Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956), known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the 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; 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 in London.In 2000, Jackson Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award-winning film Pollock directed by and starring Ed Harris.
Manual Arts High School, Art Students League of New York
Nationality
American
Spouse
Lee Krasnerhis death
Parents
LeRoy Pollock, Stella May Pollock
Siblings
Charles Pollock
Star Sign
Aquarius
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Quote
1
New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.
2
On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.
3
I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.
4
The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.
5
He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting.
6
I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc.
7
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.
8
My paintings do not have a center, but depend on the same amount of interest throughout.
9
The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.
10
Every good painter paints what he is.
11
I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.
12
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.
13
When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.
14
The modern artist... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.
15
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
16
When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing.
17
The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.
18
My painting does not come from the easel.
19
Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn't have as far to fall.
20
I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.
21
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.
22
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.
23
It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.
24
When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.
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Fact
1
His "No. 5, 1948" became the world's most expensive painting, when it was auctioned to an undisclosed bidder for $ 140 million (November 2006).
2
Is buried next to his wife Lee Krasner in Green River Cemetery in Springs, New York.
3
Best known for the paintings he created during the "drip period" between 1947 and 1950.
4
Studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Arts Students League in New York.
5
The night he had his fatal car accident, his passengers were his lover Ruth Kligman and her friend Edith Metzger. Although Ruth survived, her friend Edith died along with the painter.
$400,000
