Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock is widely considered the most challenging and influential American artist of the 20th century. In his revolutionary paintings of the late 1940s, he dripped paint into complex webs of interlacing lines, rhythmically punctuated by pools of color. With their allover composition, apparent abstraction, and spontaneous but controlled paint handling, these powerful works announced the emergence of Abstract Expressionism. This sumptuously illustrated book offers a fresh overview of his achievement, reinterpreted for a new generation and features a complete visual record of the artist's work, including over 200 color reproductions of paintings, drawings, and prints, enhanced by life-sized details, foldouts, and documentary photographs. An essay by Kirk Varnedoe explores Pollock's life, the mythology that so quickly grew up around him as the prototypical action painter , and the different critical schools that have tried to lay claim to his legacy. Pepe Karmel offers new insight into Pollock's famous drip technique, as revealed by an intensive, computer-assisted study of photographs and films of Pollock at work. This volume was published to accompany the first major survey of the artist's career since 1967, held in 1998 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.