History's Greatest Artists: The Life and Legacy of Jackson Pollock

"When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about." - Jackson Pollock In August of 1949, Life magazine famously began a lengthy article on Jackson Pollock with the headline "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" By that time, Pollock was already well-established in the American art world, the beneficiary of laudatory critical assessments, commercial success, and the support of the influential Peggy Guggenheim (who had helped launch his career with a major show six years earlier). However, to the relatively uninitiated readership of a middlebrow publication like Life, the article sent shockwaves, as many wondered how Jackson Pollock, whose paintings seemed abstract and sloppy to the point of resonating like the work of a young child, could possibly command any major standing within the horizon of avant-garde and modernist art. These same people no doubt wondered how his artwork could reasonably lay claim to being masterpieces with no apparent subject matter. On a psychological level, it's even possible that readers wondered how a man who looked as macho and indeed, boorish, as Jackson Pollock could really be the greatest painter America had to offer.