Jackson Pollock: An American Saga is a 1989 biography of abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. It was awarded the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
It was considered "well-researched" by Publishers Weekly and Library Journal . The book's reception inspired Ed Harris to adapt it to film as Pollock in 2000. Marcia Gay Harden received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role of Lee Krasner.
In the New York Times Book Review, author and critic Elizabeth Frank said the work was especially strong on Krasner: "The Pollock-Krasner relationship becomes the center of the book, as indeed it should in any biography of Pollock, and to a certain extent the book even becomes Krasner's story more than Pollack's." [1]
The book was the first to explore the artist with psychological depth, based on interviews with over 850 people. The authors researched for eight years, had insight into various unpublished documents, medical and psychiatric reports, conversations with the artist's friends and widow Lee Krasner.
Paul Jackson Pollock was an American painter. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles. It was called all-over painting and action painting, since he covered the entire canvas and used the force of his whole body to paint, often in a frenetic dancing style. This extreme form of abstraction divided critics: some praised the immediacy of the creation, while others derided the random effects.
Springs is a census-designated place (CDP) roughly corresponding to the hamlet by the same name in the Town of East Hampton in Suffolk County, New York, United States, on the South Fork of Long Island. As of the 2010 United States Census, the CDP population was 6,592.
Pollock is a 2000 American independent biographical drama film centered on the life of American painter Jackson Pollock, his struggles with alcoholism, as well as his troubled marriage to his wife Lee Krasner. The film stars Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Jennifer Connelly, Robert Knott, Bud Cort, Molly Regan, and Sada Thompson, and was directed by Harris.
Lenore "Lee" Krasner was an American painter and visual artist active primarily in New York whose work has been associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. She received her early academic training at the Women's Art School of Cooper Union, and the National Academy of Design from 1928 to 1932. Krasner's exposure to Post-Impressionism at the newly opened Museum of Modern Art in 1929 led to a sustained interest in modern art. In 1937, she enrolled in classes taught by Hans Hofmann, which led her to integrate influences of Cubism into her paintings. During the Great Depression, Krasner joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, transitioning to war propaganda artworks during the War Services era.
Frank Holliday is an American painter who became known in the New York City art world in the 1970s and 1980s. He is often associated with the East Village scene and associated with Club 57. His early career as an artist included working with Andy Warhol and close associations with artists such as Keith Haring Ann Magnuson and Kenny Scharf.
Green River Cemetery is a cemetery in the hamlet of Springs, New York within the Town of East Hampton.
The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts district including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, Helena Rubinstein's New Art Center, and numerous commercial galleries. The gallery exhibited important modern art until it closed in 1947, when Guggenheim returned to Europe. The gallery was designed by architect, artist, and visionary Frederick Kiesler.
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing funding to visual artists internationally to further their artistic practices. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expressionist painter and the spouse of fellow painter Jackson Pollock. To date, the foundation has awarded more than 5,000 grants in 79 countries for a total of over $87 million.
The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show. Now considered historic, the artist-led exhibition marked the formal debut of Abstract Expressionism, and the first American art movement with international influence. The School of Paris, long the headquarters of the global art market, typically launched new movements, so there was both financial and cultural fall-out when all the excitement was suddenly emanating from New York. The postwar New York avant-garde, artists like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, would soon become "art stars," commanding large sums and international attention. The Ninth Street Show marked their "stepping-out," and that of nearly 75 other artists, including Harry Jackson, Helen Frankenthaler, Michael Goldberg, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Robert De Niro Sr., John Ferren, Philip Guston, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Ad Reinhardt, David Smith, Milton Resnick, Joop Sanders, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and many others who were then mostly unknown to an art establishment that ignored experimental art without a ready market.
Hans Namuth was a German-born photographer. Namuth specialized in portraiture, photographing many artists, including abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. His photos of Pollock at work in his studio increased Pollock's fame and recognition and led to a greater understanding of his work and techniques. Namuth used his outgoing personality and persistence to photograph many important artistic figures at work in their studios.
Irving Kriesberg was an American painter, sculptor, educator, author, and filmmaker, whose work combined elements of Abstract Expressionism with representational human, animal, and humanoid forms. Because Kriesberg blended formalist elements with figurative forms he is often considered to be a Figurative Expressionist.
Bernard Harper Friedman, better known by his initials, "B. H.," or known as Bob to his friends was an American author and art critic who wrote biographies of Jackson Pollock and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a number of novels that combined his experiences in the worlds of art and business, and an autobiographical account of his use of psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary.
Jeffrey Potter was an American biographer best known for his 1985 biography of Jackson Pollock, whom he had befriended in 1949. He also published two children’s books and two non-fiction works: one about environmental disaster, and an authorised biography of Dorothy Schiff.
Gail Levin is an American art historian, biographer, artist, and a Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, Women's Studies, and Liberal Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is a specialist in the work of Edward Hopper, feminist art, abstract expressionism, Eastern European Jewish influences on modernist art and American modernist art. Levin served as the first curator of the Hopper Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Gregory White Smith was an American biographer of both Jackson Pollock and Vincent van Gogh. In addition to writing 18 books with Steven Naifeh, Smith was an accomplished musician, historic preservationist, art collector, philanthropist, attorney, and businessman who founded several companies including Best Lawyers, which spawned an entire industry of professional rankings.
Steven Naifeh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American biographer of both Jackson Pollock and Vincent van Gogh. In addition to writing 18 books with Gregory White Smith, Naifeh is a businessman who founded several companies, including Best Lawyers that spawned an industry of professional rankings.
Guild Hall of East Hampton in the incorporated Village of East Hampton on Long Island's East End, is one of the United States' first multidisciplinary cultural institutions. Opened in 1931, it was designed by architect Aymar Embury II and includes a visual art museum with three galleries and the John Drew Theater, a 360 seat proscenium stage. It is historically significant for its role in exhibiting the works of the American Abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, John Ferren, and Robert Motherwell; performances by Helen Hayes, Thornton Wilder, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson, and hundreds of other world-class stars of stage and screen; and involvement by the literary figures George Plimpton, Peter Matthiessen, Gore Vidal, Edward Albee, and John Steinbeck. It holds a permanent collection of 2,400 works of art and continues to build on important relationships in the worlds of film, theatre, dance, music, and visual art. The museum's current director is Andrea Grover, who was previously Curator of Special Projects of the Parrish Art Museum.
Francis Valentine O'Connor was an American art historian who was pioneering scholar of the visual art of the New Deal and an expert on the contemporary artist Jackson Pollock.
2 Broadway murals are a pair of untitled decorative mosaic murals by the American artist Lee Krasner completed in 1959 and located at 2 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, New York. Both murals are abstract with colorful planes made from glass tesserae in green, gold, black, and crimson, echoing the dynamism of Krasner's Abstract Expressionist painting style. The larger mural, installed above the Broadway entrance, is 86 feet by 12 feet, while the smaller one is 15 feet by 15 feet and placed above the entrance facing Broad Street. They were commissioned in 1958 by the New York-based real estate company Uris Brothers, which was headquartered at and owned the office building at 2 Broadway. Krasner designed and completed the murals in collaboration with her nephew, Roland Stein.
Helen A. Harrison is an American art historian, curator, journalist and author. Harrison was the longtime director (1990-2024) of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, the former home and studio of the Abstract Expressionist artists Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in East Hampton, New York. She is known for her books, essays, reviews and exhibitions devoted to modern American art, and a series of historical mystery novels set in the New York art world.