Documentary Review: Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock Documentary: directed by Kim Evans, narrated by Melvyn Bragg.

This documentary follows the life and work of Jackson Pollock, from the perspective of some fellow artists, family and friends. It offers some fascinating insights into his private life and how his early life and family dynamics in the open planes and expansive skies of Kansas may have influenced his work, style and development as an artist. His work seems clearly influenced by his early life, as suggested by colleagues, in terms of his need to work in big spaces and on large canvas. Family and friends repeatedly described his conflicted and unstable relationship with others and with alcohol. His personality and internal conflict drove his choice of expressionist style and a desire to communicate pure emotion, particularly through his “drip paintings”, as well as figurative work representing primitive images. He was drawn to art and artists that integrated images and motives that linked with his childhood familial and geographic environment.

From my perspective I think these personal reports are vital to understand Pollock’s work, but alone, the outcome is too skewed.  Additional perspectives from others that view his work uninformed of his life could offer different visceral responses purely to his art. Colin Marshall on the Open Culture site says: “Jackson Pollock painted with the kind of visceral immediacy that frees you from having to know much about his ideas, his methods, or his life.” (http://www.openculture.com/2012/12/a_portrait_of_jackson_pollock_presented_by_melvyn_bragg_1987.html )  The judgement about his work purely from people who either loved him or hated aspects of him is polarised as his social circle seemed to be, and Marshall’s comment summarises, for me, what may be lacking in this documentary.   

 His love of nature and the rawness of his experiences is well accounted in this documentary. This is pertinently linked to his completed paintings and the way he painted, the places he painted such as on the floor in the open air. No space was big enough to hold his canvas in the same way that nowhere was big enough to hold him psychologically without him bumping up painfully, against people and things.

The cultural context was also influential in his work and way of life. America was emerging from a depression and changes in people’s priorities and a need to express what was difficult to articulate found its way into many of the contemporary artist’s art, method and perceptions of the world. He had a group of people that he could identify with and “belong” to but which also reinforced his risk taking. Risk taking and volatile outbursts seemed to be endorsed as well as shied away from, perhaps exaggerating the ambivalence and polarity that already seemed to be seated in his personality, which may have added the necessary energy to produce the kind of art that he was capable of. The particular narrative line taken in this documentary, leads me to think that Jackson’s constant internal conflicts both fed the creation of exceptional, ground-breaking work but also left him dissatisfied, self-doubting, then rageful, soothed only by producing  something sufficiently new. An artist’s quest is usually to evolve. He compared himself to Picasso and Matisse but couldn’t manage the internal containment of a big, demanding ego in the same way and seemed to drive himself, literally into a wall. The essence that drove his success also engineered his tragic end.  This documentary depicts this starkly with interviews from his lover and close friends. As a documentary about his life and living, I think this is a brilliant piece of work, but doesn’t necessarily offer the narrative and structure to fully explore pure reactions to his work.