Pollock, Jackson 1912-1956

POLLOCK, JACKSON 1912-1956

Abstract expressionist artist

Notorious Celebrity

Jackson Pollock was the art world's most notorious celebrity during the 1950s. Despite a long apprenticeship he came to prominence suddenly late in 1949, largely as a result of the advocacy of Nation art critic Clement Greenberg, who declared Pollock's greatness. In response to what many thought was an outrageous claim, Life magazine published a feature story titled "Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?" The article featured photographs of Pollock's huge drip paintings that consist of layers of multicolored paint spatters and quoted the artist as saying that when he painted he had to get "in" his paintings and "When I am in my painting I'm not aware of what I'm doing."

"Jack the Dripper."

Pollock made many enemies, among whom he was known as "Jack the Dripper." During the 1950s the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, New York, was as significant a place in his life as his art studio. Pollock drank heavily and was abusive when he was drunk. He was a Tuesday-night regular at the Cedar, an artists' hangout, and his appearance came to be dreaded because he was so rude and contentious. As his fame as an artist grew, so did his reputation as a nasty drunk, profane, insulting, and slovenly. Artist Larry Rivers, looking back some fifteen years, remembered, "What was obviously gorgeous in his work was becoming infused with a mindlessness impossible to separate from his social personality."

Background

Pollock was born in Los Angeles and moved to New York in 1932 at the age of twenty to study art with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Like many of the abstract expressionists (see entry), Pollock worked for the WPA art program during the war. After he was terminated early in 1943, he decorated ties and lipstick cases at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York City. He made his first drip paintings in the winter of 1946, and that style dominated his work until his death a decade later.

Success

No American artist of the time, abstract or otherwise, attracted the popular attention Pollock did. His studio in East Hamption, Long Island, was repeatedly visited by art-features writers; his work habits were described by critics; his demeanor was commented on by colleagues. By the early 1950s he was the most successful of abstract painters, selling individual drip paintings for twice the price of a new Cadillac. But the personal toll was steep. His wife, artist Lee Krasner, was finally driven away by his violent drinking episodes and his promiscuous sexual behavior. Though she still appreciated and defended his artistic talent, she could no longer abide his destructive behavior.

Death

One Tuesday night in spring 1956 Pollock met Ruth Kligman, an art student who wanted to spend some time with the best American artists. They became friendly, and in August he invited her for a weekend visit to his home in East Hampton, after his wife had moved out. She brought a friend, Edith Metzger, and on Friday, 10 August, the three of them went out to eat and drink, Pollock driving in his Olds mobile convertible. At one point Pollock passed out behind the wheel, and a patrolman stopped to investigate. When Pollock told him he was OK, the patrolman left, and the three went to a bar in East Hampton so that Pollock could steady his nerves with a drink. When he was ready to go, Edith Metzger refused to get into the car because she thought him too drunk to drive. Pollock flew into a rage, and with Kligman's help they forced her into the car. Pollock raced off recklessly. Within minutes he and Edith Metzger were dead, killed when the car veered off the winding road.

Reputation

With his death, Pollock's reputation was crystallized. He was eulogized as America's greatest artist, answering the question posed in Life seven years earlier. He was buried at Green River Cemetery in East Hampton, a location that subsequently became so popular as an artists' burial ground that the sylvan setting around Pollock's natural-rock gravestone had to be disturbed to make more burial space. Sixteen years after his death the Australian government paid $2 million for Blue Poles, a painting begun in a drunken suicidal fit. It set an alltime-record price for an artwork by an American.

Source:

Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Jackson Pollock: An American Saga (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1989).