Jackson Pollock - Tim Marlow TV - Andrew Graham-Dixon TV - Great Artists in Their Own Words TV - Marcus du Sautoy TV - Woody Allen - Hans Namuth - Matthew Collings TV - Waldemar Januszczak TV - Peggy Guggenheim TV - Simon Schama TV -
There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was. It was a fine compliment. Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock: Naked Man with Knife c.1938-40: This shows a naked man with a knife involved in some kind of brutalistic sacrifice. Tim Marlow on ... The New Tate Modern
Abstract Expressionism: Jackson Pollock: Yellow Islands, 1952. ibid.
The man they called Jack the Dripper: When Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings were first shown at the end of the 40s, beginning of the 1950s, people thought they were radical. And I think they still look radical now. I love this work: Summertime: Number 9A 1948. ibid.
No-one pulvarised the world of physical appearances more thoroughly than Jackson Pollock. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of America 2/3, BBC 2011
If ever a studio felt like an arena this is it. ibid.
What he’s trying to do throughout is actually eliminate any suggestion of representational form. ibid.
Jackson is one of several artists in America today who seem to exude anxiety through their work. Andrew Graham-Dixon, Art of America: What Lies Beneath 3/3, BBC 2011
Jackson Pollock: Mural & Alchemy & Reflections of the Big Dipper. Great Artists in Their Own Words II: Out of the Darkness 1939–1966, BBC 2013
The Abstract Expressionists: at the age of 44 he died in a car accident after a heavy bout of drinking. ibid.
This barn was home to one of the artistic revolutions of the twentieth century. The painter who worked here had become disillusioned with conventional painting techniques. In fact he stopped painting altogether and started splattering. He was as controversial as the art he produced. An arrogant self-destructive drunk and perhaps a visionary – his name was Jackson Pollock. Professor Marcus du Sautoy, The Code II: Shapes, BBC 2015
Pollock’s paintings sent shock waves through the art world. No-one had ever seen anything like this before. Life magazine declared him artist of the century. ibid.
Pollock’s paintings seem to have captured something of the wildness of the natural world. ibid.
The fractal quality of his work appeals to us because despite seeming abstract it actually mirrors the reality of the world around us. ibid.
Woody Allen: That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?
Woman: Yes it is.
Woody Allen: What does it say to you?
Woman: It re-states the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos. Play It Again, Sam 1972 starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton & Jerry Lacy & Tony Roberts & Susan Anspach et al, director Herbert Ross
Every good painter paints what he is. Jackson Pollock
The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art. Jackson Pollock
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was. Jackson Pollock
The modern artist ... is working and expressing an inner world – in other words, expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces. Jackson Pollock
The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating. Jackson Pollock
Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within. Jackson Pollock
When I am in a painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image etc. because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well. Jackson Pollock
I’m very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you’re painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge. Jackson Pollock
On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. Jackson Pollock
A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor ... There was complete silence ... Pollock looked at the painting. Then, unexpectedly, he picked up can and paint brush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realized the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dance like as he flung black, white, and rust colored paint onto the canvas. He completely forgot that Lee and I were there; he did not seem to hear the click of the camera shutter ... My photography session lasted as long as he kept painting, perhaps half an hour. In all that time, Pollock did not stop. How could one keep up this level of activity? Finally he said, ‘This is it.’
Pollock’s finest paintings ... reveal that his all-over line does not give rise to positive or negative areas: we are not made to feel that one part of the canvas demands to be read as figure, whether abstract or representational, against another part of the canvas read as ground. There is not inside or outside to Pollock’s line or the space through which it moves ... Pollock has managed to free line not only from its function of representing objects in the world, but also from its task of describing or bounding shapes or figures, whether abstract or representational, on the surface of the canvas. Hans Namuth, photographer
Jackson Pollock, artist of the abstract drip, doomed for ever to be a cliché. What do we see when we see a Jackson Pollock? We see what Pollock stands for. Jackson Pollock stands for freedom and self-expression and being American. Matthew Collings, This is Modern Art I: I Am a Genius, Channel 4 1999
He was a giant of American art. ibid.
We see the whole tragedy of Pollock’s life. Towards the end of it he couldn’t paint at all: he was a depressed alcoholic. ibid.
The Abstract Expressionist’s moment was the 1950s. ibid.
And that was what was going on in Jackson Pollock’s head? ibid.
Pollock’s was a mystery art of pure abstraction. ibid.
He was world famous. Yet he didn’t know where to go. ibid.
Jackson Pollock: It’s a zen look, it’s not a thing, it’s a weightless, gravity-defying delicate dance. Matthew Collings, This is Civilisation IV: Uncertainty, BBC 2007
Jackson Pollock: hero of the American West. Waldemar Januszczak, Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA s1e1, BBC 2018
Benton’s most loyal and celebrated pupil – that is Jackson Pollock. ibid.
In 1945 he [Pollock] moved to a house on Long Island and began making his celebrated drip paintings. ibid.
Abstract expressionism – the first truly American art movement. ibid.
Interviewer: You’ve often said your greatest achievement was your discovery of Pollock.
Guggenheim: Yeah, I think so.
Interviewer: And your collection?
Guggenheim: That was my second achievement. Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, BBC 2016
Peggy once gave a lunch for Pollock at the Chelsea Hotel. Pollock as belligerent and got so drunk that he threw up. A guest told Peggy, ‘You should frame the carpet; it could be worth millions someday!’ ibid.
Abstraction pumped up with the vitality of expressionism: Jackson Pollock’s pictures were monumental in scale and ferociously physical in execution. Simon Schama, Civilisations s1e9: The Vital Spark, BBC 2018