Wyoming-born painter who danced paint onto the floor
Paul Jackson Pollock, 28 January 1912 to 11 August 1956, made Abstract Expressionism famous by pouring household enamel onto canvases laid flat. LIFE asked in 1949 if he was America's greatest living painter; seven years later a drunk driving crash ended the drip period's author at forty-four.
Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, in January 1912, the youngest of five brothers; his Iowa-raised parents were Presbyterians of Irish and Scots-Irish descent, and his father farmed and later surveyed land. Surveying trips with him introduced the boy to Native American culture. Expelled from one high school in 1928 and then from Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, he fell under the spell of the Mexican muralists, calling Jose Clemente Orozco's fresco Prometheus the finest painting in North America.
In 1930 he followed his eldest brother Charles to New York to train with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. His teacher's rural themes left little trace, but his rhythmic handling of paint and stubborn independence stuck. A more decisive lesson came in 1936, when David Alfaro Siqueiros ran an experimental workshop that introduced Pollock to liquid paint, a debt the critic Robert Storr says is rarely acknowledged. From 1938 to 1942 he worked for the WPA Federal Art Project while undergoing Jungian therapy for his drinking.
Peggy Guggenheim signed him in July 1943 and commissioned an 8-by-20-foot Mural for her townhouse, painted on canvas at Marcel Duchamp's suggestion so it could be moved; Clement Greenberg declared it great art. In October 1945 he married the painter Lee Krasner, whom he had met at a 1942 group show, and a loan from Guggenheim helped them buy a house at Springs on Long Island. There, with canvases flat on the floor, he produced the celebrated drip paintings of 1947 to 1950, and in August 1949 LIFE asked whether he was America's greatest living painter.
After 1951 came the black pourings on raw canvas, none of which sold when first shown at Betty Parsons. Collector demand at the Sidney Janis Gallery and personal frustration deepened his alcoholism. He painted his last two pictures, Scent and Search, in 1955, made no paintings in 1956, and on 11 August that year crashed his Oldsmobile while drunk, killing himself and Edith Metzger. Krasner managed his estate for the rest of her life.
Source: Jackson Pollock
