Jackson Pollock, often humorously referred to by art critics of the era as ‘The Dripper’, lived a relatively short life, dying at the age of 44 in 1956. However, his inventive techniques and unusual creations have ensured him a place in art history.

Born in Cody, a small town in Wyoming state in the US, Pollock left home at an early age to work independently in New York, where he stayed on until the end of his brief life. Obsessed by his own artistic imagination, he purposefully kept away from the routines of normal life, drinking alcohol heavily and smoking cigarettes unceasingly while working on his astonishing paintings.

Despite his lifestyle, the cause of Pollock’s early death proved to be not a heart attack or a sickness but a road accident, caused due to his drunk driving.

In the words of Allan Kaprow, a well-known critic of the age who wrote columns for the New York weekly Art News: “Pollock left us very young, his genius still unrecognised. What’s worse is that we are in times when we are terribly occupied with, even dazzled by, the space and objects of our everyday life that, I am sure, will be the alchemies of the coming times in the 1960s.”

The Picasso Museum in Paris pays tribute to the singular genius of Jackson Pollock

Kaprow proved to be right, and Pollock was largely ignored by art experts for many decades after his death. He came back to public attention only when the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Gallery of London paid him considerable tributes in the 1980s. These exhibitions of his works were done once their artistic values were finally comprehended and appreciated.

The current show in Paris, entitled ‘Jackson Pollock: The Early Years 1934-1947’, attempts to bring to the visitor’s attention the painter’s unusual career, marked by his very original technique of dripping spoonfuls of his chosen paints on the canvas and later turning the colourful spots into his sought-after forms with the use of brushes and knives.

In Pollock’s own words: “I have no idea of what I’m doing when I am painting but I have no fear of making changes or destroying the images already created, because painting has a life of its own.”

A restless young man, Pollock was famous by the early 1940s as an unusual personality. One of the most respected art critics of the era, Clement Greenberg, had already foreseen him as a genius. While Pollock was still alive, New York’s Museum of Modern Art had acquired his oil work The She Wolf, painted, or ‘dripped’ if you prefer, in 1943.

The current show in Paris lays emphasis on a number of sources that had nourished the young Jackson’s passion for artistic creations, not to forget the influence of the European avant-garde painters, such as Pablo Picasso and many others.

‘Jackson Pollock: The Early Years 1934-1947’ is on display at the Picasso Museum in Paris from October 15, 2024-January 19, 2025

The writer is an art critic based in Paris.
He can be reached at zafmasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 19th, 2025