Pollock: 1912-1956: At the Limit of Painting (Basic Art)

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), rebel and tragic hero of Abstract Expressionism, was already being mythologised during his lifetime. Dubbed the “Hemingway of painting”, he offered the public everything expected of a genius: alcoholism, unruly behaviour, megalomania, depression, an early death in a car crash and an art unlike anything that had come before. With his abstract “drip paintings”, he opened an entirely new chapter in modern art.

At the beginning of his career Pollock worked figuratively, absorbing influences ranging from Surrealism to Mexican mural painting. In the second half of the 1940s, however, he developed a style that he did not invent but would make world-famous. As the most prominent representative of “Action Painting”, he turned his back on conventional painting techniques, creating abstract webs by splashing industrial paints onto canvas with sticks or hardened brushes, or allowing paint to drip directly from the tins.