Jackson Pollock
Put the canvas on the floor and poured, and made American painting the centre of the argument.
Jackson Pollock was born in Wyoming in 1912, studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League, and worked through the 1930s on the federal art project while drinking heavily and undergoing Jungian analysis. Between 1947 and 1950, in a barn on Long Island, he laid unstretched canvas on the floor and poured and flung household enamel across it, producing the drip paintings that made him internationally famous — Life magazine asked in 1949 whether he was the greatest living painter in the United States. He returned to figuration, stopped painting almost entirely, and was killed driving drunk in 1956.
Very little comes to market and nearly everything of consequence is documented in the O'Connor and Thaw catalogue raisonne and its supplements. Attribution disputes are frequent and well publicised, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation ceased authenticating in 1996, so no body issues opinions — provenance, materials analysis and the catalogue are what carry a work. The commercial enamel he used is chemically unstable and cracks; drip paintings on unprimed canvas have significant conservation histories. Early works on paper are the accessible end of the market and are also the most forged.
If you own a work by Jackson Pollock
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.