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Meesterlijk Modern #3
Pollock (Basic Art)
A tragic icon of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) took influences from Picasso and Mexican surrealism and developed his own way of seeing, interpreting, and expressing. Though his name inevitably conjures up images of the drip paintings for which he is most famous, this technique was only developed midway through his career. The progression from his earlier work to his final "action" paintings — a veritable revolution of painting as a concept — reveals the genius of this tortured artist whom many call the greatest modern American painter.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 21, 2007
Some people don't understand Pollock...me either...that's what I like about his art! Great book!
April 7, 2019
Buena Intro al la pintura y le vida de Pollock. Lo recomiendo.
February 24, 2019
C’est le second ouvrage de Leonhard Emmerling portant sur un artiste-peintre américain que je lis. Le premier, consacré à Basquiat m’avait fort ravi, autant pour la pertinence et la proximité des propos que par la qualité des illustrations et par la finition Taschen du bouquin. POLLOCK (1912-1956) possède les mêmes qualités.
Ce Jackson-Pollock-pour-les-nuls propose non seulement l’évolution chronologique du catalogue de l’artiste, mais il s’attarde également au contexte social des États-Unis ainsi qu’aux remous du marché de l’art qui ont vu naître, évoluer puis s’effondrer l’artiste-troublé.
Comme bien des gens, j’étais assez familier avec la technique qui caractérise l’œuvre de Pollock, le dripping, mais j’étais davantage intéressé par le cheminement de l’artiste l’ayant mené vers cette approche, à la fois furieuse, exaltée et maîtrisée.
L’auteur présente donc les rapprochements entre Pollock et ses contemporains, dont Gerome Kamrowski, William Bazioteset et surtout Pablo Picasso. J’ai été étonné par la corrélation entre ce qui se dégage de certaines œuvres réalisées par Pollock au tournant des années 1930-1940 et la proposition cubiste, puis surréaliste de Picasso. C’est à ce moment que Pollock est passé progressivement de la dissimulation vers l’abstrait. Il y a certaines œuvres reproduites dans le livre que je n’aurais jamais associées d’emblée à l’artiste, tellement, prises seules, elles sont loin de ce que sera le dripping qui le caractérisera à l’apogée de sa carrière, mais, les explications claires de l’auteur à propos de l’évolution de sa technique rendent légitime et cohérente la progression artistique.
La courte carrière de Pollock —il est mort en 1956— a certes été marquée par différentes phases artistiques, mais le volet personnel, sous-jascent à cette évolution, est avant tout marqué par l’alcoolisme chronique ainsi que par sa relation houleuse avec l’artiste Lee Krasner, son épouse alors qu’il était au sommet de son art. Jackson Pollock a eu la chance d’être reconnu dès ses débuts, d’exposer et d’être célébré de son vivant, mais ses failles singulières l’empêcheront d’en jouir tel qu’il aurait pu le faire. La critique l’a pris sous aile, a accepté, sanctifié, son cheminement et l’a porté sur les plus hautes marches de l’éloge. Pollock a contribué à muter le centre de l’art mondial de Paris vers New-York et sera pour toujours le « héro de l’expressionnisme abstrait » américain.
« … Pollock’s talent (is) volcanic. It has fire. It is unpredictable. It is undisciplined … It is lavish, explosive, without an ear to what the critic or spectator may feel —painters who will risk spoiling a canvas to say something in their own way. Pollock is one.”
J’ai beaucoup apprécié de beau livre.
Ce Jackson-Pollock-pour-les-nuls propose non seulement l’évolution chronologique du catalogue de l’artiste, mais il s’attarde également au contexte social des États-Unis ainsi qu’aux remous du marché de l’art qui ont vu naître, évoluer puis s’effondrer l’artiste-troublé.
Comme bien des gens, j’étais assez familier avec la technique qui caractérise l’œuvre de Pollock, le dripping, mais j’étais davantage intéressé par le cheminement de l’artiste l’ayant mené vers cette approche, à la fois furieuse, exaltée et maîtrisée.
L’auteur présente donc les rapprochements entre Pollock et ses contemporains, dont Gerome Kamrowski, William Bazioteset et surtout Pablo Picasso. J’ai été étonné par la corrélation entre ce qui se dégage de certaines œuvres réalisées par Pollock au tournant des années 1930-1940 et la proposition cubiste, puis surréaliste de Picasso. C’est à ce moment que Pollock est passé progressivement de la dissimulation vers l’abstrait. Il y a certaines œuvres reproduites dans le livre que je n’aurais jamais associées d’emblée à l’artiste, tellement, prises seules, elles sont loin de ce que sera le dripping qui le caractérisera à l’apogée de sa carrière, mais, les explications claires de l’auteur à propos de l’évolution de sa technique rendent légitime et cohérente la progression artistique.
La courte carrière de Pollock —il est mort en 1956— a certes été marquée par différentes phases artistiques, mais le volet personnel, sous-jascent à cette évolution, est avant tout marqué par l’alcoolisme chronique ainsi que par sa relation houleuse avec l’artiste Lee Krasner, son épouse alors qu’il était au sommet de son art. Jackson Pollock a eu la chance d’être reconnu dès ses débuts, d’exposer et d’être célébré de son vivant, mais ses failles singulières l’empêcheront d’en jouir tel qu’il aurait pu le faire. La critique l’a pris sous aile, a accepté, sanctifié, son cheminement et l’a porté sur les plus hautes marches de l’éloge. Pollock a contribué à muter le centre de l’art mondial de Paris vers New-York et sera pour toujours le « héro de l’expressionnisme abstrait » américain.
« … Pollock’s talent (is) volcanic. It has fire. It is unpredictable. It is undisciplined … It is lavish, explosive, without an ear to what the critic or spectator may feel —painters who will risk spoiling a canvas to say something in their own way. Pollock is one.”
J’ai beaucoup apprécié de beau livre.
October 26, 2017
The Tachen books are great introductions to the topic. In this case, it was a great overall perspective of Pollock, his life, and his work. Exactly what i was looking for! The illustrations are of good quality. The only criticism would be that when the text is referencing numerous paintings that are on other pages, it got pretty confusing trying to flip back and forth to be able to understand what they were saying.
April 4, 2014
I found out all that I needed to know and more from this book. Once more Taschen has proven its worth :)
August 5, 2025
I will always have a soft spot for Taschen books and this kind of academic writing on art history in general because, and here's my unpopular opinion for the day, not everything needs to be accessible and immediately understandable to laypeople. I think there's a beauty in the kind of rarefied erudition that only considerable study allows one to develop and to understand. There's a point that Hermann Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game makes beautifully, which is that there's a certain joy to be had in this kind of sophisticated game with words, much the same way that a virtuoso musician could enjoy progressive microtonal experiments or a mathematician might enjoy solving complex algebraic problems. You don't have to understand or share in this joy, but don't deny that it exists just because you yourself can't understand it. And there's passages of really beautiful writing in this, in particular one passage of a political awareness as unexpected as it is accurate in this context:
At the same time, the book however also features the following paragraph, which reveals the writer's bourgeois-patriarchal sensibilities:
Which is some pre-World War I patriarchal kind of talking about women, like that's something you'd expect to see written in Freud or one of his contemporaries with the views they held. I'm not sure where Emmerling got that quotation from, but why would you as a serious art critic take that to mean that he hated his mother? Why would you make this kind of assumption about such an intimate relationship, when all you have to go on is some written statement taken out of context?
"We should not forget that the success of these photographs and the art whose emergence they documented was due in part to an instrumentalization of abstraction in the U.S. and Western Europe at that period. Abstraction was declared the art of the Free World, i opposition to the Socialist Realism of the Eastern Bloc. Just as Willi Baumeister and Franz Winter were appropriated as artists of the Adenauer period, Pollock figured as a prime representative of a Western art that permitted freedom of individual expression, in contrast to the regimented, party-line art practiced behind the Iron Curtain. The erstwhile advocacy of Marxist ideals by Abstract Expressionism artists was hushed up."
At the same time, the book however also features the following paragraph, which reveals the writer's bourgeois-patriarchal sensibilities:
"An overly indulgent woman who spoiled her youngest song, Stella Pollock instilled a lasting mixture of love and hate in Jackson. His brother Sande, in a letter to Charles, attributed Jackson's psychological problems to this relationship to their mother. In strangely detached words, as if speaking of some other family, Sande wrote, "Jackson is afflicted with a definate neurosis. Whether he comes through the normalcy and self-dependency depends on many subtle factors and some obvious ones. Since part of his trouble (perhaps a large part) lies in his childhood relationships with his Mother in particular and family in general, it would be extremely trying and might be disastrous for him to see her at this time." As late as 1956 Pollock himself emphasized how much he hated his mother, calling her 'an old womb with a built-in tomb'."
Which is some pre-World War I patriarchal kind of talking about women, like that's something you'd expect to see written in Freud or one of his contemporaries with the views they held. I'm not sure where Emmerling got that quotation from, but why would you as a serious art critic take that to mean that he hated his mother? Why would you make this kind of assumption about such an intimate relationship, when all you have to go on is some written statement taken out of context?
October 5, 2024
“I am not a phony!”
Informative, the language was a bit difficult for me to understand at times.
Page 76
“The following years, until his death, saw his alcohol consumption steadily rise and his creative powers steadily decline. Why the film work with Namuth triggered such a profound crisis has never been adequately explained. In a sense, Pollock apparent felt that his acting in front of the camera (something that would later be seminal to the development in f performance art) was a sham, as if he were only pretending to paint for the ale of the film’s audience. What in the loneliness of the studio had been a profound and intimate interplay between him and the canvas became play-acting in front of an imaginary public, and thus a betrayal of himself and his art. In fact at a previous date, for the photographer Rudolph Burckhardt, Pollock had only pretended to paint.”
Informative, the language was a bit difficult for me to understand at times.
Page 76
“The following years, until his death, saw his alcohol consumption steadily rise and his creative powers steadily decline. Why the film work with Namuth triggered such a profound crisis has never been adequately explained. In a sense, Pollock apparent felt that his acting in front of the camera (something that would later be seminal to the development in f performance art) was a sham, as if he were only pretending to paint for the ale of the film’s audience. What in the loneliness of the studio had been a profound and intimate interplay between him and the canvas became play-acting in front of an imaginary public, and thus a betrayal of himself and his art. In fact at a previous date, for the photographer Rudolph Burckhardt, Pollock had only pretended to paint.”
May 8, 2025
The Taschen Basic Art series as a whole makes for a great introduction to various artists. We get a bit of analysis mixed with a bit of biography and a pretty good selection of works. I didn't have any exposure to Pollock's early work before this, so that was the most interesting part of this one to me. Does help give a bit more understanding to what Pollock was doing even if it won't win over any detractors.
January 1, 2023
A very insightful look into the controversial American painter Jackson Pollock. While it may not sway more people to reexamine and embrace his artwork. Seeing the development of his style and the background, both historical and personal, is a must for anyone who would criticise his body of work, whether it be negative or positive.
March 2, 2019
An overview of the life and work of an artist.
The writing was reasonable and some of the images were captivating.
Reading / viewing time of roughly 90 minutes.
The writing was reasonable and some of the images were captivating.
Reading / viewing time of roughly 90 minutes.
February 21, 2012
The text is fairly cursory, but it'd make a nice introduction to Pollock. I bought the book for the reproductions, though. The print quality is good, but the colors seem to be a bit saturated. I don't really trust the color accuracy after having seen Gothic at "Picasso to Warhol" exhibit. The reproduction of this painting has made the greens more green and the reds more red.
For the price, I would recommend this for anybody just interested in having a book of Pollock works. There are many large images covering various periods. I would give it 3 1/2 stars because I love the artwork but don't trust the color.
For the price, I would recommend this for anybody just interested in having a book of Pollock works. There are many large images covering various periods. I would give it 3 1/2 stars because I love the artwork but don't trust the color.
September 3, 2009
Boeiend werk over het zeer bewogen leven van de Amerikaanse abstract-expressionistische kunstenaar Jackson Pollock (1912-1956).
Bij 'n tweede grote expositie deden sommige critici zijn werk af als 'gegratineerde macaroni', maar ik vind zijn 'dripping- & pouring-paintings' schitterend!!! Zou de oceaan over moeten om een aantal werken een keertje in 't echt te kunnen zien en dat zit er jammer genoeg echt niet in.
Mural(1943)- Blue(1943)- Summertime(1948) - Gray and Red (1948) - Number 32 (1950) - Number 1 (1952)
Bij 'n tweede grote expositie deden sommige critici zijn werk af als 'gegratineerde macaroni', maar ik vind zijn 'dripping- & pouring-paintings' schitterend!!! Zou de oceaan over moeten om een aantal werken een keertje in 't echt te kunnen zien en dat zit er jammer genoeg echt niet in.
Mural(1943)- Blue(1943)- Summertime(1948) - Gray and Red (1948) - Number 32 (1950) - Number 1 (1952)
April 25, 2012
Here's what I say about Jackson Pollock's art: if you look at his (best) work and either get it, or understand that you should get it, then you can be my friend. If you think it's just a bunch I splattered paint, you're no friend of mine.
May 3, 2013
Interesting, albeit brief, run-through of Pollock's life & work, opinionated in the way that art history & criticism always is, i.e. much to be argued with. Like someone else has said here, it's a good start. Plates are nice, though (necessarily) far too small.
September 8, 2016
zajímavé. Hlavně pěkné reporodukce.
October 20, 2014
Un poquito de Pollock para disfrutar el domingo: jamás se va a sentir lo mismo leyendo un libro sobre él que parándose frente a su obra en el MoMA.. pero descubrí detalles nuevos.
August 13, 2015
Fascinating.
November 22, 2020
“I want to express my feelings... not illustrate them”.
December 13, 2015
Очень читабельное, хорошо иллюстрированное ликбез-издание от Taschen
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews