Pollock, Jackson

Jackson Pollock: An American Saga

Jackson Pollock was more than a great artist, he was a creative force of nature. He changed not only the course of Western art, but our very definition of "art." He was the quintessential tortured genius, an American Vincent van Gogh, cut from the same unconforming cloth as his contemporaries Ernest Hemingway and James Dean--and tormented by the same demons; a "cowboy artist" who rose from obscurity to take his place among the titans of modern art, and whose paintings now command millions of dollars.

Here, for the first time, is the life behind that extraordinary achievement--the disjointed childhood, the sibling rivalry, the sexual ambiguity, and the artistic frustration out of which both artist and art developed.

Based on more than 2,000 interviews with 850 people, Jackson Pollock is the first book to explore the life of a great artist with the psychological depth that marks the best biographies of literary and political figures. In eight years of research the authors have uncovered previously unknown letters and documents, gained access to medical and psychiatric records, and interviewed scores of the artist's friends and acquaintances whose stories had never been told. They were also the first biographers in twenty years to benefit from the cooperation of Pollock's widow, Lee Krasner.

The results of these unprecedented efforts lie before you: a rich, sprawling, landmark biography of one of the most compelling figures in all of American culture; a brilliant, explosive "portrait of the artist," intimately detailed, abundantly illustrated (with more than 200 photographs from Pollock's life and work, many of them never before published), and filled with new information and new insights.

In a style as richly textured, engrossing, and poignant as the best of contemporary literature, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith give us the family crucible out of which the artist and his art emerged. Beginning with Jackson's birth on a sheep ranch in Wyoming, we follow the Pollock family on a relentless trek across the American West, as their dreams of a better life somewhere else are repeatedly frustrated. We see the young Jack Pollock as a struggling art student in New York, escaping into drunken rages or throwing himself into the Hudson River in one of several attempts at suicide.

Later, we see Pollock, by turns, gently affectionate and outrageously cruel, creatively bankrupt and heroically productive. We see him alternately fascinated and intimidated by his contemporaries: Clement Greenberg, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Harold Rosenberg, Clyfford Still, Tennessee Williams. We see him enter into a tumultuous marriage with the painter Lee Krasner, creating a powerful alliance that will lead first to triumph, then to decline, and finally to death when, with his mistress at his side, Pollock smashes his car into a tree.

But Jackson Pollock is more than the epic story of a tormented man and his sublime art, it is also a compulsively readable, sweeping saga of America's cultural coming of age. From frontier Iowa to the dust bowl of Arizona, from the twilight of the Wild West to the desolation of Depression-era New York, from the excitement and experimentation of the Mexican muralists to the fanfare of the Surrealists' visit to America, from the arts projects of the WPA to the explosion of interest and money that marked the beginning of the modern art world, Pollock's story unfolds against the dramatic landscape of American history.

Here then is a definitive record of the journey of an artist, filled with piercing psychological insights, that brings us to a truer understanding of the power and pathos of creative genius.

Jackson Pollock

The almost mythic Jackson Pollock--a roughshod, ill-mannered, prodigiously ambitious, aggressive, alcoholic, tormented artist--is alive and unwell in this book. But Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel, the chief curator and adjunct assistant curator, respectively, of the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Painting and Sculpture, also go deeply into Pollock's art in eye-opening ways. This book is the catalog for the retrospective of Pollock's art-shattering oeuvre at the Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 1998 and includes many biographical pictures as well as color plates of Pollock's paintings, from the awkward but earnest early works to the late, great, famous canvasses. Varnedoe's essay, aptly titled "Comet: Jackson Pollock's Life and Work," deftly invites the reader into Pollock's world, starting with his country studio: "The structure, often called a barn, is in fact more like a glorified tool shed." Karmel's essay, "Pollock at Work: The Films and Photographs of Hans Namuth," is a truly groundbreaking exploration of Pollock's technique. Karmel has scrutinized every frame of every piece of film, still or moving, ever taken of Pollock painting. He arrives at absolutely original conclusions: Pollock's all-over swirls of dripped and flung paint often began as figurative works and clearly relate to such all-American stalwarts as Thomas Hart Benton. Karmel makes countless other sharp observations, noting the difference, for example, between fast-looking marks and the slow, deliberate movements with which they were made (and vice versa). His essay is a work of brilliant scholarship, written thrillingly, and it will forever change the way any serious viewer looks at Pollock's paintings. It makes this volume absolutely essential for understanding the work of this great, sad artist. --Peggy Moorman

Jackson Pollock is widely considered the most challenging and influential American artist of the 20th century. In his revolutionary paintings of the late 1940s, he dripped paint into complex webs of interlacing lines, rhythmically punctuated by pools of color. With their allover composition, apparent abstraction, and spontaneous but controlled paint handling, these powerful works announced the emergence of Abstract Expressionism. This sumptuously illustrated book offers a fresh overview of his achievement, reinterpreted for a new generation and features a complete visual record of the artist's work, including over 200 color reproductions of paintings, drawings, and prints, enhanced by life-sized details, foldouts, and documentary photographs. An essay by Kirk Varnedoe explores Pollock's life, the mythology that so quickly grew up around him as the prototypical "action painter", and the different critical schools that have tried to lay claim to his legacy. Pepe Karmel offers new insight into Pollock's famous "drip" technique, as revealed by an intensive, computer-assisted study of photographs and films of Pollock at work. This volume was published to accompany the first major survey of the artist's career since 1967, held in 1998 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Jackson Pollock

"A remarkably fresh look at Pollock's life and work."
-Publishers Weekly

Ellen G. Landau's compelling and original book, now published in an affordable paperback edition, covers the life and work of this complex, tragic, and immeasurably influential figure in modern art. More than 100 of Pollock's big, bold canvases are reproduced in glorious color, including six gatefolds that show his vast horizontal works without distortion. Every lover of American art, every lover of great art, will enjoy this gorgeous volume, the definitive work on a painter who revolutionized the world of art.

Jackson Pollock: 1912-1956 (Taschen Basic Art)

A TRAGIC ICON OF ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM, JACKSON POLLOCK (1912-1956) TOOK INFLUENCES FROM PICASSO AND MEXICAN SURREALISM AND DEVELOPED HIS OWN WAY OF SEEING, INTERPRETING, AND EXPRESSING. THOUGH HIS NAME INEVITABLY CONJURES UP IMAGES OF THE DRIP PAINTINGS FOR WHICH HE IS MOST FAMOUS, THIS TECHNIQUE WAS ONLY DEVELOPED MIDWAY THROUGH HIS CAREER. THE PROGRESSION FROM HIS EARLIER WORK TO HIS FINAL "ACTION" PAINTINGS--A VERITABLE REVOLUTION OF PAINTING AS A CONCEPT--REVEALS THE GENIUS OF THIS TORTURED ARTIST WHOM MANY CALL THE GREATEST MODERN AMERICAN PAINTER.

Jackson Pollock: Key Interviews, Articles, and Reviews

This anthology surveys five decades of critical response to Jackson Pollock, bringing together essential and hard-to-find texts from newspapers, journals, and catalogues. It includes all of Pollock's statements about his art as well as interviews with his wife, painter Lee Krasner, providing firsthand testimony about his goals and methods. Reviews of Pollock's early exhibitions reveal the intense interest his work aroused even before he arrived at his famous technique of "dripping" paint. Later articles trace the growth of Pollock's myth after his death in 1956 and document the continuing debate over psychological and mythological interpretations of Pollock's work.

Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner (Pegasus Library)

This dual portrait examines the art and lives of these talented artists and their productive, yet tempestuous relationship.

For more than a decade Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner devoted their lives to each other, serving in turn as muse, critic, companion, lover, friend, and alter ego. Their romance was stormy--their raucous arguments are the stuff of legend--and their talents were prodigious. Filling the pages of this book are examples of the contributions both artists made to the world of modern art. Readers will learn how Pollock and Krasner's artistry evolved and how they influenced each other's success. Recent developments, such as a revealing biopic and the art world's designation of Pollock as the most expensive artist in the world, bring their portrait fully up to date. While the author acknowledges history's sensationalization of their lives, it is the paintings themselves--revolutionary, innovative, and daring--that tell the most compelling story.

Jackson Pollock: Works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and from European Collections

"On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally in' the painting."-Jackson Pollock, 1947

Jackson Pollock (19121956) was the commanding figure of American Abstract Expressionism. By the mid-1940s, he was painting in a completely abstract manner, and the "drip and splash" style for which he is best known emerged rather abruptly in 1947. This manner of Action Painting had in common with Surrealist theories of automatism that artists and critics alike supposed it to -result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist. Advanced critics strongly supported Pollock, but he was also subject to much abuse and sarcasm; in 1956, Time magazine called him "Jack the Dripper." By the 1960s, however, he was generally recognized as the most important figure in this century's most important movement in American painting. His unhappy personal life and his premature death in a car crash contributed to his legendary status.

This catalogue book was first published on the occasion of a noted exhibition at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dsseldorf, Germany. It presents important paintings as well as graphic works from the New York Museum of Modern Art and from several European collections, for example, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.

Volkmar Essers is curator at the museum Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dsseldorf. He specializes in and has published on Abstract Expressionism.

Jackson Pollock: A Biography

Deborah Solomon interviewed the people who knew Abstract-Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) for this insightful portrait.

Jackson Pollock (Portfolio (Taschen))

TASCHEN portfolios feature high quality prints that beg to be framed. Tucked in each portfolio are 14 large-format reproductions, each with a brief description. Guaranteed to brighten any day, they also make great gifts for art lovers!