Pollock

Synopsis: Jackson Pollock (Ed Harris) was the most famous of the American Abstract Expressionist painters. This is the story of his rise and fall and the part his wife. Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden) played in it.

"How do you know when you've finished a painting" asked the Time Magazine journo. "How do you know when you've finished making love?" is the reply. It is one of the more sanguine comments from controversial artist Jackson Pollock portrayed with great devotion by Ed Harris in this less-than-sympathetic biopic of a man once hailed as the greatest (North) American artist of the twentieth century. Produced, directed and starring Harris, one of the most solid, genuine and pliable actors currently working the traps, as Pollock, it offers up a fifteen year study of the artist's life.

As a history lesson, it conforms very much to the artist-as-genius model and tells us how Pollock grew from desperate artistic wanna-be to a raging success. Pollock considered himself an underdog, discredited by critics who wrote off his early work. During a stint in the Hamptons and an all-to-brief period of sobriety, he experimented until he "broke the ice". The work eventually paid off and Pollock became the man of the moment and indulged in the international validation of the art world but eventually paying the price as fashions changed.  As a film, it is graphic, sensual and forthright. It is also a difficult two hours to endure, if only because we know, or quickly guess, how Pollock's life will turn out.

Championing the man and his work was Lee Krasner, an artist whom many still consider better than Pollock. It is no surprise then, that this woman before her time, was still a woman of her time and dutifully pushed her man into the limelight, stalling her own career for nearly two decades.

Krasner is played by Marcia Gay Harden, who won an Oscar as best supporting artist. It is Harden who offers the most appeal in this production. For although Harris is superlative in his role, his exacting, mannered wildness clearly revealing the anguish that was Pollock, he is portrayed as a brutish, self important bully who destroys himself and all around him. In other words an unsympathetic character and one hard to watch for the just over two hour running time.   The audience is left a little more aware, a lot more appreciative of the work, of Pollock and the radical art scene of America in the 50s but alienated from the main character and the film is not unlike its subject,bold and beautiful and in equal parts compelling and frustrating.

FYI: For a broader view of the mechanics underpinning Pollock's ascendancy it is well worth reading Serge Guilbaut's book "How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom and the Cold War.

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