Jackson Pollack was a complex man who brought many things into the forefront of impressionism Essay Example For Students

Jackson Pollack was a complex man who brought many things into the forefront of impressionism Essay Jackson Pollack was a complex man who brought many things into the forefront of impressionism. Although he led a very short life of 44 years he was known as one of the pioneers of abstract impressionism. His abstract painting techniques and unhealthy psychological being made him very sought after, studied and critiqued. Within his complexity came out a brilliant artist that was widely considered the most influential painter of the 20th century. Pollacks first documented adventure into the art world was in 1929 when he began to study painting at the Art Students League in New York City. Jackson, by this time in his life had already become a full-blown alcoholic. His brother, Sanford who taught as an apprentice at the school, was living with him in 1937 while Jackson continued attending school, wrote to Charles Beard a family friend. Jack has been having a very difficult time with himself. This past year has been a succession of periods of emotional instability for him which is usually expressed by a complete loss of responsibility both to himself and to us. Accompanied, of course with drinking. It came to the point where it was obvious that the man needed help. He was mentally sick. So I took him to a well recommended Doctor, a Psychiatrist, who has been trying to help the man find himself. As you know troubles such as his are very deep-rooted, in childhood usually, and it takes a long while to get them ironed out. He has been going some six months now and I feel there is a slight improvement in his point of view. 1 Jackson Pollock was a very troubled man with deep personal issues. He tried to express himself through his paintings, his only release valve for his troubles and issues. He had had troublesome behavior from the time he was an adolescent and had already developed a drinking problem by the age of sixteen. By the age of twenty-five he had been in a car accident which was his fault, and had been arrested in Marthas Vineyard for drunkenness and disturbing the peace. 2 Jackson was definitely headed down the wrong trail. One of Jacksons good life influences was Thomas Hart Benton who not only gave him his first true guidance in painting, but also introduced him to popular literature on psychology and to literary friends with special interest in the mind and its workings. Shortly after starting to study under Benton, Pollack became a family friend by spending part of each summer at the Bentons vacationing cottage on Marthas Vineyard. In his early works he was mostly dedicated to Regionalist work being heavily influenced by Mexican muralist painters Orozco, Rivera, and Sizueiros. Although he did experiment with abstraction of objects in line type paintings. Even with being trained under a realist in Benton, Jackson branched out to explore the expression of himself through his abstract paintings. In 1936 Pollock worked in a experimental workshop where he worked on floats and banners for the Communist demonstrations, but shortly his interest in politics diminished and the one for psychological arose. 939 brought Jacksons his first psychological treatment from psychoanalyst Dr. Joseph Henderson. From 1938 to 1942 Pollock worked for the Federal Art Project, and by the mid-40s he was painting in a completely abstract manner. In 1944 Jackson met and married his Lee Krasner, also an abstract impressionist of great influence in the 20th century. In 1947 Pollock abruptly started working in what he was famous for, his drip and splash method. He continued painting throughout the early 50s, and in 1956 Time magazine named Jackson Jack the Dripper. Later in 1956, Pollock would shock the world when he was in a fatal car wreck which added to his already legendary status as an artist, and was a demonstration of the harsh violent displayed in his paintings. Jackson was most well known for his drip paintings, which were created in a very unheard ofaâ‚ ¬Ã‚ ¦unusual way. He attached his canvases to the wall or floor dancing around them attacking it from all four sides. He would use about anything but a paintbrush to apply the paint to the canvas. He most often stood over the work slinging paint with sticks, trowels, or knives. A good man is hard to find paper EssayOthers would seem to be thrown together with jagged lines showing no specific figure or form. Some showed single lines with no depth, while others traveled deep into space with heavily worked pieces. Some showed Cubist influence, while others showed the opposite with a surrealist influence. A few showed a cluster of objects occupying the entire page with no visual center of attention, while others had a definite object that drew your eye. None of the diversified paintings were numbered, dated, or signed showing no real order or meaning of his progression or mutation in style. It was not until after Pollock quit bringing the paintings that Jackson and Henderson began speaking on a more personal level. 8 In 1969, Henderson decided to sell the paintings and suit was filed against him by Krasner for violating the privacy from Doctor to patient. Pollock was also known to have a very strong tie to nature and internal human forces as subject matter for his paintings. Kasner spoke of his strong interest in nature in an interview in 1944 saying, Certainly his relationship to nature was intense. For example, the moon had a tremendous effect on him, and he liked gardening. Just walking on the beach in the wintertime with snow on the san was exciting. He identified very strongly with nature. 9 Tony Smith did a group of interviews called Who Was Jackson Pollock? In these interviews he spoke of how Jackson identified with the land and how he always used it in some way. This was elemental; painting is always, to some extent, cultural. He went on to sayaâ‚ ¬Ã‚ ¦ I dont think that Jackson painted o the floor just for its hard surface, or for the large area, or the freedom of movement, or so that the drips wouldnt run. There was something else, a strong bond with the elements. The earth was always there. 0 Many that were close to Jackson said that they would set silently with him, and watch nature for hours. Pollock believed that modern art, especially his own expressed the inner life of the artist. With this he did not just believe that the emotions of the painter at the time the painting was created were coming out, such as hate, love, anger, and fear. He believed that there were inner forces coming out of the painting expressing themselves. Jackson made himself very clear about this in an radio interview with William Wright when he started off by making the point that modern artists work from a different sourceaâ‚ ¬Ã‚ ¦ The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within. aâ‚ ¬Ã‚ ¦ the modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner worldaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" in other wordsaâ‚ ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å"expressing he energy, the motion, and other inner forces. 11 He meant from this exert that modern artists did not just draw inner force energy from themselves, but from the world around them. They drew energy from nature and from the city, from animals and people alike. Who was Jackson Pollock? This was a greatly wide spread question. Was he a genius or was he a lunatic? Was he an artist or was he an alcoholic? Jackson Pollock was a man with many ideals that not many could understand. Maybe only he could understand the complexity of his own mind, and the ideals that he believed in. Although Pollock was a psychologically complex man he was a genius of his time. Showing us not only a new way to paint, but also a new way to think. Jack the Dripper, one to be remembered and missed.