Pleasantly saw an early Jackson Pollock in DC (Not an Abstract)

During my wanderings in the Museum, I found some great pieces, pieces that do not reflect the "image" formed by the media in our minds. For example, I found some Picasso works which are not cubism as we usually know him with. I also found Marc Chagall in MoMA when I thought I need to see some Jewish galleries before I can meet it. I also liked the Klimt piece there when Neue Gallerie was where I thought all Klimt were. I will share them with you in due time and in separate blogs. 

For this blog, I found a Jackson Pollock at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington D.C. and I was so pleased to see his creative father figure Thomas Hart Benson and learned about their story. I have seen a biopic of him and this side of his story was not touched. 

Jackson Pollock has persevered in his quest to being an artist and succeeded in having his "drip" technique accepted in the American art world.  He was not a strong figure painter as I would surmise. But hey, he persevered to become an American Artist. 

                 Wheat, Benton's artwork 

             when he moved to Missouri

  

             Going West, 

         a gift of Pollack to his mentor Benton. 

               And this is not an abstract.

"Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock

A Slow Start

Jackson Pollock was eighteen years old when he

moved from California to New York in 1930 to

study with the realist painter and muralist Thomas

Hart Benton. Though Pollock did not seem to

have natural artistic skill, he persevered, creating

rhythmic compositions following Benton's lessons.

Benton encouraged Pollock, eventually becoming

a father figure to the young artist, whose family

life was scattered and dark. The domestic stability

Benton's family provided enabled Pollock's slow

artistic progression.

Jackson Pollock, 1953"

Role Reversal

Thomas Hart Benton, 1940

Benton catapulted to fame in 1934 with the publication of a Time magazine article lauding him as the new hero of American art. Amid the Great Depression, his depictions of  rural life reassured and appealed to Americans. With this success, Benton decided to leave New York and accept a teaching position in his home state of Missouri. Wheat was created there, much later in his career, after Benton's shift from large narrative murals to smaller, quieter scenes, yet retaining his thematic emphasis on regional Midwestern subject matter.

Pollock painted Going West on the eve of Benton's departure from New York; it

was a gift to his teacher and eventually donated to the Smithsonian American Art

Museum by Benton. In it, a lone figure works a team of horses or mules westward

through a dark, foreboding landscape. Both the subject matter and swirling compo-

sition reflect Benton's influence, but Pollock would not continue in this vein for long.

By the end of the 1940s, he invented his radically abstract "drip" paintings and Benton

and Pollock's positions in the art world reversed: Life magazine suggested that Pollock

was "the greatest living painter in the United States" and Benton, who rejected

abstract expressionism, was considered a has-been. Their personal relationship 

nonetheless remained affectionate and the two kept in touch until Pollock's death in 1956.

1) 2021 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Tony Vaccaro/Bridgeman Images 2) Bettman Archive/Getty Images"