this newspaper. The public adored his illustrations. However, critics did not share the feeling; some thought his work was too simplistic and meaningless. Despite the criticism his work proved to be very helpful for generations today. Rockwell’s reasons for the work he made were to show realism of American culture. Life during this time is easier to understand through his work. One specific accomplished in1930 is an untitled painting, commonly recognized as “two men sharing a coffee pot”. This painting is of two elderly

Known for his neo- expressionist and gestural paintings,Jean–Michel Basquiat was a famous ‘black urban’ artist who came to the forefront of the art world in the 80s, his art reflecting the graffiti culture of the United States. In a letter written to Basquiat after his death, Bennett writes: Through Bennett’s admiration for Basquiat is the need to re- contextualise the issues that he has explored throughout his career as an artist. Gordon Bennett approaches such issues within a global context within one of the works from the series Notes to Basquiat (Jackson Pollock and his other)

Taking following extreme cases of abstraction, when speaking of Pollock’s work such as his ”Autumn Rhythm” (1950), we realize how the visual formed is fully based on science and gravity that permits the dripping and pouring of the paint on the horizontal canvas. But, by walking around/on the canvas we can argue Greenberg’s analysis and suppose that the painter possibly connects with it, he gets drowned in the act and merges inside the painting while mechanically pouring paint on the canvas. This means that even though the painter tries to focus on the flatness of the painting rather than the content and is physically detached from the canvas, this focus cannot erase an emotional

Jackson Pollock succeeded in developing a new artistic technique to depict the world by accepting culture’s initial reactions understandingly and remaining confident in himself. Pollock broadly describes the origin of his use of abstract expressionism in a 1949 interview with William Wright. He explains how he practiced many of the great historical art techniques in school, but felt that “the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture”