At the Picasso Museum in Paris, the first works of the American painter are exhibited, before his famous “drippings”. We can see in particular the lasting influence that the Spanish master and the surrealists had on him before the definitive affirmation of his art.
On August 11, 1956, in the early evening, on a road in Springs (New York State), Jackson Pollock smashed his Oldsmobile Starfire against a tree. On board, a young woman also died; another survives, Ruth Kligman who, from Willem de Kooning to Andy Warhol, will establish herself as the muse of an entire generation of revolutionary artists. Enough to feed the myth. That of a “radically American modernism” and of an artist, Pollock, unique, gifted with irresistible energy, solitary but embodying the aspirations of a nation-continent definitively freed from the cultural burdens of old Europe.
A heroic and brutal myth, above which the formulas “dripping”, “all over”, “action painting” chant the incantations of a planetary cult. A myth also skillfully constructed, not only by critics such as Clement Greenberg, who is so invested in the “popular” recognition of his foal,
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