Final Presentation Notes

Early Life - Slide 2

• Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, in a small town of Cody, Wyoming. He was the youngest of five sons, and the domestic circumstances of the Pollock family were anything but simple. The boy’s personality was decisively shaped by his father’s long absences, and his mother’s dominant character. Introduced to Alcohol at the age of fifteen.
• First Piece is a self portrait of himself, produced in 1931. He was shown Art by an Art’s called 

Jackson Pollock Timeline - Slide 3

• Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, in a small town of Cody, Wyoming. He was the youngest of five sons, and the domestic circumstances of the Pollock family were anything but simple.
• Introduced to Alcohol at the age of fifteen, it effected his Psychological mind, and had physical effects on his life, combined with a hard domestic up bringing.
• Attended Art’s School in New York, started Action Painting and had his first show in New York, on Jan 5th 1948. He exploded on the American Art Scene then.
• Pollock was drinking very heavily by this point and suffered from Depression, which also Included a nervous/mental Breakdown. Alcohol would also be to blame for his death, when on the night of August 11, 1956, drunk he smashed his car into a tree and died. A fellow friend also perished in the accident as well.

Abstract Expressionism - Slide 4

• Abstract Expressionism is a landmark in the general history of art and of modern art in particular. Like the Cubist epoch it represents a revolutionary event which revises our view of things before and after. Abstract Expressionism started (post war) after the Second World War.
• As Hollywood, Coke and Ford soon became part of the everyday geography of experience, so the most famous instances of Abstract Expressionism have provided readymade symbols of modernity to our cosmopolitan eyes. Jackson Pollock’s mazes of paintwork, Mark Rothko’s hovering rectangles and William de Kooning’s strident Women posses the same sort of currency as Mondrian’s grids, Picasso’s multi-faceted faces of Warhol’s Marilyn’s.
• All were influenced by Existentialist ideas, which emphasized the importance of the act of creating, not of the finished object.
• All were influenced by Existentialist ideas, which emphasized the importance of the act of creating, not of the finished object.
• Main Artists - Picasso, Kandinsky, Pollock, Rothko are the main painters of the Abstract Revolution.

His Work - Slide 5

• It was the first work of Pollock’s which both ignored human scale, and was conceived to be viewed from close proximity. Like Pollock’s work and similar to Monet, was designed so his pictures to be seen from a certain distance, at which separate brushstrokes and juxtapositions of color’s merge in the eye into a motif and the overall composition becomes legible. Pollock’s work also invites close up viewing.
• He was commissioned to paint a mural for a lady’s party and struggled to paint it, until he started and finished it in a single night. 
• He also used Watered down Paint and Emulsion on his work as they were a lot more runny.
• He also listened to Music and painted using his bodies response to the song he was listening to. He often Listened to Jazz.
• His Psychoanalytical Drawings - drawing he used to tell his therapists how he’s feeling and try and tell them what he failed to do verbally.
• His dancelike movements Pollock made during the painting process have frequently been described as encouraging a free flow of unconscious imagery and it’s immediate communication to the canvas.
• Quote by Pollock - “When I’am in my Painting , I’m not aware of what I’m doing” (Landau:14)
• Quote - In the New York Times, the critic Robert Coates declared, “I can say of such piece’s. . . only that they seem mere unorganised explosions of random energy, and therefore meaningless” [Assessed: 30/03/11]

• To paint his pictures he used;
• Stones
• Sticks
• Hard Brushes - usually left on purpose to go hard so the paint ran off them.
• Palette Knife
• His own Body

Influences - Slide 6

• He was Influenced by Picasso and Thomas Hart Barton.

• Quote - “I will never be satisfied until I’m able to mould a mountain of stone with the aid of a jack hammer to fit my will” (Landau:12).

• Picasso - Neoclassical Period
• Joan Miro (1893 - 1983)
• Paul Klee (1879 - 1940)
• Clemente Orozco (1883 - 1949)
• Diego Rivera (1886 - 1957)
• David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896 - 1974)

• Quote by Pollock, concerning his interest with Picasso, he stated and threw a book of Picasso’s on the floor “God damn it, that guy missed nothing!” (Emmerling:28) - He hoped to pick up on something Picasso had missed during his career.

• He Influenced - Helen Frankenthaler.

Past and Present - Slide 7 

• Personally Jackson Pollock has defiantly made his mark on the past, the way he went against what anybody said to him, whether that was about him in general, his work, or what they thought he was better off doing. He showed people a new form of Painting and became a master at it! Wiping the smile off Critics such as Clement Greenberg who critisied his work harshly.
• Presently he still continue’s to inspire people, and I myself for that matter with his work. Pollock was like Hendrix in the Art World, he invented thing’s people didn’t even think would work, except he ended up Mastering it to great effect, creating huge canvas full of emotion, and pure Artistic Energy through connection with the Canvas. He allows people today do express yourself in whatever you desire. I find his work also has a very strong Link with Graffiti, so it would say presently his work can be seen in that form of Art and within such Artists as Helen Frankenthaler.

Conclusion - Slide 8 - (Final Slide)

• Explosively changed the way Abstract Art could be approached.
• Used his life trauma’s to create his Masterpieces through Mastered Techniques he created himself.
• Created work that he wanted to create, regardless of what the critics said.
• Inspired Other Artists

I tried to make as brief as I could, but it was hard, on the day the note may well be broken down a bit more. You don't have to say everything, but on the day we will should have a quick rehearsal of the presentation so we all know what to do. We need to get in the 10 min slot this time! See you tomorrow in the library at 9:30. I hope you can make it early if not we can have a quick rehearsal as the other presentations are going on quickly.

See you tomorrow.