Jackson Pollock

The catalogue for MoMA's 1998 Pollock retrospective, the exhibition that reset the terms of Pollock scholarship for a generation and the first survey of his work in New York since 1967.

Kirk Varnedoe's long essay, "Comet: Jackson Pollock's Life and Work," carries the biographical and critical argument; Pepe Karmel's "Pollock at Work: The Films and Photographs of Hans Namuth" reconstructs how the poured paintings were actually built, using a computer-assisted reading of Namuth's 1950 films and stills and some sixty documentary photographs. Glenn D. Lowry supplies the foreword. The oblong volume runs 344 pages with more than 400 illustrations. The exhibition ran at MoMA from 1 November 1998 to 2 February 1999 and travelled to the Tate Gallery, London, in 1999; MoMA followed it with two companion readers, Jackson Pollock: New Approaches and Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles, and Reviews.

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) worked under Thomas Hart Benton before arriving at the poured and dripped canvases of 1947-50 that made him the pivotal figure of Abstract Expressionism. MoMA holds the deepest institutional collection of his work, including the copper plates and unique proofs from his printmaking.