How Jackson Pollock Redefined Modern Art: An Introduction

In his life­time, Jack­son Pol­lock had only one suc­cess­ful art show. It took place at the Bet­ty Par­sons Gallery in New York in Novem­ber 1949, and after­ward, his fel­low abstract expres­sion­ist Willem de Koon­ing declared that “Jack­son has final­ly bro­ken the ice.” Per­haps, accord­ing to Louis Menand’s book The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, he meant that “Pol­lock was the first Amer­i­can abstrac­tion­ist to break into the main­stream art world, or he might have meant that Pol­lock had bro­ken through a styl­is­tic log­jam that Amer­i­can painters felt blocked by.” What­ev­er its intent, de Koon­ing’s remark annoyed art crit­ic and major Pol­lock advo­cate Clement Green­berg, who “thought that it reduced Pol­lock to a tran­si­tion­al fig­ure.”

It was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a reduc­tion: as Menand sees it, “all fig­ures are tran­si­tion­al. Not every fig­ure, how­ev­er, is a hinge, some­one who rep­re­sents a moment when one mode of prac­tice swings over to anoth­er.” Pol­lock was such a hinge, as, in his way, was Green­berg: “After Pol­lock, peo­ple paint­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. After Green­berg, peo­ple thought about paint­ing dif­fer­ent­ly.”

When they made their mark, “there was no going back.” Gal­lerist-YouTu­ber James Payne exam­ines the nature of that mark in the new Great Art Explained video above, the first of a mul­ti-part series on Pol­lock­’s art and the fig­ures that made its cul­tur­al impact pos­si­ble. Even more impor­tant than Green­berg, in Payne’s telling, is Pol­lock­’s fel­low artist — and, in time, wife — Lee Kras­ner, whose own work he also gives its due.

We also see the paint­ings of Amer­i­can region­al­ist Thomas Hart Ben­ton, Pol­lock­’s teacher; Mex­i­can mural­ist David Alfaro Siqueiros, in whose work­shop Pol­lock par­tic­i­pat­ed; and even Pablo Picas­so, who exert­ed sub­tle but detectable influ­ences of his own on Pol­lock­’s work. Oth­er, non-artis­tic sources of inspi­ra­tion Payne explores include the psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ry of Carl Gus­tav Jung, with whose school of ther­a­py Pol­lock engaged in the late nine­teen-thir­ties and ear­ly for­ties. It was in those ses­sions that he pro­duced the “psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic draw­ings,” one of sev­er­al cat­e­gories of Pol­lock­’s work that will sur­prise those who know him only through his large-can­vas, whol­ly abstract drip paint­ings. Each rep­re­sents one stage of a com­plex evo­lu­tion­ary process: Pol­lock may have been the ide­al artist for the new, post-war Amer­i­can world, but he hard­ly came ful­ly formed out of Wyoming.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

Watch “Jack­son Pol­lock 51,” a His­toric Short Film That Cap­tures Pol­lock Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art on a Sheet of Glass

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

Was Jack­son Pol­lock Over­rat­ed? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Crit­ic, and Behind Pol­lock There Was Clement Green­berg

Anato­my of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Paint­ing by Jack­son Pol­lock (or Any Oth­er Artist)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.