Jackson Pollock
<p>The artist whose work best epitomises gestural abstraction is Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), who developed his signature style in the mid-1940s. By 1950, Pollock had mastered his technique and was creating large-scale abstract paintings, which consist of rhythmic drips, splatters, and dribbles of paint. The mural-sized fields of energetic skeins of pigment surround viewers, drawing them into a delicate spider web. Using sticks or brushes, Pollock flung, poured, and dripped paint (not only traditional oil paints, but also aluminium paints and household enamels) onto a section of canvas he simply unrolled across his studio floor. Parker Tyler coined the metaphor of the infinite labyrinth: a dead-end labyrinth whose key not even its creator owned. This working method earned Pollock the derisive nickname &ldquo;Jack the Dripper&rdquo;.</p><p>On his painting process, Pollock declares: &ldquo;It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.&rdquo; Pollock literally immersed himself in the painting during its creation. Responding to the image as it developed, he created art that was spontaneous yet choreographed. Scholars have connected Pollock&rsquo;s ideas about improvisation in the creative process to his interest in what psychiatrist Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. The improvisational nature of Pollock&rsquo;s work and his reliance on the subconscious also have parallels in the &ldquo;psychic automatism&rdquo; of Surrealism and the work of Vassily Kandinsky. A towering figure in 20<sup>th</sup>-century art, Pollock tragically died in a car accident at age 44. Surviving him was his wife, Lee Krasner, whom art historians recognise as a major Abstract Expressionist painter.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
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