Jackson Pollock :: Essays Papers

Jackson PollockJackson Pollock was an American abstract artist born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912. He was the youngest of his five brothers. Even though he was born on a farm, he never milked a cow and he was terrified of horses because he grew up in California. He dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen and proceeded to act to New York City with his older brother, Charles, and studied with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League. Thomas Benton was already a great artist at the epoch in which Pollock studied with him. Benton acted like the father icon in Pollocks life to replace the original that wasnt there. Benton was known for his large murals that appear on ceilings or walls. Jack was a rebellious sort at all times, recalls his classmate and friend, artist Harold Lehman. He grew his hair long and helped pen a manifesto denouncing athletics, even though he had a muscular build and the school wanted to effectuate him on the football team, says former teacher Doug Lemon. Pollock always was flurry with himself in his studies because he had troubles drawing things like they were supposed to look. From 1938 to 1942, Jackson linked a Mexican shop class of people with a painter named David Siqueiros. This workshop painted the murals for the WPA Federal Art Projects. This spic-and-span group of people started experimenting with new characters of paint and new ways of applying it to large canvas. People say that this time period was when Jackson was stimulated with ideas from looking at the Mexican or WPA murals. Looking at paintings from Picasso and the surrealists as well as inspired Jackson at this time. The type of paint they use was mixing oil colors with paint used for painting cars. Jackson noticed that the shapes and colors they created were just as fine-looking as anything else was. Jackson realized that you didnt have to be fitting to draw perfect to make beautiful paintings. Jackson started developing a whole new w ay of painting that he had never tried and true before and his paintings were starting to look totally different from before. Jackson also started carry through paintings, which are paintings that are abstract, but get the word action from the way they are made.