On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally `in' the painting

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On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally `in' the painting.
-- Jackson Pollock, 1947.

Pollock, Jackson (1912-56). American painter, the commanding figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

He began to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students' League, New York, under the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. During the 1930s he worked in the manner of the Regionalists, being influenced also by the Mexican muralist painters (Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros) and by certain aspects of . From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the Federal Art Project. By the mid 1940s he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the `drip and splash' style for which he is best known emerged with some abruptness in 1947. Instead of using the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead of using brushes he manipulated it with `sticks, trowels or knives' (to use his own words), sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of `sand, broken glass or other foreign matter'. This manner of Action painting had in common with Surrealist theories of automatism that it was supposed by artists and critics alike to result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist.

Pollock's name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of relations among parts. The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas -- indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally `in' the painting.
-- Jackson Pollock, 1947.

Pollock, Jackson (1912-56). American painter, the commanding figure of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

He began to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students' League, New York, under the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. During the 1930s he worked in the manner of the Regionalists, being influenced also by the Mexican muralist painters (Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros) and by certain aspects of . From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the Federal Art Project. By the mid 1940s he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the `drip and splash' style for which he is best known emerged with some abruptness in 1947. Instead of using the traditional easel he affixed his canvas to the floor or the wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead of using brushes he manipulated it with `sticks, trowels or knives' (to use his own words), sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of `sand, broken glass or other foreign matter'. This manner of Action painting had in common with Surrealist theories of automatism that it was supposed by artists and critics alike to result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist.

Pollock's name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of relations among parts. The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size of the canvas -- indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Biographical Information:
Jackson Pollock was born in Wyoming in 1912 and died on Long Island, New York in 1956. He was a leader of the New York action painters and a major contributor to Abstract Expressionism. He studied from 1929-1931 at the Art Students League in New York City and started working on government art projects in the late 1930s. Abstract Expressionism is characterized by a lack of representation and by an emotional approach to concept and execution. The movement is often called "The New York School" or "action painting". Its art results from the fusion of various influences, notably surrealism, synthetic cubism, and neoplasticisim. Pollock's early abstract style is seen in "The She-Wolf" (1943) and "Eyes in the Heat" (1946). His technique, which for several years involved the dripping and spattering of paint upon the surface rather than the conventional mode of brushing. By 1947 Pollock started to experiment with all-over painting, a labyrinth of lines, splatters, and paint drips from which emerged the great "drip" or "poured" paintings of the next few years. "Number 1 (Lavender Mist)" (1950) is one of his most beautiful drip paintings, with its intricate web of oil colors mixed with black enamel and aluminum paint. Pollock quickly became an international symbol of the new American painting following World War II: he came from out West, became a huge force on the New York art scene, living hard, drinking hard, and then dying violently in a car accident at a young age. He achieved a stature of mythic proportions in the 1950s. He was married to the Brooklyn-born painter Lee Krasner (1908-1984). Action Painting referred to an artistic style in which the process of painting was as important as the completed picture. In Pollock's paintings the elements of intuition and accident play a large and deliberate part, that being one of the major contributions of Abstract Expressionism, which had found its own inspiration in Surrealism's psychic automatism. At the same time, however, Pollock relied on his skills acquired by years of practice and reflection. In the mid 1950s, Pollock experienced a period of crisis and doubt, which lead to major depression, as a result of the success of his drip paintings .He changed his style to return to traditional brush painting. The black-and-white canvases and the paintings that followed his depression suggested a new phase, unfortunately terminated by Pollock's accidental death in 1956.

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Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)

Paul Jackson Pollock was born January 18, 1912, in Cody, Wyoming. He grew up in Arizona and California and in 1928 began to study painting at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. In the fall Of 1930 Pollock came to New York and studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Benton encouraged him throughout the succeeding decade. By the early 1930s Pollock admired the murals of Jose Clemente 0rozco and Diego Rivera. Although he traveled widely throughout the United States during the 1930s, much of Pollock's time was spent in New ...

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