This is a reposting of a Suite101 article I wrote a couple years ago, just making note of Jackson Pollock's birthday today and who and where he was before he became Jack the Dripper:In 1930, future Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock was a causeless rebel from Wyoming, with some inclination towards art but no real focus to pursue it. He soon went along with his two older brothers to New York, however, enrolling at the Art Students League to take courses with Thomas Hart Benton. Benton was another American art force in the making who would lead the 1930s Regionalist Triumvirate, a trio which included Benton, Grant Wood of American Gothic fame, and John Steuart Curry.
Benton, Wood and Curry turned to the culture and landscape of the Midwest for subject matter, much of which was projected onto imposing, semi-epic murals. They sought to shift the focus of American art away from Eurocentric or even East Coast preferences, and to show how the everyday farm girl or preacher or working man were worthy of appreciation. As Benton himself declared, "The Great Plains have a releasing effect...I like their endlessness." Regionalist work was sometimes praised as exciting and organic, yet at other times the school was called reactionary or exaggerated. The swaggering Benton tended to be the most dynamic of the group, and his career would be marked with conflict against what he perceived to be the art elite.
While Tom Benton had a bit of a macho hothead reputation, he was often attentive and caring toward his students. In the case of the Pollock Brothers, all were readily welcomed by Benton and his Italian wife Rita, a support base which included free spaghetti dinners and an open door policy at the Benton's apartment. Jackson, in need of both paternal and artistic guidance, immediately bonded with Benton. In the classroom, Benton came across as a strong-willed yet perceptive instructor who stressed direct experience, hard work and the significance of composition and design in his teachings.
Benton's initial influence on the youngest Pollock was more emotional than immediate. Firstly and perhaps most importantly, Benton urged Jackson to think of himself as a serious artist and not just a floundering wannabe. Also, Benton's style had a unique muscle and energy that lent itself to the abstracted pulse of Pollock's later canvases of chaos.
Benton's earlier travels across the country inspired Pollock's own sojourn across Depression-era America, hitchhiking and taking odd jobs. Pollock posed for Benton as well, providing a lean and wiry figure for works like Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley. There was clearly a father-son rapport between the pair, but despite calling him a "damned fool" for drowning his talent, Benton was never able to stop Pollock from drinking. Pollock also reportedly became too fond of earthy and free-spirited Rita Benton, brooding about how he wanted to marry her himself but how she would never leave Tom.
In 1935, Benton had had enough of New York and was ready to take a position at the Kansas City Art Institute. He and Rita headed west while Pollock moved into their apartment, although the place was never the same without the couple's vibrant presence. Pollock visited the Bentons in Missouri not long after, but by that point he was drinking so heavily that he had to enter a clinic and undergo professional treatment. Back in Manhattan, drying out slowly, Pollock began to drift away from Benton, explore Jungian therapy and ultimately took on his cooler and more cryptic "Jack the Dripper" identity.
By the mid-1940s, Pollock was married to Lee Krasner and had become a burgeoning force on the art scene. Benton, on the other hand, was considered to be a Regionalist throwback, relegated to the Midwest and no longer nationally prominent. Benton had been on the cover of Time in 1934; by 1947 Pollock was heralded by the same magazine as "the most powerful painter in America." Still, while it seems likely that Benton would have followed the same life path without ever meeting Jackson, without Benton, America might not have boasted of that same powerful Pollock as one of its own.
Upon hearing of Pollock's fatal car crash in 1956, Benton was deeply saddened-too much so to even attend Pollock's funeral. Willem de Kooning made a special trip to Benton's summer home in Martha's Vineyard to tell Benton in person, and the Bentons then showed De Kooning how Rita had saved all of Pollock's many press clippings. Pollock had also kept in touch with Benton, generally when he was depressed or had gotten particularly drunk and reminiscent--and no matter what the hour or how inebriated the conversation, it seemed that Benton was always willing to pick up the phone.
Sources
Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock -- Henry Adams (Bloomsbury Press, 2009)
American Visions: The Epic History of Art In America -- Robert Hughes (Knopf Publishing, 1999)
