Jackson Pollock: Drawing the Unconscious

Paul Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) was born in 1912 into a working-class family in Cody, Wyoming, the youngest of five boys. He only spent the first 11 months of his life in Cody, however, and never returned. Due to his father’s job as a land surveyor, he, his mother and his four brothers moved multiple times throughout California and Arizona. His father, an abusive alcoholic, left the family when Pollock was eight years old and his older brother, Charles, stepped into the father role. Charles, an artist himself, greatly encouraged and influenced Jackson in his choice to become a painter. The insecure and self-doubting Jackson relied greatly on the advice from his older, confident and more experienced brother, who also later encouraged him to move to New York. Jackson’s passion for the arts was clear from an early age when he opened his own ‘art gallery’ in the chicken coop of his family’s property. 

During his teenage years, Jackson began to drink heavily, an addiction that troubled him for the rest of his life. Lee Krasner, Pollock's wife, later stated in an interview that he had a difficult relationship with his mother, which she believes to have been one of the main reasons for his repeated relapses. 

By 1928, Pollock had already experienced such a substantial amount of bullying and neglect that he decided to leave his high school and move to Los Angeles with his mother, where he began attending Manual Arts High School.

Here, Pollock met another man that greatly impacted his artistic style: Frederick John de St. Vrain Schwankovsky introduced Pollock to European modern art and theosophical literature. He also gave him the speeches of former theosophical messiah and Schwankovsky’s close friend, Jiddu Krishnamurti. These explorations lead to his subsequent detailed examination of unconscious imagery within his paintings. 

It was during Pollock’s time in LA that the young artist transformed into a hefty troublemaker. He was expelled twice from his high school but nevertheless continued exploring his interest in the works of artists such as Diego Rivera and other muralist painters, who later became among his main influences.

After completing his high school studies in Los Angeles, Pollock joined his brothers Charles and Frank in New York, where he began taking sculpting classes. He followed his oldest brother to the Art Students League, where he studied under Thomas Hart Brenton. Brenton exposed the artist to Renaissance art and even provided him with private tutoring lessons as “[Pollock’s] mind was absolutely incapable of logical sequences. He couldn’t be taught anything.”  

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While studying at the Students League, Pollock’s interest in muralist painters grew. He visited Diego Rivera’s murals in San Francisco and José Clemente Orozco’s Prometheus mural at Pomona College. In 1934, he even had the opportunity to watch Rivera in the flesh, while Rivera painted his controversial mural painting Man at the Crossroads at the Rockefeller Center. 

Although the artist was captivated by the liveliness of New York and the tremendous recognition and evolution the arts experienced, it was unable to distract him from his severe alcoholism and growing depression. This became especially evident when his father died in 1933. That same year, he moved into an apartment with his brother Charles and his wife Elizabeth, half of the space occupied by the younger brother and the other half by the couple. Here, Pollock painted his first large mural work, inspired by Orozco’s wall paintings.

In 1935, Pollock began a job at the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), where his brother Sande (Sanford) was also working. Over the next few years, Sande became an important figure in Pollock’s life as he went through deep emotional troubles while also beginning to find his own ground in the art world. 

Pollock met the Mexican muralist and anti-fascist David Alfaro Siqueiros, for whom he, and other young artists, created large-scale public artworks in order to aid the anti-fascist cause. Siqueiros introduced Pollock to more unconventional art techniques, such as dripping and pouring paint, which later grew into the source of Pollock’s most prominent style.

By 1937, Pollock’s depression and alcohol consumption had become so severe that Sande demanded him to seek help from a specialist. However, nothing helped him recover from his troubles, as more setbacks affected his well-being. Over the next year, he proposed to a woman, who rejected his offer, and he lost his job due to his unstable health. This led to him admitting himself into a hospital where he underwent Freudian treatments. 

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Not long after being released, he had a second breakdown and began a new treatment at the facility of Dr Joseph Henderson, who used drawings and other images in his therapy. He was one of the main influences who encouraged Pollock to use his art to express his inner self – his subconsciousness as a way to treat his severe depression. The artist’s paintings became deeply personal as he viewed the practice as “... self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.”His unstable mental health further prevented him from joining the army during the US entry into the Second World War.

Things changed for the artist when he met his future wife and biggest supporter, fellow artist Lee Krasner (1908-1984). They both took part in a group exhibition at McMillen Inc., where Krasner was so impressed by Pollock’s work that she went to visit him at his apartment the following week. It was the beginning of their intense emotional and artistic relationship that spanned until Pollock’s early death. 

By the end of the year, Krasner moved in with Pollock where they spent most of their time painting and discussing their artworks.

Pollock had a career break-through moment when he met Peggy Guggenheim in 1942 through Krasner’s connections. Guggenheim showed his work Collage at her gallery Art of This Century during a group exhibition focusing on collage works. Guggenheim’s intention was to create a venue that functioned as a "research laboratory for new ideas" and to "serve the future instead of recording the past".

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She commissioned Pollock in 1943 to create a large painting for her apartment, which he, according to the legend told by Krasner, finished in just one day, after a long period during which he had felt blocked and unable to paint. Later studies of the painting have shown that the painting was more likely to have been completed over multiple weeks. Guggenheim also offered him his first solo exhibition and a monthly stipend of $150, enabling him to paint full-time, which benefited him tremendously as he had been fired from his – very short – employment as a printmaker due to his heavy drinking. Working as a printmaker taught him various printing techniques, such as silk screening, which he used in some of his works over the following years.

The following year, Pollock sold his first painting to a museum. She-Wolf (1943) was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art for $650 and – although much convincing was needed to persuade the director to acquire the painting – it later became one of MoMA’s most valuable artworks.

Pollock’s first solo exhibition took place in 1945 and included paintings, paper drawings and gouaches such as The Mad Moon-Woman, Pasiphaë, Male and Female and Stenographic Figure. The show was a success and some of the works were later shown again at the San Francisco Museum of Art. 

Influential figures such as Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp and Clement Greenberg began seeing the true potential of Pollock’s work as it seemed so individual and deep. When asked about his style, Pollock simply commented: “I'm very representational some of the time and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.”

Although the artist was experiencing great success in New York, he and Krasner, who had just wed ten days earlier, decided to move to The Springs, East Hampton, Long Island in 1945, where they suspend their artistic doings for a while to fix up the very run-down house, which they purchased through a loan given by Guggenheim.

Pollock resumed painting in 1946 and moved his studio to the barn of the property, where he eventually created some of his most famous pieces, such as Nr. 5 in 1948. 

By 1947, Pollock had become a known artist in the States. Articles were written about him and his work by figures such as Clement Greenberg, who called Pollock “The most powerful painter in contemporary America...” 

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His canvases grew larger and larger, which meant he had to accommodate his painting style to such scales. He began laying his canvases out on the floor, walking along and across them with a dancelike style, creating speckled and sprinkled patterns over the surface. It enabled him to ‘become one’ with his work as he could handle the canvas from all sides. He explained this process stating: “My painting does not come from the easel. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor, I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting…”

Peggy Guggenheim decided to close her gallery Art of This Century in 1947. Nevertheless, she convinced Betty Parsons to take Pollock under her care. At his first exhibition at Parsons gallery, he displayed seventeen works, of which only two were sold, though critics reviewed his works positively. 

While his work was still experiencing great success at prestigious events, such as the Venice Biennale, his mental and physical health was deteriorating drastically. In the autumn of 1948, Dr Edwin Heller came to the East Hamptons and took Pollock under his care and was able to help him overcome his alcoholism. It led to a rather productive and sober period for the artist during which he found stability in his monumental dripping paintings and in a new hobby – gardening. 

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Pollock really came to the attention of the art world when LIFE magazine published its article with the famous title: ‘Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?’ In it, Pollock’s works were shown through the colored photographs of Martha Holmes and Arnold Newman, while the article itself praised but nevertheless questioned the artist’s style and unusual use of materials, such as sand and glass within his paint. 

The article set loose a wave of praise and recognition for the artist. Through his newly gained fame, Pollock brought attention to an undervalued and unappreciated artistic movement to which the likes of Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko belonged: Abstract Expressionism.

Following the article, Pollock exhibited his painting The Intrasubjectives at the group show at the Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, which included artists such as Rothko, Arshile Gorky and de Kooning and which gave rise to the Abstract Expressionism movement. 

The successful treatment of Pollock’s alcoholism through Dr Heller came to a sudden halt at the beginning of 1950 when the doctor died in a car accident. Pollock quickly relapsed and fell back into his old habits.

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While his mental health deteriorated more severely after the death of Dr Heller, Pollock’s artistic career thrived like never before. He had exhibitions in numerous institutions and held multiple solo shows. However, by 1952 his relationship with Betty Parsons was strained as sales hadn’t been able to mirror his cultural success and he cut ties with the gallery, joining the neighboring gallery of Sidney Janis. His first exhibition at the gallery was later voted the second-best exhibition of 1952 by Artnews.

In 1955, after his mother suffered from multiple heart attacks, he went back to having treatments for alcohol addiction and depression in the city, which included regular drinking sessions at bars before returning home to Krasner, who herself was enjoying an ample amount of artistic success at this point. 

None of the treatments were able to accomplish the progress that Dr Heller achieved previously and Pollock stopped painting entirely. By 1956, his own health issues took a strain on his relationship with Krasner. She left for Europe while Pollock stayed in East Hampton with his mistress Ruth Kligman. 

On August 11, 1956, Pollock, who was intoxicated at the time, crashed his car into a tree on Fireplace Road, killing one of the passengers, Edith Metzler, and himself in the process. Kligman was the only one to survive the fatal crash.

To this day, Pollock greatly influences the art world with his magnificent paintings. Not only has he become one of the most expensive artists in the world, but he has also shaped the entire artistic movement of Abstract Expressionism with his drip technique. The sheer size of his canvases makes viewers stop in their tracks and gasp at the overwhelming layers of spectacular shapes and colors. Pollock created something deeply personal and shared it with the world: he placed his subconsciousness on the canvas for everyone to see and yet for no one to see at all, as everyone interprets his paint splatters differently. At auction, his works are highly sought after and often reach prices of over $50 million apiece. 

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Article by Sophie Bubmann