Jackson Pollock Essay

The creative artist, Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912 in Cody, Wyoming. His father was a farmer, government land surveyor and his mother was an artist. He was the youngest out of five siblings. His dad left him at the age of eight and then his oldest brother, Charles became the father and showed Pollock art. His early life and family were to prove an important influence on his development. Pollock then went to Manual Arts High School and was expelled for abandoning school for his artistic ideas. Pollock was eighteen when he moved with Charles to New York. They both studied art from Thomas Hart Benton. Like Pollock’s father, he became an alcoholic as well and had to be treated. Picasso’s art influenced Pollock to

Also with other muralists, including Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros which was an important influence on Pollock’s work. In the short-term, his use of Lithograph inspired Pollock to do the same in such abstract pieces as Figures in a Landscape performed in black and white and featuring ghostly figures in a haunting setting, and Landscape with Steer, which uses a similar style and tone in the foreground but contrasts the monochrome with the brightly coloured to lend the piece an energetic yet sinister feel. In the longer term, however, the scale of Orozco’s projects instilled in the young artist a desire to create huge pieces. examples of which he only attempted years later. Pollock was known as an abstract expressionist and began abstract impressionism. In 1935 Pollock was enrolled onto the Work Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. This project, set up as part of the New Deal economic reforms that were intended to tackle the aftermath of A&F Markets. The Great Depression that struck in 1929, sought to offer a salary to out-of-work artists, in return for which they would create pieces to be displayed in public institutions, such as schools, hospitals and libraries. In its 8 years, the FAP is to have produced 200,000 works, mostly paintings, posters and murals. More importantly, it provided