No artist among the Abstract Expressionists is more open about revealing the stages that led up to the surface we see. This vertical directionality down to the weave, distinct from any device of perspective (though at times contributing to the spatial drama of the work), is the hallmark of the way Pollock painted.

But people want to know what Pollock’s works mean? This begs the question of what "meaning" means when interpreting Pollock. Here, I would suggest, meaning is the sum total of three things:

1. what you feel on first encountering the work,
2. what you can see of the qualities of the work that made you feel as you did,
3. what you can know about the work’s imagery and intent, and the historical origins and context from which, and in which, it was created.

The point to stress here is that the first levels of relevant information in the quest for meaning are visceral and visual, not verbal. These are the realities that I think have been forgotten in the current "literature" on Pollock -- and most serious art. Indeed, one must come to the sad conclusion that for many historians, biographers and critics today, the works of art are not real as objects -- only the theory of explanation is real. This lack of empathy -- this inability to share in another's emotions or feelings -- this inability to see, and through perception, to feel through what is actually there in the art work, but instead to assert only what theory requires to be there -- makes all too much recent art commentary tendentiously distortive, unenlightening, and ultimately useless.

What follows applies the method just described in the reviews of the show and its catalogue, and in the commentaries on specific works.  Back to Top  

Jackson Pollock, Contemporary American Artist. 1912 - 1956 H. S. A. A.
Born 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, America, and became known as the most important artist of the Abstract Expressionist movement. His main studies in art  at the age of 17 years old was under the painter Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Student's League, New York. And in the early 1930's was influenced by the Mexican Muralist painters Orozco and Rivera.
It was in the late 1940's that his painting started to show the direction in art known as abstract and the 'drip and splash' style  which he would become known throughout the world. He would place huge  canvases  on the floor and then 'drip and splash colours through holes in a paint can suspended above the canvas. His use of knives, sticks and other various items to manipulate and blend the paint together with adding other material such as pieces of broken glass, sand, plaster and any other material to hand to create an 'impasto' of various thickness to achieve the effect he wanted. This type of method became known as 'action' painting, thereby resulting in direct expressionism of the moods of the artist.
Later in his life he would alter the 

actual shape of the canvas  to one of unusual characteristics later known as the New American Painting style.
Theodore Zimmerman's family retain four drawings of Pollock in their collection.
Jackson Pollock died in an automobile crash in Cody in 1956 only 44 years old but was a giant figure of American
Abstract Expressionism.