Pollock’s Legend Still Splattered On Art World
An artist who abandoned all conventions, Pollock used the separation and marbling of the wet paint enamel to create the dripping patterns in Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist).
Even a century since his birth, American “splatter artist” Jackson Pollock still provokes heated debate about the very definition of art.
Was a man who placed a canvas on the floor and dripped paint straight from the can actually creating a work of art?
“It’s very hard if you try to build the paint up to this extent with this many colors and not achieve mud,” says National Gallery of Art curator Harry Cooper.
“He didn’t achieve mud here — I think he achieved something quite beautiful,” Cooper tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. “And in the process, he opened up a whole new way of thinking about what a painting could be, how you could make a painting, what it could do in an abstract way.”
The public perception at the time, though, was distinctly different than that of art critics.
“In the popular mind, he was Jack the Dripper,” Cooper says. “I think all of those feelings and associations have remained with the work, no matter how many books and how many retrospectives he has.”
In 2006, one of Pollock’s works sold for $140 million — the most ever paid for a painting. He remains polarizing, a man whose work is as derided as it is desired.
Born in Cody, Wyo., on Jan. 28, 1912, Paul Jackson Pollock trained under the acclaimed American naturalist Thomas Hart Benton.
Jerry Roberts
