Jackson Pollock: The Life Story Behind the Drip Painter
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Jackson Pollock changed painting by taking the canvas off the wall and putting it on the floor. He did not stand in front of it with a brush, the way painters had done for centuries. He walked around it, he dripped paint from a stick, he poured it from a can, and he let the paint fall where it wanted to fall, while he moved his body like a dancer. The result was a picture with no centre, no top, and no bottom, a web of lines that seemed to go on forever. People who saw it for the first time often did not know what to think. Was it a painting, or was it a mess? Pollock thought it was a painting, and he thought it was the most honest painting he could make.
He was born in Wyoming, in the American West, and he grew up in a family that moved often, from farm to farm, from town to town. He was a troubled young man, he drank too much, and he struggled with his feelings for most of his life. He came to New York in 1930, and he lived through the Depression, working on government art projects, learning from other painters, and slowly finding his own way. For years he painted in a style that was influenced by other artists, and it was only in the late 1940s, when he was in his mid-thirties, that he found the drip method that made him famous.
His fame came fast, and it came with a price. Life magazine called him the greatest living painter in America in 1949, and his pictures began to sell for large sums. But the fame did not make him happy, and it did not cure his drinking. He died in a car crash in 1956, at the age of forty-four, leaving behind a small number of drip paintings that changed art forever. His story is not a happy one, but it is an important one, because it shows how a man can invent a whole new way of painting, and how that invention can cost him everything.
A Restless Boy in the American West
Paul Jackson Pollock was born on 28 January 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, the youngest of five sons of LeRoy Pollock, a farmer and surveyor, and Stella May McClure Pollock. The family moved often during his childhood, living in Arizona, in California, and in other western states, as his father looked for work. Young Jackson grew up outdoors, in a landscape of desert, mountains, and wide skies, and he learned to be independent, to wander, and to look at the land. He was not a good student, and he was expelled from two high schools, in part because he was rebellious, and in part because he did not fit into the routine of school. He liked to draw, and he liked to make things, but he did not like to sit still and follow rules.
His older brother Charles was an artist, and he encouraged Jackson to draw and to think about art. Charles went to Los Angeles to study art, and Jackson followed him there in 1928, at the age of sixteen, enrolling in the Manual Arts High School. He studied under Frederick Schwankovsky, a teacher who encouraged his students to look at modern art, to think about the unconscious mind, and to paint what they felt, not only what they saw. Pollock was a difficult student, and he was expelled from the school as well, but he had found his direction. He wanted to be a painter, and he was willing to leave the West to do it.
In 1930, at the age of eighteen, he moved to New York City with Charles, and he enrolled in the Art Students League, where he studied under Thomas Hart Benton, a painter of American scenes who became his teacher and his friend. Benton taught him to draw, to compose a picture, and to think about the rhythm of a painting, and Pollock respected him deeply, even though their styles were very different. Benton painted realistic scenes of American life, while Pollock would later paint abstractions that looked like nothing in real life. But Benton’s lesson about rhythm, about the movement of a line across a canvas, stayed with Pollock, and it became the foundation of his drip paintings.
New York in the 1930s was a hard city for a young artist. The Depression had hit, jobs were scarce, and Pollock lived in poverty, working odd jobs and relying on help from his brothers. He drank heavily, and he suffered from depression, and he often felt that he would never succeed. But he kept painting, and he kept looking at art, in museums, in galleries, and in the studios of other artists. He was learning, even when he did not know it, and he was building the skills he would need when he finally found his own voice.
The Depression Years and the WPA
In the 1930s Pollock worked for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, the WPA, a government programme that paid artists to paint murals and to make art during the Depression. The work gave him a small income, and it gave him a chance to paint on a large scale, which he loved. He painted murals for public buildings, and he learned how to work with large surfaces, how to manage a big picture, and how to paint with his whole body, not only with his hand. Those lessons would matter later, when he began to paint on the floor.
He also began to look at the work of other modern artists, including the Mexican muralists, who painted large, political pictures, and the European Surrealists, who were interested in dreams and in automatic painting, painting without thinking, letting the hand move on its own. Pollock was interested in the idea of painting from the unconscious mind, and he began to experiment with different ways of putting paint on canvas, including pouring, dripping, and splashing. He also began to see a psychoanalyst, Dr. Joseph Henderson, who encouraged him to draw his dreams and his feelings, and those drawings, which are now in museums, show a man trying to understand himself through art.
In 1935 he met Lee Krasner, a painter who would become his wife and his most important supporter. Krasner was a strong, talented artist in her own right, and she recognised Pollock’s talent before most people did. She introduced him to other artists, to dealers, and to collectors, and she helped him to get his work shown. They married in 1945, and they moved to a farmhouse in Springs, on Long Island, where Pollock would paint his most famous pictures. Krasner gave up much of her own painting time to support him, cooking, cleaning, and managing the household, while he painted in a barn that he used as a studio. That sacrifice is part of his story, and it is one that should not be forgotten.
The 1930s and early 1940s were years of struggle, but they were also years of learning. Pollock painted in many styles, trying out different ideas, and he was influenced by Picasso, by Miró, and by other European artists who had come to New York during the war. He was not yet the drip painter, but he was getting closer, and he was learning to trust his own hand, to let the paint move, and to find a rhythm that was his own. The Depression had taught him to work with little, and the WPA had taught him to work large, and both lessons would come together in the barn at Springs.
Peggy Guggenheim and the First Break
In 1943 Pollock had his first solo exhibition at Art of This Century, the gallery run by Peggy Guggenheim in New York. Guggenheim was a wealthy collector who supported modern art, and she gave Pollock a monthly income, which allowed him to paint full time. She also commissioned him to paint a large mural for her house, a picture more than five metres long, which he painted in a single night, according to the stories told about it. The mural, which is now in the University of Iowa, shows his style changing, with long, looping lines that move across the canvas like a dance. It was a breakthrough, and it showed that he was ready to paint on a scale that few other artists dared to try.
The exhibition was praised by critics, including Clement Greenberg, who would become Pollock’s most important champion. Greenberg wrote that Pollock was the most important young American painter, and that his work was the future of American art. That praise mattered, because it gave Pollock confidence, and it gave collectors a reason to buy his work. He was no longer a nobody painting in a small studio. He was a painter with a gallery, a patron, and a critic who believed in him. But he was still drinking, and he was still struggling with his feelings, and the success did not cure those problems.
In 1945 he married Lee Krasner, and they moved to Springs, where they bought a small farmhouse with a barn. The move was a turning point. In New York, Pollock had lived in small rooms, with little space to paint. In Springs, he had a barn, and he had the space to lay a canvas on the floor and to walk around it. He also had the quiet of the countryside, and the support of Krasner, who believed in him completely. The stage was set for the drip paintings, and Pollock was ready, even if he did not know it yet.
He continued to paint in the mid-1940s, making pictures that were influenced by Surrealism and by Picasso, but he was not satisfied. He felt that his pictures were too controlled, too much like other people’s work, and he wanted to find a way to paint that was truly his own. He began to experiment with pouring paint, with using sticks instead of brushes, and with working on the floor, and those experiments, which seemed strange at the time, would become the most famous paintings of his life.
The Drip Years in the Barn at Springs
In 1947 Pollock began to paint in the way that made him famous. He laid a large canvas on the floor of his barn, he tacked it down, and he walked around it, dripping and pouring paint from cans, using sticks, brushes, and even his hands to move the paint. He did not use an easel, he did not use a palette, and he did not plan the picture in advance. He let the paint fall, and he moved his body, and the picture grew out of that movement. He called it “action painting,” because the action of painting was part of the picture, and he believed that the paint should record the movement of the artist, not only the idea in his head.
The drip paintings from 1947 to 1950 are his most famous works. Number 11, painted in 1952, Autumn Rhythm, painted in 1950, and Blue Poles, painted in 1952, are among them, and they are now in museums around the world. The pictures have no centre, no top, and no bottom, and they can be hung in any direction, because they are all-over paintings, with lines that cover the whole surface. They look chaotic at first, but if you look closely, you can see a rhythm, a balance, and a sense of control. Pollock was not throwing paint at random. He was controlling the fall of the paint with his body, with the speed of his movement, and with the thickness of the paint, and he knew when a picture was finished, even if he could not explain how he knew.
The drip years were also the years when Pollock stopped drinking, for a time, and when he was at his most productive. He painted almost every day, and he made a large number of pictures in a short time. He was also becoming famous. Life magazine published a long article about him in 1949, with the question “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” on the cover, and the article made him a celebrity. People who had never been to a gallery knew his name, and his pictures began to sell for large sums. But the fame was hard for him. He did not like being a celebrity, and he did not like the pressure to repeat his success. He began to drink again, and his work began to suffer.
In 1950 he painted Autumn Rhythm, a large picture that is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and it is one of his most loved works. The picture is a web of brown, black, and white lines, and it feels like a forest in autumn, even though it shows no trees. It is a picture about movement, about the wind, about the falling of leaves, and it is a picture that can only be understood by looking at it for a long time, letting your eyes follow the lines, and letting the rhythm of the picture become your own rhythm. That is what Pollock wanted: a picture that you do not look at, but that you enter, like a room, or like a forest.
Fame, Drinking, and the Last Years
After 1950 Pollock’s work changed again. He began to paint in black and white, using only black paint on white canvas, and he made a series of pictures that were darker and more controlled than the drip paintings. He also returned to using a brush, and to painting figures, though the figures were abstract and hard to recognise. Some critics thought he was losing his way, and some thought he was trying to find a new direction. He was also drinking heavily again, and his marriage to Krasner was under strain. She had given up her own career to support him, and she was now watching him destroy himself, and it was painful for both of them.
He had a few more successes in the early 1950s, including an exhibition in Paris, but his health was failing, and his drinking was getting worse. He was involved in a car accident in 1956, and he died on 11 August 1956, at the age of forty-four, in Springs, Long Island. He was driving, and he had been drinking, and the car crashed. His death was reported around the world, and it was a shock, because he was still young, and he was still famous, and many people thought he had more great pictures in him. Krasner, who was in Europe at the time, came home to bury him, and she spent the rest of her life looking after his work and her own.
Pollock’s death at forty-four has made him a legend, and it has also made it hard to see his work clearly. People talk about his drinking, about his death, and about his fame, and they forget that he was a hard-working painter who invented a new way of painting, and who painted some of the most original pictures of the twentieth century. His life was short, and it was troubled, but his work has lasted, and it is now in the great museums of the world, where people who were not born when he died can look at it and feel its energy.
Why the Drip Still Matters
Pollock’s drip paintings changed art because they changed the relationship between the painter and the canvas. Before Pollock, a painter stood in front of a canvas, like a person looking through a window, and painted a picture of something. Pollock lay the canvas on the floor, walked on it, and became part of the picture, like a dancer in a dance. That idea, that painting is an action, not only an image, influenced a generation of artists, from the Abstract Expressionists in New York to artists in Europe and Japan, and it is still influencing artists today. His work is not only about paint. It is about the body, about movement, and about the idea that art can be a record of a moment, not only a picture of a thing.
His pictures are now worth a great deal of money, and one of them, Number 17A, was reported to have been sold for a very large sum in a private sale, though the exact price is not publicly confirmed. That kind of money can distract from the art, and it can make people think that Pollock’s work is about wealth, when it is really about movement and feeling. The best way to understand his work is not to think about its price, but to stand in front of a large drip painting, to let your eyes follow the lines, and to feel the energy of the man who made it. That energy is still there, more than seventy years after he painted it, and it is the reason his work still matters.
Lee Krasner and the Work Behind the Fame
Lee Krasner is often mentioned as Pollock’s wife, and she was, but she was also a painter in her own right, and her role in his life deserves more than a footnote. She was older than Pollock, she had studied art in New York, and she had a strong, clear style of her own. When she met him, she saw his talent, and she decided to help him, even if it meant putting her own work aside. She introduced him to dealers, she managed his career, she cooked and cleaned, and she gave him the space to paint. After his death, she spent decades looking after his work, organising exhibitions, and making sure that his pictures were seen. She also returned to her own painting, and her later work is now recognised as important in its own right. Pollock’s fame would not have happened without her, and it is fair to say that she was his partner in every sense.
Their house in Springs is now a museum, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, where visitors can see the barn in which he painted, the floor of which is still covered in drips of paint from his work. The floor is a work of art in itself, a record of his movement, and it is one of the most moving places in American art. To stand in that barn is to understand Pollock in a way that no book can teach. He was a man who painted on the floor, and the floor remembers him.
The Barn Floor and the House That Remembers
The barn at Springs, where Pollock painted his drip pictures, is still there, and its floor is still covered in paint, in drips, in footprints, and in the marks of a man who walked around a canvas, day after day, for three years. The floor is now preserved as part of the Pollock-Krasner House, and visitors can stand in the barn and look down at the floor, and see the colours, the black, the white, the red, and the yellow, that fell from his cans and sticks. It is a strange and moving place, because the floor is not a painting, and it is not a floor. It is a record, of a body moving, of paint falling, and of a man working, and it is one of the most honest records of an artist’s work that exists. To stand there is to understand Pollock in a way that no photograph can teach, because you are standing where he stood, and you are seeing what he saw, from above, looking down at a canvas on the floor.
Krasner, who lived in the house after Pollock’s death, kept the barn as it was, and she painted in a studio nearby, looking out at the same fields, and working in the same quiet way. She did not paint on the floor, and she did not drip paint, but she worked with the same energy, and with the same dedication, and her later work, which is now recognised as important, was made in that house, in the shadow of her husband’s fame. The house, and the barn, are now a museum, and they are a reminder that great art is often made in small, ordinary places, in a barn, in a farmhouse, and not in a grand studio in a city. Pollock needed space, and quiet, and a floor, and Springs gave him all three, and his pictures are the proof.
My Take:
I have to be honest: the first time I saw a Pollock, I did not understand it. I looked at the web of lines, I looked for a picture, a face, a tree, and I found nothing. I thought, this is a mess, and anyone could do this. Then I saw a large Pollock in a museum, and I stood in front of it for a long time, and I began to see something else. I saw rhythm, I saw movement, I saw a kind of music in the lines, and I realised that my first reaction was wrong. Pollock was not making a mess. He was making a picture about movement, and about the energy of a man painting, and that is a different kind of picture from the ones I was used to. I think many people have the same first reaction, and I think it is worth getting past it, because there is a real picture underneath the mess.
What I admire most is that he invented a new way of painting, and he did it by asking a simple question: what if I put the canvas on the floor? That question sounds small, but it changed everything. It changed the way a painter stands, the way a painter moves, and the way a picture looks. I admire people who ask simple questions that change everything, because those questions are often the hardest to ask. Pollock asked one, and he followed it to the end, even when people laughed at him, even when they called his work a joke. That takes courage, and it takes a kind of stubbornness that I respect.
I also admire his work ethic, even though his life was troubled. He painted every day, he worked in a barn in the cold, and he kept painting even when he was poor and unknown. He did not wait for inspiration. He worked, and the work produced the inspiration. That is a lesson I think about a lot, because I have often waited for the right moment to start something, and the right moment never came. Pollock did not wait. He laid the canvas on the floor, he picked up a can of paint, and he started. That is a practical lesson, and it is one I want to remember.
His drinking and his death are the hardest parts of his story for me, and I do not want to make them sound romantic. He drank too much, he hurt himself and the people around him, and he died in a car crash at forty-four, after drinking. That is not a romantic ending. It is a sad ending, and it is a warning. I think we should be honest about that, and we should not pretend that his drinking made his art better. It did not. It made his life shorter, and it made his work harder. The drip paintings were made in a period when he was not drinking, or drinking less, and that is not a coincidence. His best work came when he was sober, and his worst years came when he was drinking. That is a fact worth remembering, especially for young artists who think that suffering makes art better. It does not. Work makes art better, and drinking makes work harder.
I think about Lee Krasner a lot when I think about Pollock, because her story is often left out, and it should not be. She was a talented painter, she gave up her own career to support him, and she spent the rest of her life looking after his work. That is a huge sacrifice, and it is one that many women have made for famous men, often without thanks. I want to thank her, in this small way, for what she did, and I want to say that Pollock’s fame was not his alone. It was theirs, and it was built on her work as much as on his. When I look at a Pollock now, I also think of Krasner, standing in the kitchen, making dinner, while he painted in the barn, and I think that is part of the picture too.
The Life magazine article is another part of his story that interests me, because it shows how fame can help and hurt at the same time. The article made him famous, it made his pictures sell, and it gave him money, but it also put pressure on him to be the greatest living painter, and that pressure was too much for a man who was already struggling. I think about how fame works in our time, with social media, with viral videos, and I think Pollock’s story is a warning. Fame does not cure a troubled life. It can make it worse, by adding pressure, by adding attention, and by making it harder to work quietly. Pollock needed quiet to paint, and fame took that quiet away.
I also think about the West, and about how his childhood in Wyoming and Arizona shaped his work. He grew up in a landscape of wide skies and desert, and his paintings have that same sense of space, of a picture that goes on forever, with no centre and no edge. I think that is not a coincidence. He learned to look at a landscape that had no frame, and he painted pictures that had no frame. That is a beautiful connection, and it reminds me that where we grow up matters, even when we leave it behind. Pollock left the West for New York, but the West stayed in his pictures, in the wide, open feeling of the drip paintings.
I do not think every Pollock is perfect, and I do not think his work is all equal. Some of the black-and-white pictures feel empty to me, as if he is trying to find a new direction and has not found it yet. Some of the late pictures feel like repetitions of the drip paintings, without the energy of the originals. I say that because I think it is important to be honest, even about an artist I admire. His best work, the drip paintings from 1947 to 1950, is so strong that it does not need every picture to be a masterpiece. Autumn Rhythm, Number 11, and Blue Poles are enough to carry his name, and the rest can be what it is, good work by a man who was trying to find his way.
What I take from his life is a lesson about movement and about the body. Pollock painted with his whole body, not only with his hand, and his pictures record that movement. I think that is a useful reminder for anyone who works with their hands, or with their mind, that the body matters, and that work is not only a mental act. It is a physical act, and the energy of the body can be part of the work. I also take a lesson about asking simple questions. What if I put the canvas on the floor? What if I use a stick instead of a brush? Those questions changed art, and they were simple questions, asked by a man who was willing to try something strange. I hope I can ask simple questions like that, in my own work, and I hope the reader can too.
I also think about his death, and about how short his life was. He was forty-four, and he had only been painting in the drip style for a few years. He could have painted for another forty years, like Matisse or Miró, and we will never know what he would have made. That is sad, and it is also a reminder not to wait. Pollock did not wait to invent his style, and he did not wait for permission. He painted, and he painted fast, because he knew, even without knowing, that he did not have forever. I think we should all paint, in whatever way we paint, with that same urgency, not because we will die young, but because time is short, and the work we want to do will not do itself.
If I could stand in his barn in Springs, I would look at the floor, covered in paint, and I would think about the man who walked on it, who dripped paint, who moved his body like a dancer, and who made pictures that still move people today. I would not think about the money his pictures are worth now, or about the fame, or about the car crash. I would think about the movement, about the rhythm, and about the simple question that started it all. That is what I want to remember about Pollock: not the tragedy, but the invention, not the drinking, but the dance, not the death, but the pictures that are still alive.
In the end, I think Pollock teaches me that art can be an action, not only an image, and that a picture can be a record of a moment, of a movement, of a man walking around a canvas on the floor. That is a new idea, and it is a brave idea, and it is one that still matters. I hope the reader stands in front of a Pollock one day, a large one, and lets their eyes follow the lines, and feels the energy of the man who made it. That energy is the real picture, and it is still there, waiting, more than seventy years after he painted it.
I also think about the barn floor, and about how it is now preserved as a work of art in itself. A floor, covered in paint, with footprints, is not a painting, and it is not a floor. It is a record of a man working, and it is one of the most moving places in American art. I would like to stand in that barn one day, and look down at the floor, and think about the man who walked on it, who dripped paint, and who made pictures that changed art. That floor tells me something about work: that work leaves a mark, even when you do not intend it to, and that the mark can be as important as the finished picture. Pollock’s floor is his diary, written in paint, and it is still there, waiting for visitors to read it.
There is a lesson in his relationship with Benton, his teacher, that I want to keep. Benton painted realistic scenes of American life, and Pollock painted abstractions that looked like nothing, and yet Benton taught Pollock about rhythm, about the movement of a line, and about how to compose a picture. That is a good teacher: not someone who makes you copy them, but someone who teaches you a skill, and lets you use it in your own way. Pollock used Benton’s lesson about rhythm to make drip paintings, and Benton would probably not have recognised his own lesson in Pollock’s work, but it is there, in the movement, in the lines, and in the balance. I think about my own teachers, and about the lessons that stayed with me, even when I went in a different direction, and I am grateful to them, as Pollock was grateful to Benton.
I think about the Depression, and about the WPA, and about how a government programme that paid artists to paint murals gave Pollock a living, and gave him a chance to work on a large scale. That programme is often forgotten, but it mattered, because it kept artists alive during a hard time, and it taught them to work large, to work in public, and to think about art as a job, not only as a gift. Pollock learned that lesson, and he used it in the barn at Springs, where he painted large canvases, on the floor, with his whole body. I think we should remember the WPA, and other programmes that support artists, because they make art possible, especially in hard times, when artists are poor, and when the market does not support them.
Finally, I want to say something about the word “action painting” and about how Pollock’s work is often described as if it were only about action, about movement, and about the body, and not about thought. That is a mistake, because Pollock thought a great deal about his work, about rhythm, about balance, and about when a picture was finished. He was not throwing paint at random. He was controlling the fall of the paint, with his body, with the speed of his movement, and with the thickness of the paint, and he knew when to stop. That control, hidden inside what looks like chaos, is the real skill of his work, and it is why his pictures still feel balanced, even though they look wild. I hope the reader looks at a Pollock again, and sees the control inside the chaos, and the thought inside the action.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Jackson Pollock born?
Jackson Pollock was born on 28 January 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, in the United States. He grew up in the American West, moved to Los Angeles as a teenager, and then to New York in 1930.
How did Jackson Pollock paint his drip paintings?
Pollock laid a large canvas on the floor of his barn, walked around it, and dripped and poured paint from cans, using sticks, brushes, and his hands. He did not use an easel, and he let the movement of his body control where the paint fell.
What are Jackson Pollock’s most famous paintings?
His best-known drip paintings include Autumn Rhythm from 1950, Number 11 from 1952, and Blue Poles from 1952. These large, all-over pictures have no centre and no top or bottom.
Who was Lee Krasner?
Lee Krasner was a painter who married Pollock in 1945. She supported his career, introduced him to dealers and collectors, and after his death spent decades looking after his work while also making her own important paintings.
How did Jackson Pollock die?
Jackson Pollock died on 11 August 1956 in Springs, Long Island, at the age of forty-four, in a car crash. He had been drinking before the crash, and his death ended a short but highly influential career.
Where can I see Pollock’s paintings today?
Pollock’s drip paintings are in major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Australia, which holds Blue Poles.
