Jackson Pollock and His Discontent: An Artistic Symptom of Modernity

Abstract

. This paper offers a study on the life and work of distinguished north American artist, Jackson Pollock, from a critical perspective that analyzes his art as a symptomatology of a general cultural discontent. We will reflect upon the criticisms made by Clement Geenberg and Rosanlind Krauss – and in a way, by Pollock himself – when they identified a sort of involution or regression in his last paintings from the 1950s, characterized by being more figurative. We ask ourselves if that need of identifying constant progress and an unrepeatable authenticity in the creative process is a unique characteristic of a modernity that has been already disputed by Bruno but also in previous works, such as in Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontent. We will try to demonstrate to what extent Pollock's work not only reflects his own personal universe but also a general crisis within modernity, through the appropriation of an innovative visual language that takes many conceptual aspects on different ways of perceiving the world from the example of non-Western cultures.