Now here's an addictive website! Move your mouse over this blank page and it becomes a paint brush, the button changes color, and in no time you're painting like Jackson Pollock. Alas, I haven't figured out how to save or print the results of your random inspiration.
An interesting artist, Pollock. The movie by Ed Harris is powerful. There's also an interesting subplot to this era in art, which has the CIA supporting abstract art because it has no content and therefore can be exported without damaging America's social or political reputation in the Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union. The CIA actually backed financially art journals supporting abstract expressionism! Pollock benefited from all this.
Personalities like Pollock -- artist as wild man -- reinforce the romantic interpretation of art as sacred calling, against which all non-artistic behavior gets excused or at least "understood." By this late juncture, the artist dead and his destructive personality more irrelevant than when he was alive, the work is all that matters. So who cares if you were an asshole in life? The people you hurt die off but the art lives on. That's the rationale of the romantic vision of art.
National Gallery of Art Profile.
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