Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

1. People

   • Jackson Pollock
   • Carl Jung
     • Swiss psychoanalyst~ collective unconscious; beneath one's private memories is a storehouse of feelings and symbolic associations common to all humans
   • Hans Hoffman
     • German painter who attended the NY Art Student's League, taught Krasner and had a close relationship with Pollock; he believed that there should be contrast in the color, texture and form of a painting; wanted to stay linked to the world of objects
   • Lee Krasner
     • wife of Pollock (mother-son relationship), student of Hoffman, devoted her life to making Pollock a greatly known artist; introduced him to Peggy Guggenheim
   • William de Kooning
     • a Dutch American expressionist artist who put cubism, surrealism, and expressionism together in his work; famous for his pictures of women, blended the figure and the ground, inspired by Picasso
   • Thomas Hart Benton
     • mentor of Pollock, Threshing Wheat~ showed the changing tech in the West and the commercialization (regionalism), teaches @ the Art Student's League
   • David Siqueros
     • encouraged abstractism
   • Pablo Picasso
     • created the first cubist painting; was not liked by Pollock; distorted human figure
   • Peggy Guggenheim
     • a gallery owner who gave Pollock a stipen to paint; he would get money for the paintings he sold and would get no extra money if the paintings did not sell; eventually her gallery closes, and Pollock was not paid
   • Hans Namuth
     • photographer and filmmaker who documented Pollock; this documentation led to Pollock's downfall back into alcoholism
   • Clement Greenberg
     • critic that helped make Pollock's career by getting him on the cover of Time Magazine
   • Jack the Dripper
     • a nickname given to Pollock between 1947-1950 when he began Drip Painting
   • Ruth Kligman
     • Pollock's girlfriend whom he had an affair with while married to Krasner; she was the only one to survive the crash
   • Edith metzer
     • a friend of Klingman who was killed in the car crash caused by Pollock
   • David Alfaro Siqueros
     • a Mexican social realist painter who inspired Pollock with his nontraditional painting techniques like air brushing and pouring
   • Joan Miro
     • Spanish painter who focused on abstractism and surrealism; Pollock studied his work for the distorted human form
   • Ed Harris
     • directed and acted the part of Pollock in the Hollywood film Pollock
   • Marcia Gay harden
     • played the part of Lee Krasner in the Hollywood film Pollock
   • Robert Mother well
     • an American painter who attended the NY School The Art Student' s League; dramatic and bright brush strokes, energetic imagery, pure emotional response. His collage also concerned itself with an awareness of the presence of the artist in a work. Using torn paper on minimalist backgrounds,
   • Arshile Gorky
     • he was an ethnically Armenian painter who played a large role in the emergence of the Abstractism Era; he borrowed from the surrealist, but incorporated more color and personal content;

2. Art Terms

   • Abstract Expressionism
     • (40s&50s) expressing profound social alienation in the wake of WW2, making art that was both moral and universal
     • action painting~active paint handling
     • color field painting~broad sweeping expanses of color
     • borrowed from the surrealist the idea of examining the unconscious
   • Cubism
     • look @ something from multiple angles @ the same time
   • Regionalism/ American Scene Painting
     • The artistic focus was from artists who shunned city life, and rapidly developing technological advances, to create scenes of rural life; adopted by Benton and for a short time,Pollock
   • Automatism
     • paint is applied directly to the canvas without any planning or preconceived ideas
   • Drip Painting
     • paint is dripped or poured onto the canvas; an art form pioneered by Jackson Pollock
   • Navajo Sand Painting
     • paints loosely upon the ground of a hogan, where the ceremony takes place, or on a buckskin or cloth tarpaulin, by letting the coloured sands flow through his fingers; this inspired Pollock as he painted on the ground letting the paint flow from his sticks and brushes
   • Abstraction
     • seeks to break away from traditional representation of physical objects; Pollock rarely showed identifiable figures in his paintings

3. Places/Things

   • WPA (The Works Project Administration
     • gov't pays artist to document and reguevenate through art; Pollock and his brother join
   • The Springs, Long Island
     • where Pollock and Krasner move to buy their first house; Pollock is very productive here~ using an abandoned barn as his studio
   • The Art Student's League
     • @ age 18 Pollock moved to NYC to study here; met Benton here; during his time here he participated in his first exhibition @ Brooklyn Museum