Jackson Pollock

In 1947, in a converted barn on Long Island, Pollock set his canvas on the floor and stopped using the brush the way painters had for centuries. He walked around the canvas dripping and flinging liquid house paint across it, working from every side. Europe was in ruins after the war and the center of Western art was sliding from Paris to New York, and Pollock's poured canvases became the sound that new American painting made.

Fame arrived fast and strangely. In August 1949 Life magazine ran a photo spread headlined “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” Overnight a difficult abstract painter was a national celebrity, which was not a role he handled well. He had struggled with drink since his twenties, and the pressure and the myth of the wild American genius pressed down on the work.

His marriage to the painter Lee Krasner held much of it together. She had recognized his talent early and managed his career. The great drip years were short, roughly 1947 to 1950, and by the mid-1950s he was painting little and drinking heavily. In August 1956, near his home in Springs, he died at 44 when he crashed his car while driving drunk.