•  Artist: Jackson Pollock
• Title: Mural
• Media: Painting
• Dimensions: 8' X 20'
• Date: 1943

            Paul Jackson Pollock (Jackson Pollock) was born January 28, 1912, and died in an alcohol related car accident on August 11, 1956. He was an influential American painter and a major figure in the field of abstract expressionism. He is also well known for pioneering his own unique style known as drip painting. Pollock enjoyed a considerable amount of fame during his life, but was also challenged by his reclusive nature, volatile personality, and his struggles with alcoholism.

            Pollock’s influence on art comes from developing challenging and radical ideas concerning the abstract style of modern art. He detached line from color and redefined categories of drawing and painting. At the same time, he challenged no means of describing pictorial space (www.theartstory.org/artist-pollock-jackson.htm).

            Pollock work, Mural, was commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim and is considered by many to be the most important modern American painting ever made. He managed to synthesize the multitude of stylistic techniques and theoretical methodologies which he had been exposed to, and created a painting that is inundated with personal, cultural, social, political, and art-world references (uima.uiowa.edu/jackson-pollock/). He challenged himself to create a single piece of art-work that expressed every artistic element he had lived up to that point.

            By creating an abstract piece that was the culmination of all of his previous artistic experience, Pollock challenged himself to create a work that broke from the past, and ushered in a new future of modern abstract art. His work also challenges the viewer by moving away from traditional models of line and form, and inviting the viewer to see and experience what they want to see and experience from the piece.