Jackson Pollock’s Abstract Expressionism
All-over composition, drip painting and process art.
It’s impossible to just simply “look” at a Jackson Pollock. If the monumental size of his works doesn’t immediately demand your attention, his bold, complex and intertwining linear forms will draw the eye into the heart of the painting and lead it in a rhythmical dance across the canvas.
In Cathedral, Pollock employed the technique of drip painting to create formal relationships that are both chaotic and contrived. He explores the entire surface of the canvas by snaking linear forms continuously throughout the space, even daring to visually lead them off the edge only to draw them back again.
Jackson Pollock has been accredited with several innovations over the course of his career. Cathedral illustrates two of his revolutionary contributions to Post-modern painting: the “all-over composition” and the dripping technique.
Despite popular belief, Pollock did not invent the idea of dripping paint on a canvas but rather learned the technique from David Siqueiros when working at his studio in 1936. He was heavily influenced by both the painting styles and communist politics of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco and Siqueiros during his early years as a working artist and would be impacted by the critiques and guidance of several other figures in the art world in years to come.
Before he was ever dubbed “the greatest living painter in the United States,” by Life magazine Pollock was the youngest of five boys born to Leroy and Stella Pollock on Jan. 28, 1912. He moved around the American west frequently throughout his childhood but was heavily encouraged by his working class parents to develop his artistic talent.
Though his father was not around for much of Pollock’s adolescence, Leroy Pollock continued to encourage his son from afar. In a letter to Jackson, Leroy wrote, “I think every person should think, act and believe according to the dictates of his own conscience without much pressure from the outside.”
Whether due to his father’s encouragement or his own rebellious nature, Pollock moved to New York City after being expelled from his California high school for insulting and challenging the authority of the school’s administration.
It was at the Art Student’s League in New York where Pollock met his most influential teacher, Thomas Hart Benton. Although Benton was a Regionalist painter, a far cry from Pollock’s later Abstract Expressionist style, many of the techniques and formal qualities of Benton’s illustrative paintings are emulated in both Pollock’s symbolic and non-representational works.
As Benton’s student, Pollock did work for several years in the Regionalist style; however the discontentment and paranoia that characterized Post-war America alongside Pollock’s own internal conflicts eventually led him to explore the darker issues of society and the self through different means of expression.
In “From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism: Modern art and consensus politics in Post war America,” Erika Doss projects that the “spidery webs of Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist painting reflect post war disaffection and anxiety.” His tangled lines and multiple layers of color are emotionally charged with confusion and frustration, interpreted by Doss as a visual representation of the discontentment that characterized post war American attitudes. She further claims that Pollock’s formal decisions in regard to technique and composition illustrate “disturbing insights into the human condition.”
Initially, American art culture did not embrace European abstraction. Prior to World War II, most Americans found abstract art to be inferior and irrelevant, favoring the more representational, literal style of Social Realism.
However, American society changed drastically after the war and the art world shifted just as radically in order to adapt to the changing social climate. Jackson Pollock accredited technological advancement for the American art world’s sudden draw to abstract painting: “The modern painter cannot express his age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance…the modern artist is…expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.”
Abstract Expressionism in the United States was heavily influenced by European surrealism. While surrealism sought primarily to explore the unconscious self, the dreamscape, Abstract Expressionism expanded on this notion of unconscious examination by additionally exploring conscious, emotional experience on both a societal and personal level.
Despite his incredible talent and mild success as a young artist, Jackson Pollock struggled with acute depression and alcoholism. In 1939, he elected to undergo Jungian psychoanalysis in an attempt control his mood swings and addiction. During therapy, Pollock created works that “concerned universals in the human psyche,” often naming his symbolic works after Jungian archetypes.
The public cannot view many of the paintings he created during his treatment because doctor-patient confidentiality statutes protect them but the works he created outside of therapy are a strong indication of the personal explorations he underwent. Pollock continued to create symbolic, surreal works until his breakthrough eight years later.
In 1947, Pollock began creating works by placing his canvas on the floor and using his signature dripping technique to conduct formal experiments with texture and line. He virtually eliminated all symbolic representation in his drip paintings, opting for abstract forms that represented intangible emotions and shifting focus from the product to the process.
Pollock employed painting as both a mode of self-expression and an act of healing. Cathedral, mentioned previously as one of his earliest drip works, is just one example of this exploration. The title speaks volumes about Pollock’s emphasis on process. While he painted, Pollock would step inside the canvas, standing and walking around as he worked. The painting was his house of worship, the sacred space where he could find meaning, ask questions and search for answers.
From 1948 to 1950, Pollock was able to manage his depression and addiction well enough to achieve tremendous success in the New York art world and receive acclaim from influential art critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. Drip painting quickly became his signature style and all-over composition, his signature format.
Unfortunately, his success was short-lived. Pollock relapsed back to his alcoholism and shifted his painting style once again to symbolic representation, a career move for which he received heavy criticism. His depression worsened as the art world that once embraced him turned a cold shoulder to his work.
On Aug. 11, 1956, Jackson Pollock died in an automobile accident while driving under the influence of alcohol at the age of 44. Although he was largely being ignored from his artistic contributions at the time of his death, Jackson Pollock’s legacy as an innovator who pushed painting into the Postmodern era remains even in the 21st century. He is remembered as one of the greatest American painters who ever lived.
