Jackson Pollock
FameRank: 6

"Paul Jackson Pollock", known as "Jackson Pollock", was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionism/abstract expressionist movement. He was well known for his unique style of drip painting.

During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety, a major artist of his generation. Regarded as reclusive, he had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.

Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related single-car accident when he was driving. In December 1956, several months after his death, Pollock was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. A larger, more comprehensive exhibition of his work was held there in 1967. In 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The tate Britain/Tate in London.

More Jackson Pollock on Wikipedia.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.

The modern artist…is working and expressing an inner world – in other words – expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.

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.

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.

It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed – after a while you may like it or you may not.

I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.