The Jackson Pollock Sketchbooks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art - Assignment Example

RESEARCH PAPER ON JACKSON POLLOCK Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912, in Cody, Wyoming, U.S. He grew up in Arizona, Chicago, and California due to the nature of his father’s job—a surveyor—which entailed a lot of moving. Jackson Pollock was delighted in telling people around him of his roots. Snapshots from his family archives that have dated back from the 1920s show that he liked art when he was a little boy. In 1093, he decided to join is brothers to pursue art at New York’s Art Students League. During his many voyages in the company of his father, he explored the culture of native America. He had been expelled from two schools before he finally joined his elder brother in Art Students League, where they became Thomas Hart Benton’s students. Jackson was not highly influenced by Benton’s theme of the American countryside and instead relied mostly on his dynamic style of painting and his sense of freedom (Potter 43). Jackson also struggled with alcoholism to an extent that he had to attend physiotherapy classes. In 1945, he married an American painter, Lee Krasner, and they moved together to the Springs area in East Hampton. They bought a house and a barn. Jackson then converted the barn into a studio, and it is in that room where he produced some of his greatest works. He continued practicing the drip painting technique to a point that the Time magazine dubbed him as “Jackson the Dripper” (Engelmann 72). His career was cut short on August 11, 1956, when he had an accident when driving in an intoxicated state. He succumbed to severe injuries and died the same day. In 1943, Jackson painted a mural on a canvas for Peggy Guggenheim on the floor to make it easily portable. One art critic, Marcel Duchamp, saw the mural and wrote: “I took one look at it and I thought, ‘Now that’s great art’ and I knew Jackson was the greatest painter this country had produced” (Landau 40). It is said that most of his paintings expressed Jungian concepts and archetypes. Historians say that his work might have had bipolar disorder meaning that it was hard for someone to understand exactly what Jackson Pollock had in mind when making a certain painting. David Alfaro Siqueiros, a Mexican muralist, is the man who introduced Jackson to the use of liquid in 1936. Some of the most famous paintings by Jackson are the Male and Female and Composition with Pouring I. He preferred to use household paintings, adding that they were much better compared to artist’s paints because they represented “a natural growth out of a need” (Potter 78). His technique of painting on canvases when he had spread them on the floor enabled him to view his paintings from all directions. Among his tools were basting syringes, sticks, and hardened brushes—an innovation that was challenging the traditional use of easel and brush by most painters. His dripping technique led to the development of action painting whereby he would move his whole body when dong his work. Painting on the floor entailed a lot of movement around the canvas. According to Jackson, his works were not accidental. He always had an idea of what he wanted to paint. He would therefore move around the canvas spattering, pouring and dripping paint on it until he saw what he wanted to have as the final result (Pollock et al . 67). His work can be traced to the Indian sand painters of the West. He referred to his work on the floor and stated, “I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk round it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting” (Engelmann 57). He had a unique way of doing his work, an aspect that made him stand out among other painters of his time. One photographer, Hans Namuth, wanted to take Jackson’s pictures while he was doing his work at his studio in Springs. The idea was for Jackson to start the painting once Namuth arrived so that he could view everything from the start. However, Namuth arrived only to find a canvas covered with paint lying on the floor. He found it completely weird when Jackson suddenly took his tools of work and started moving around the canvas. He began at a slow pace, slowly increasing until it seemed like he was dancing and completely forgot the presence of other people in the room. He was even unaware of the click of the camera as Namuth took his pictures. It was not until half an hour later that he came to a sudden stop and said “This is it” that Namuth realized how Jackson worked. His was a totally different way from other painters who would take their time to pause and observe what they were doing. To Jackson, his work had to be done once an idea came to his mind and nothing would stop him until he brought out his idea into reality (Woodsmall 53). He continued with his drip painting technique till 1950, when he suddenly dropped it. This completely amazed people because he was at the peak of his career. He then took up painting using darker colors and even made a collection of black paintings that were made on unprimed canvases. He experienced a lot of pressure from collectors as his work was in high demand, a fact that contributed to his alcoholism. He went back to using colors, but this time, his work was more figurative. There were a lot of questions on his figurative elements, which made Pollock start numbering his work. According to him, this would enable people to view a painting for what it is and not what they want it to be (Fichner-Rathus 37). Jackson Pollock produced a large body of literature that can be interpreted and criticized differently depending on a viewer’s way of thinking. His work brings out some theories that somehow reflect the changing priorities and concerns of art and the social worlds at large. His paintings tell us a lot about him as well as how the social and historical contexts interact with art. His paintings do not completely explain his art, but they do bring forth various interpretations as they are all visual. One may judge from a general view that his work reflects the Indian sand painting, the Jungian symbols and influence from other painters such as Albert Pinkham Ryder. However, a more critical thinker will look at Jackson’s work more individually so as to understand what he tries to bring out in ach painting (Potter 41). Jackson clearly said that he painted from the unconscious. Taking a closer look at one of his paintings, Guardians of the Secret, it is not clear what exactly he meant by unconscious painting. The painting represents some form of Jungian imagery and contains coded messages written on it that have not been understood by people as yet (Pollock and Ratcliff 62). The bottom part of the painting is made up of another painting, She-Wolf, while the top consists of Male and Female, both of which are Pollock’s. One writer once said that this painting resembles the work of Zia Pueblo, who perfected the art of altarpieces and ritual sand paintings. The writer was of the idea that Pollock’s Guardians of the Secret was a ritual painting that was made for healing purposes. It was for this reason that it had to be guarded and its secrets kept safe (Fichner-Rathus 41). Pollock’s idea of the unconscious was adopted by people as an excuse for irrational and unacceptable behaviors. According to them, they had absolutely no idea of why they behaved in such manners as they were unable to control them. Pollock also argued that the modern artists tried to express an inner world that was controlled by inner forces. His Jungian model of the 1940s is also said to be an expression of the fears and horrors felt by people during World War II. His idea of the unconscious brings out what people could not express at that time as they feared what would happen next and lived in uncertainties of what tomorrow held for them (Woodsmall 63). Modern phycists, such as Richard Taylor, have studied Pollock’s works and techniques. They say that his work contains mathematical properties that express fractal qualities. According to them, Pollock improved his work step by step as his career progressed. They suggest that he tried to bring out aspects of the Chaos Theory in mathematics way before the theory came into existence. He had a way to express his ideas and make them appear almost real to the viewers of his paintings (Landau 62). Pollock made his last two paintings, Search and Scent in 1955. In his last year, 1956, he made sculptures at Tony Smith’s home. These sculptures are said to bring out similar ideas with his paintings. In his own way, Pollock became a famous painter in America and the world at large. His paintings have become a decoration for many in their homes as critics continue to evaluate and try to understand what exactly he tried to bring forth in his work (Fichner-Rathus 95). Jackson Pollock’s repute for stubborn independence was to verify a key component in explaining the parameters of his theory. Postwar America was bureaucratized, homogenized and the “buttoned down” that a lot of people feel easily lost in a small crowd. Many of Jackson Pollock’s published and private statements shows that his thinking directly concurs with the fundamental premises of the acting style that is so inextricably as hallmarks of his era (Rose 53). For instance, in an interview he gave in 1994 to The Journal of Art and Architecture about the European Surrrealists, he said that he was particularly impressed with their notion of the source of art as being unconscious. Pollock described his absorption of art was one that had a life of their own (Karmel). The Jackson Pollock story is one that has been exploited and explored frequently for the last three decades. Some of the essentials that have come to disregard his heroic persona was evident in his early works. Most of his pieces seemed to depict undisciplined, violent and explosive notions that he repeatedly used in 1940. His painting of ritual violence, turbulence clashes are related to fragmentary archetypal imagery. He later moved to abstract expressionism through his First Man exhibition. His involvement in gestural painting was inspired through sand painting that is practiced by the Americana Indians. In 1956, Allan Kaprow was pioneering his performance artist with the help of Pollock, who helped remanage the canvas which helped reproduce Peggy Guggenheim also commissioned as a painting for a specific entry hall of his New York apartment. The resulting work known as The Mural helped prove importance of Pollock’s transtition form the style of murals, which is the native American art and European modernism, towards his developed drip technique (Baetjer, Pollock, Messinger, and Rosenthal 53). WORKS CITED Baetjer, Katharine, Jackson Pollock, Lisa M. Messinger, and Nan Rosenthal. The Jackson Pollock Sketchbooks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Museum, 1997. Print. Engelmann, Ines Janet. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. Prestel Verlag GmbH + Company, 2007. Print. Fichner-Rathus, Lois. Foundations of Art and Design (With Access Code). Cengage Learning, 2007. Print. Karmel, Pepe. Jackson Pollock - Interviews, Articles, and Reviews: [publ. in Conjunction with the Exhibition "jackson Pollock" ... the Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 1, 1998 to February 2, 1999]. New York: Abrams, 1999. Print. Landau, Ellen G. Jackson Pollock. Harry N. Abrams, 2010. Print. Pollock, Jackson, and Carter Ratcliff. Jackson Pollock: Drip Paintings on Paper 1948-1949. New York: C & M Arts, 1993. Print. Pollock, Jackson, and Volkmar Essers. Jackson Pollock: Works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and European Collections. Heidelberg: Kehrer, 2003. Print. Potter, Jeffrey. To a Violent Grave: An Oral Biography of Jackson Pollock, Pollock-Krasner House, 2011. Print. Rose, Bernice. Jackson Pollock: Drawing into Painting. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. Print. Woodsmall, Cindy. For Every Season. Waterbook Press, 2013. Print. Read More