Jackson Pollock

The chief aspect of the life and career of Jackson Pollock that has always fascinated me was his self-destructiveness. He struggled for years to achieve success and fame, and when he received it, following the period in which his "drip paintings" took the world by storm and landed him the cover of Life Magazine (1949), he abruptly abandoned the style altogether. He simply stopped making them. When he returned to work a few years following the magazine article, the color in his compositions was gone, as well as the all-over dripped lines of paint. Instead, he painted in black, some abstract compositions, but mostly figurative works that recalled some of his earliest pieces.Why would he have seemingly turned on himself and his success, at the peak of his fame? Why would he have abandoned the technique of drip painting that he had literally invented, and which had changed the course of modern art history?

The answer baffles me, and probably most others, as none of us will not ever be fully aware of an artist's intentions or process.

But yet I deeply appreciate the inner struggles that Pollock must have experienced, which ultimately prevented him from fully embracing the path of long term success and longevity his life might had taken. It would have been "easy" for him to continue his drip paintings, work with a commercial gallery in New York City, and make an absolute fortune along the way, enjoying every single moment that was given him. But he wasn't an easy man. And that's the very reason why his work was so brilliant, so groundbreaking, and so spectacular to absorb in person.

So the answers are in the paintings themselves. Here are my favorites, of which, among his non-drip paintings, Guardians of the Secret at SFMOMA tops the list.

Guardians of the Secret, 1943
Oil on canvas
48 3/8 x 75 3/8 in.

One: Number 31, 1950
Oil and enamel on canvas
8' 10 x 17' 5 5/8 in.

Number 1 (Lavender Mist), 1950
Oil, enamel, & aluminum on canvas
87 x 118 in.