Jackson Pollock - Definition and Overview

Jackson Pollock in 1950

Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 - August 11, 1956) was an influential American artist and a major force in the abstract expressionism movement.

He was born in Cody, Wyoming, and later moved to New York in 1929, where he studied under Thomas Hart Benton. Pollock moved away from figurative art, and developed techniques of splashing and dripping his paint onto canvas (action painting). Pollock was dubbed "Jack the Dripper" due to his painting style.

From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the Federal Art Project, in the 1950s Pollock was supported by the CIA via the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).

Pollock's career was cut short when he died in a car crash in 1956 at the age of only 44.

He was the subject of the documentaries Jackson Pollock (1987) and Jackson Pollock - Love & Death on Long Island (1999) as well as a movie drama called Pollock (2000) starring Ed Harris. The earlier ten-minute documentary Jackson Pollock (1951) was directed by Hans Namuth and had music by Morton Feldman.

Jackson married Lee Krasner in 1944.

External links

• Jackson Pollock on Museum Web Paris (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/pollock/)
• Pollock collection on the Guggenheim NY Site (http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_works_129_0.html)
• Pollock Movie (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0183659)
• Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center (http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/CAS/pkhouse.nsf)
• Pollock-Krasner Foundation (http://www.pkf.org)
• "Jackson Pollock — and True and False Ambition: The Urgent Difference" by Dorothy Koppelman (http://www.terraingallery.org/Jackson-Pollock-Ambition-DK.html)
• "Jackson Pollock’s 'Number One 1948' or — How Can We Be Abandoned and Accurate at the Same Time?" by Lore Elbel-Bruce (http://www.aestheticrealism.org/Pollock_LS.htm)