jackson pollock.pdf

meline: Abstract Expressionism

On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this

way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally `in' the painting.

-- Jackson Pollock, 1947.

Pollock, Jackson (1912-56). American painter, the commanding figure of the

Abstract Expressionist movement.

He began to study painting in 1929 at the Art Students' League, New York, under the

Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. During the 1930s he worked in the manner

of the Regionalists, being influenced also by the Mexican muralist painters (Orozco,

Rivera, Siqueiros) and by certain aspects of Surrealism. From 1938 to 1942 he

worked for the Federal Art Project. By the mid 1940s he was painting in a completely

abstract manner, and the `drip and splash' style for which he is best known emerged

with some abruptness in 1947. Instead of using the traditional easel he affixed his

canvas to the floor or the wall and poured and dripped his paint from a can; instead

of using brushes he manipulated it with `sticks, trowels or knives' (to use his own

words), sometimes obtaining a heavy impasto by an admixture of `sand, broken

glass or other foreign matter'. This manner of Action painting had in common with

Surrealist theories of automatism that it was supposed by artists and critics alike to

result in a direct expression or revelation of the unconscious moods of the artist.

Pollock's name is also associated with the introduction of the All-over style of

painting which avoids any points of emphasis or identifiable parts within the whole

canvas and therefore abandons the traditional idea of composition in terms of

relations among parts. The design of his painting had no relation to the shape or size

of the canvas -- indeed in the finished work the canvas was sometimes docked or

trimmed to suit the image. All these characteristics were important for the new

American painting which matured in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Pollock was the

first ``all-over'' painter, pouring paint rather than using brushes and a palette, and

abandoning all conventions of a central motif. He danced in semi-ecstasy over

canvases spread across the floor, lost in his patternings, dripping and dribbling with

total control. He said: ``The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.''

He painted no image, just ``action'', though ``action painting'' seems an inadequate

term for the finished result of his creative process. Lavender Mist is 3 m long (nearly

10 ft), a vast expanse on a heroic scale. It is alive with colored scribble, spattered

lines moving this way and that, now thickening, now trailing off to a slender skein.

The eye is kept continually eager, not allowed to rest on any particular area. Pollock

has put his hands into paint and placed them at the top right-- an instinctive gesture

eerily reminiscent of cave painters who did the same. The overall tone is a pale

lavender, maide airy and active. At the time Pollock was heiled as the greatest

American painter, but there are already those who feel his work is not holding up in

every respect.

Lee Krasner (1908-84), who married Pollock in 1944, was not celebrated at all during

his lifetime (cut short in 1956 by a fatal car crash), but it was actually she who first

started covering the canvas with a passionate flurry of marks. The originality of her

vision, its stiff integrity and its great sense of internal cohesion, is now beginning to

be recognized. Cobalt Night (1962; 237 x 401 cm (7 ft 9 1/3 x 13 ft 2 in)) at 4 m (over

13 ft) is even larger than Lavender Mist and has the same kind of heroic ambition.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: