Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock (American painter, 1912-1956) His method – peripatetic, circumambulating – would have baffled the old masters. They propped their canvases on easels, giving them a standing equal to the artist. Pollock preferred his canvasses supine on the floor, as if to demonstrate his mastery over them and subject to his will. In that position, they were at his mercy, helpless to resist the spastic gestures of his brush, the paint he splattered on them like insults of a deranged artist. L’enfant terrible, he proved the age-old controversy that art is the power of withinness, a sudden bursting star – “energy made visible.” Even Picasso, that merciless butcher of the body, would agree. In his signature canvases, we seem to be looking into a parallel universe: as though with a simple flick of the wrist, he hurled us back to the beginning.