Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollack Was

¶ … Jackson Pollock Jackson Pollack was of the one of the foremost artistic innovators of the 20th century. His style and creative techniques inspired a generation of artists and had a lasting and profound affect on contemporary art. His later work is credited with initiating the Abstract Expressionist School of modern art. His style and method of painting was a radical departure from the type of painting that merely represented or "copied" the world and objects that the artist encountered.

He developed a technique and approach to painting and produced works of art which were a more subtle and complex expression and response to the world around him and his own psyche. Jackson Pollack was born in 1912. He studied at the Art Students League in New York City and was influenced and by the work and of Charles Benton. His early works were similar in many ways to the naturalistic style of Benton. At this early stage of his career he was essentially a representational artist.

In other words, his art contained objects and elements that were familiar and recognizable and part of the ordinary world. However, the early half of the Twentieth Century was a time of radical thought and experimentation in modern art and Pollack was influenced by modern experimentation and new trends in art, such as Surrealism and other European art. He began to adopt a more abstract and "expressive" style of painting, as can be seen in works such as the She-Wolf, painted in 1943.

(Jackson Pollack.1912-1956) Other works such as Pasiphae and Totem 1, painted in 1944, also show the influence of the Surrealists. The style that was to make him famous and which was responsible for some of his most renowned works was his "action painting." This was to revolutionize the art world of the time and lead to the acceptance of Abstract Expressionism. This style was not representational or conventional and did not simply re-present the world as it was usually seen.

In order to come into deeper contact with the reality of both the outer and inner worlds of his experience, Pollack devised a radical new way of approaching the canvas. His technique was to lay very large pieces of canvas on the ground - not on a conventional easel - and, using sticks and other instruments, he would allow the dripping paint to interact with the surface of the canvas. He would walk around the canvas while using this technique.

In this way, Pollack claimed, he came more in contact with his medium and was able to express himself in a way that would not have been possible using conventional painting techniques. "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of "get acquainted" period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.

I try to let it come through." (Jackson Pollock) Using this method he produced beautiful canvases with interlocking and interlaced colors which were completely abstract, such as Full Fathom Five and Lucifer which were both painted in 1947. There were developments and enhancements in his technique of painting and later he would create a style which was characterized by a crisscrossing of lines in black and whites and muted colors. An example of his later style is the painting Ocean Grayness (1953.

The renowned critic of modernism and art Herbert Read, stated that the originality of Pollock's work could be found in the phrase" concrete pictorial sensations." (Read, Herbert. P. 262) By this he meant that the artist was creating independent artistic creations which were expressions of experience which did not necessarily relate to any other references; or to things outside of itself. This meant that the images that Pollock created were expressions of a new sense of artistic freedom.

This sense of freedom was based on the experimental and unrestricted expressions of artistic innovation that the Surrealists first displayed. "Pollock owed his 'radical new sense of freedom' to the unprecedented and automatic methods of the Surrealists..." (Ibid. 260) However the work that he created had a specific and unique sense of.