One of the peak names of abstract expressionism: Who is Jackson Pollock?

Painter Jackson Pollock (28 January 1912 – 11 August 1956), one of the most important representatives of the abstract expressionist movement, is one of the most important artists of the 20th century.

In the words of the American artist Ad Reinhardt, abstract expressionism is an artistic approach that finds its expression on a ground where the boundaries between the reality of everyday life and the reality of painting art are clearly separated.

Abstract Expressionism, which has assumed an unruly attitude, emerges in the last years of the Second World War. Without having to comply with the usual basic plastic values, the forms are constructed as they come from within and shaped on the canvas with a dramatic or lyrical mood. There is a sense of spontaneous fiction.

Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an American painter. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles. It was called all-over painting and action painting, since he covered the entire canvas and used the force of his whole body to paint, often in a frenetic dancing style. This extreme form of abstraction divided the critics: some praised the immediacy of the creation, while others derided the random effects. In 2016, Pollock's painting titled Number 17A was reported to have fetched US$200 million in a private purchase.

Abstract Expressionist artists generally chose the subjects of their works from primitive and ancient mythology, using different techniques such as dripping, throwing, and scraping, by placing superficial abstract forms on large-sized canvases. The common features of abstract expressionist artists are that they live in New York, they perform their works in New York, and exhibit in galleries in New York. Because of these features, they have also been referred to as New York School artists.

Abstract expressionism is evaluated under two separate headings as Action Painting and Color-Field. Jackson Pollock, Action Painting, and Mark Rothko have also been accepted as representatives of Color-Field.

Action Painting is Jackson Pollock's most important and original contribution to art history. His style is a painting style that emphasizes physical movement through paint that is instantly and carelessly poured, dripped, or rubbed onto the painting surface. Although Mark Tobey was the first to use this technique, Pollock personalizes and matures this technique. Action/Action Painting, which emerged for the first time in the USA and is included in the abstract expressionism movement, is not only the first reaction of US painting to European abstract painting but also its first contribution to European painting.

Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, the fifth child of Stella May MacLure and Le Roy Pollock. His father, a road worker, works away from home. His authoritarian mother has a great influence on his uncompromising and contradictory identity when he becomes an adult. Throughout his life, his rebellious personality and problems such as alcoholism caused him to be expelled from his school as well as from his job.

Pollock's acquaintance with modern art begins when his older brother Charles, who left his family and went to Los Angeles in 1921, sent home the prints of The Dial art magazine. Pollock, who went to Los Angeles in 1928, entered the workshop of illustrator and painter Frederick John de St Vrain Schwankovsky at the School of Handicrafts. However, he was expelled from the school in 1929, then he was accepted again and was expelled from the school again due to the problems he had with the school administration. 1930 would be a very important year for Pollock, who moved to New York. He succeeds in attending Ahron Ben-Shmuel's sculpture class at Greenwich House and then Thomas Hart Benton's painting workshop at the Art Students League.

During this period, Pollock gradually moved away from concrete painting and approached the European avant-garde by painting paintings such as The Flame.

Due to his increasing psychological problems in 1939, Pollock applied to the psychotherapist Dr. Joseph Henderson, who was from Carl Gustav Jung (one of the leading psychologists of the twentieth century), and these interviews played an important role in his artistic life. After more than a year of treatment, when Dr. Henderson left New York in 1940, Pollock continued treatment with Dr. Violet Staub de Laszlo, who was of the same school. Painting studies played an important role in his treatment.

Pollock, who made figurative paintings in the early 1940s, began to be influenced especially by Picasso, Miro, and Arshile Gorky. Abstract surreal paintings emerge, in which images of Aztecs and Native Americans and Jung's symbols are mixed with what these artists learned from their works.

In 1943, he received an offer from Peggy Guggenheim (US art collector) to paint a mural for her home. He completed his first large-scale mural, Mural, at the beginning of 1944. (Picture at the top of the page.) Using the automatism of the surrealists, his work, which he made as an abstract expressionist work in line with his teacher Benton's understanding of composition, is considered to be the first example of his own style. At a glance, for a moment, the thick forms made with black thick arc effects seem to be effective, but suddenly this effect gives place to the dominance of white-colored areas. Even later, yellow-colored effects come to the fore. For this reason, the concept of the main idea of the work completely disappears, as the audience's observations are constantly changing.

Until the mid-1940s, the distinguishing feature of Pollock's works can be evaluated as rapid execution, formal and thematic pluralism, improvisation, and veiling of forms. The paintings he made in the early 1940s are called the Totemic Period.

The word totem, borrowed from the North American Indians, denotes a social system in which tribes identify with an animal or plant they regard as a ranger.

Pollock opens his first solo exhibition in 1943. However, he achieved his real breakthrough with the paintings he made with the dripping technique, which is his own unique style, which he realized in 1947-1951. Sometimes he drips paint with a brush, sometimes he rubs it with a stick, spreads it with a trowel, or even runs it straight out of the can. It also mixes sand, broken glass, nails, screws, or other foreign materials scattered around into the paint. Cigarette ashes or, if it comes across, a dead bee were also involuntarily taking their place in the picture.

In 1945, he and his painter wife Lee Krasner move to a farmhouse on Long Island, quitting alcohol.

In the 1950s, the CIA allegedly funded cultural initiatives as part of the propaganda war against the Soviet Union and supported artists by purchasing paintings. Pollock was also among the supported artists. However, the CIA's support for abstract expressionism is still controversial.

Pollock's paintings change dramatically with his return to alcohol. In these paintings, Pollock stops using color as in his drip paintings.

In 1956, Pollock succumbed to alcoholism and stopped painting and drawing. He had become an icon, he had become famous and rich, but he felt miserable, lonely, and misunderstood. His marriage was also going very badly, he and his wife began to live separately. For 18 months he does not paint and gains excess weight. On the night of August 11, 1956, he crashes his car and dies. His friend Edith Metzger, who was with him during the accident, dies, and his lover Ruth Kligman is seriously injured but survives.