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Jackson Pollock Gallery |
LIFE® - Artist Jackson Pollock, 1949
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LIFE® - Artist Jackson Pollock, 1949
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LIFE® - Artist Jackson Pollock, 1949
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Gallery Description
(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.
By the mid 1940s he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the 'drip and splash' style for which he is best known. 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 results in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist.
Pollock was the first “all-over” painter, pouring paint rather than using brushes and a palette, and abandoning all conventions of a central motif. He danced in semi-ecstasy over canvases spread across the floor, lost in his patternings, dripping and dribbling with total control. He told “The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.” The eye is kept continually eager, not allowed to rest on any particular area when one looks at his paintings. Pollock used to put his hands into paint and place them at the top right-- an instinctive gesture eerily reminiscent of cave painters who did the same.
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Thursday, August, 21 st
2008
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