• Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock's wife, changed her name. Her original name is Lenore Krassner.

• Pollock's real first name is Paul. Right around the time that he moved to New York to study with Benton in 1930, he decided to drop his first name and use his middle name of Jackson.

• The only person to survive Pollock's deadly car accident was his lover, Ruth Kligman.

• One of his most famous works is Blue Poles, painted in 1952. It was created with enamel and aluminum paint with glass on a canvas.

• The most important element in Pollock's paintings is that of lines. When he first started using the method of pouring and dripping paint onto canvas, it resulted in huge areas covered with complex linear patterns that created image and form.

• "Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" That was the question on the front cover of Life magazine on August 8, 1949.

• His first experiment with liquid paint was at the Siquieros workshop in New York, 1936.

• The French equivalent of action painting, a form of abstract expressionism associated with Pollock, is Tachisme.

• Pollock was nicknamed Jack the Dripper because he literally dripped paint onto his canvas to create unique, intricate pieces.

His brother Sanford knew Jackson had a special talent. In 1941, he wrote a letter to their eldest brother Charles about Jackson. He said if Jackson could "hold himself together, his work will become of real significance. His painting is abstract, intense, evocative in quality."

• Pollock's paintings differed from before he moved to the Hamptons and right after the move. Before moving to The Springs in East Hampton with his wife, his imagery was congested, the colors were somber, and the overall mood of his paintings was anxious and conflicted.

• After the move to the country, the colors were brighter, his compositions were more open, and the imagery reflected a new responsiveness to nature.

• His work Blue Poles, 1952 was originally inscribed with a '3' and subsequently painted over with a '2'.

• In 1949, Pollock decided to number his paintings, including the year they were created, instead of using descriptive titles. This began with his 1949 solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery.

• Downward arching stretch-marks at the top edge of the canvas are common with Pollock's works. This is because he would often hang them along a beam in his studio; another step in his creation process.

Click links below for more info and for some quotes by Pollock himself!

~ He would drink himself unconsious frequently...

~ He pissed in Peggy Guggenhiems fireplace at a dinner party in front of her guest

~ He was a studied with Thomas Hart Benton briefly

Not known any more.

But click link below for an example of his early style!

The answer isn't necessarily "who", but "what".

(See painting titled: No. 5)

Jackson Pollock studied the way paint hits a canvas. For example, during the Renaissance, painters studied how to replicate our 3-dimensional world onto a flat canvas with accuracy. Pollock wanted to study how paint can physically sit on top of a canvas, and how the 3-dimensionality of it will appear. He wanted to see how the paint would dry, how the paint would fall on itself, and how different colors would interact.

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Certainly Jackson Pollocks earlier works from the 40's such as 'Guardian's of the secret' & 'she wolf' were strongly influenced by Picasso (whom i feel he absorbed via Arshile Gorky) combined with an influence of Mexicans such as Jose Orozco & David Alfaro Siqueiros. Previous to this he had been under the influence of Tom Benton and not producing anything as interesting. The influence of the art critic Clement Greenberg on the whole New York School, and particularly in reference to the decline of painting in Europe created an environment of possibilities at the right place & the right time. Gorky's death in 1948 also left the way open for Pollock to move into the number 1 spot in America.

Not sure if i agree with the first reply above, i was under the impression that Pollocks main weakness was his drawing skill, this he resolved in the end by drawing 'above' the canvas surface. But maybe i agree with the 'what, not who' as i feel Pollock was most strongly driven by the environment New York artists were creating on the world stage.

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Indian culture and their art like sand-painting was one important source for Pollock. also the Indian mythology influenced him and gave him motifs and subjects to paint. Here one quote bij himself on this matter:

-…I have a definite feeling for the West, the vast horizontality of the land, for instance… …I have always been very impressed with the plastic qualities of American Indian art. The Indians have the true painter's approach in their capacity to get hold of appropriate images, and in their understanding of what constitutes painterly subject-matter. Their colour is essentially Western, their vision has the basic universality of all real art. Some people find references to American Indian art and calligraphy in parts of my pictures. That wasn't intentional; probably (it) was the result of early memories and enthusiasm…

* artist quotes Pollock, from "Art and Architecture" Vol. 61 no. 2, February 1944; as quoted in "Twentieth-century American painting", Gail Levin, The Thyssen-Bornemisza collection. London, 1987, p. 267 (art quotations)

Pollock's fame is not due to any one painting, more on the novelty of his style and methods, the Abstract Expressionism.

Click link below to see a long list of titles, which you can click and look at.

His drip paintings, e.g. Number 5, or Lavender Mist.