Jackson Pollock Presentation Note's So Far - (to be fine tooth combed later)

Jackson Pollock Presentation Notes

Slide 2 - Early Life

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, it effected his Psychological mind, and had physical effects on his life, combined with a hard domestic up bringing. He didn’t follow school rules, and was expelled from school. He was an outsider whose dandified air’s, alienated his fellow students. He found acceptance while at Manual Art’s High School when he was introduced to lot’s of different form’s of Art. 

Attended Art’s School in New York.

 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.

Jackson Pollock, an American action painter 1912-1956 uses paint as an extension of his inner expressions. Pollock married Lee Krasner, also an American artist. In 1936 Pollock was first introduced to liquid paint which signifies and forms his exocentric and bold unconventional style. He uses synthetic enamel, metal and plastic paints and applies them to the canvas on the floor while moving around it which makes his style of painting similar to Indian Sand Painters of the West. ‘A quarter of a century has passed since Pollock’s death, and it is now easier, in hindsight, to see the unites of theme and shape in his art.’ (Hughes: 262) He works without any pre planned idea and focuses more on capturing his emotions at that particular point in time. ‘My painting is direct….I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. … When I’m painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.’ (Pollock: 353) His early work shows exploration of different techniques used in applying the paint. In 1947 he stopped using paint brushes and instead experimented with splattering, pouring and dripping paint on to the canvas. During 1948-50 Pollock’s works consisted of static forms with a delicate and abstract nature. This came to be known as his ‘drip period’. However in 1953 he began to use brushes again in his work

‘Pollock had never been a natural draftsman; his line had a labored, blurting character, an inherent clumsiness of the hand. But by 1948, he had mastered this way of painting “from the hip” swinging the paint stick in flourishes and frisks that required an almost dance like movement of the body, Pollock’s drawing had gone to the opposite extreme on their short flight to the canvas, the sheins and spatters of paint acquired a singular grace. The paint laid itself in arcs and loops as tight as the curve of a trout-cast. What Pollock’s hand did not know, the laws of fluid motion made up for.’(Hughes: This describes how he changed and introduced this stylised form of abstract painting which creates 3-dimentional forms and the movement of individual and grouped particles through the essence of cubism.
Sources
 The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists, Peter and Linda Murray, 1959, Penguin books Ltd, England
 The Shock of the New Art and the century of Change, Robert Hughes, 1980, British Broad Casting Corporation, London
 Modern Art from 1800 to the present day, 1961, Larousse Encyclopedia of Modern Art, Paris
 Pollock, Leonhard Emmerling, 2003

Let me know if anyone can find anything on what he used before liquid paint.

Slide 3 - Jackson Pollock Timeline

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, it effected his Psychological mind, and had physical effects on his life, combined with a hard domestic up bringing. He didn’t follow school rules, and was expelled from school. He was an outsider whose dandified air’s, alienated his fellow students. He found acceptance while at Manual Art’s High School when he was introduced to lot’s of different form’s of Art. 

Attended Art’s School in New York.

 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.

Slide 4 - Abstract Expressionism 

To be added.

Slide 5 - His Work

It was the first work of Pollock’s which both ignored human scale, and was conceived to be viewed from close proximity. Monumental canvases by other artists, such as Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, compel the viewer to step back and contemplate from a distance. Like Pollock’s work and similar to Monet, designed 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.

It was his first work in connection with which - thanks to photography and later, film - the myth of the lone genius began retroactively to shape the aura surrounding the act of painting .

Emmerling.L (2003) Pollock. Germany: Taschen

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. (Emmerling:65)

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”. (Emmerling:68)

Pollock’s tendency to blur the conventional clear in the view of such stark, strongly linear compositions. (Emmerling:71)

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.

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. That was to be the turning point of his career, and a new form of painting born.

He went to New York and worked his new way of Painting ‘Action Painting’, to create such classic’s as ‘Autumn Rhythm’ and ‘Number 31’.

He created 31 work’s of art, 1/3rd of his collection in one year. He continued painting with such criticism from Art critic’s such as Greenberg. 

Emmerling.L (2003) Pollock. Germany: Taschen

Personally Historically, he enabled artists after his death, and today to freely express themselves, wether that’s working on the floor, on the wall, or on an easel. Art critics, critisied his work, saying it was messing, with no composition, un finished, and no more than an explosive amount of violent energy applied to a canvas with no meaning behind it. 

Slide 6 - Influences 

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)

Emmerling.L (2003) Pollock. Germany: Taschen 

Slide 7 - Past and Present

to be added.

Quotes

“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)

“I’am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of Art being the Unconscious”

(Landau:14)

“When I’am in my Painting , I’m not aware of what I’m doing”

(Landau:14)

“God damn it, that guy missed nothing!” (Emmerling:28)

The final note's will be fine tooth combed tomorrow and posted.