| Description |
In this compelling, authoritative volume author Ellen Landau locates the man and the artist in his time, and recreates the social and cultural milieu of New York in the 1940s and 1950s from which Jackson Pollock’s work emerged.
With extensive knowledge of Pollock’s habits (much of it gained through interviews), of his reading, his conversation and the exhibitions he visited, Landau retraces many of the far-flung sources of Pollock’s work-from African sculpture to North American totems, Mexican gods, arcane texts favoured by the Surrealists and Egyptian necrology.
Pollock’s early years are chronicled from his birth through his troubled school years, to his arrival in New York and periods of rewarding study with Thomas Hart Benton, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Stanley William Hayter. Pollock attracted many other mentors during this time; perhaps most important of all was Lee Krasner. A fellow artist (and later his wife), her knowledge of art-world thinking and conviction of Pollock’s genius were essential to his development.
More than one hundred of Pollock’s works are reproduced here in colour, and six gatefolds show his vast horizontal works without distortion. A wealth of comparative photographs illustrating paintings by artists whom Pollock admired further explains the work of this complex, tragic and immeasurably influential figure. |