Jackson Pollock - Hardcover

Landau, Ellen G.

4.38

103 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810984962 ISBN 13: 9780810984967

Publisher: Abrams, 2010

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

How did Jackson Pollock become a cult figure for the Beat Generation? And what caused his reputation to continue to soar? This compelling and original Abrams classic, now back in print, locates the artist in the continuum of his times, recreating the social and cultural milieu of New York in the 1940s and 1950s. With extensive knowledge of Pollock’s habits (much of it gained through interviews), his reading, his conversation, and the exhibitions he visited, the author retraces many of the far-flung sources of Pollock’s work. A wealth of comparative photographs that illustrate paintings by artists Pollock admired further explains the work of this complex, tragic, and immeasurably influential figure. Pollock’s big, bold canvases are reproduced in five colors to convey the brilliance of his network of tones, his aluminum paint, and his sparkling collage materials. Six gatefolds show his vast horizontal works without distortion and a chronology provides a summary of the major events of Pollock’s life.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Ellen G. Landau is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University, where she has taught since 1982. She is also the author of Lee Krasner: A Catalogue Reaisonne, Reading Abstract Expressionism, and Artists for Victory, as well as many articles on twentieth-century American art.

From Library Journal:

The role of art historian as biographer is beset with contradictions, an artist's life and art being neither mutually exclusive nor synonymous. Balanced in his life on the edge of destruction and in his art on that of innovation, Pollock mirrored a chaotic world, one in which humans seemed to have lost control. Less gossipy than Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith's Jackson Pollock ( LJ 8/89), this book treats Pollock's personal life, creative work, and cultural milieu as discrete elements that produce a gradually developing image, not always in accord with the public's view of Pollock as rebellious cowboy or counterculture loner. Pollock was the major force behind the transfer of avant-garde art from France to the United States and the American idiom in which it was expressed. This "American Prometheus" is well served by this elegantly illustrated, carefully annotated, and well-written work. Recommended for all art libraries and large general collections.
- Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.