In a Jackson Pollock mood

Jackson Pollock, Liverpool
Jackson Pollock was an American painter, and is possibly the leading force behind the abstract expressionist movement in the art world.When the superstar abstract expressionist Jackson “Jack the Dripper” Pollock shifted to using more recognisable figurative pictures in the early 1950s, many thought it constituted a cop-out lack of nerve, perhaps occasioned by too much fame and too much well-lubricated fun. At last, this exhibition – the first in over three decades to survey his late paintings – puts the record straight. Ultimately, Pollock was too much of a wild card to pay much heed to the restrictive gameplan of the abstract art arbiters of the day, critics Greenberg and Rosenberg. A rebel to the last, he wrested his trademark action painting from art-historical acceptance and revivified it with autobiographical figurative elements – see Number 5 from 1952 and 1953’s magisterial Portrait And A Dream, in which Pollock tears his psyche apart. These raw images touch a nerve: they are radiant, and certainly worth another look.