Product Description
THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. A thorough and riveting biography of the American Abstract Expressionist painter. Beginning with Pollock's birth, the reader is taken on a 48-page journey through the trials and tribulations ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Pollock's work
American artist Jackson Pollock lived a sometimes troubled and ultimately tragic life, despite his success in popularizing revolutionary methods of creating art. Clare Oliver's contribution to Scholastic's "Artists In Their Time" series does not sugar-coat or contradict the reality of that life, one of frequent reclusion and alcohol addiction but also containing periods of both failure and success. It also does its best to make the abstract expressionist movement understandable and accessible to young readers without passing any sort of judgment on its merit. Instead, the reader is given a clear picture of the place Pollock's innovations held in the history of art. Background information on the era in which Pollock lived and worked is helpful, but not intrusive. Illustrations are excellent. ... Read more

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An intimate and revealing portrait.--George Plimpton ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

When the Narcissist Codependant met the Bipolar Alcoholic...
This book should definitely be used as a fine example of relationship pathology.It has nothing to do with the artistic life of a genius, just about a woman's idea of her importance by association.Reading it is actually nauseating on so many levels; and this dysfunctional relationship claimed an innocent victim at the end.Spare yourself this self-referential piece of trash.

A good book for all the wrong reasons
Although Ruth Klingman is a clumsy writer (ie we silently went into the silent house.), the book was of value based on the time period it explores.
The story takes place in Jackson Pollock's last year, when his life became totally unravelled. He has alienated his friends and colleagues;started an affair with Klingman; his wife seperated from him and he spent most of his time either drunk or otherwise unable to function. If you can get beyond Ruth Klingman's overblown efforts to make this a romance story (which it is not), It tells of Pollock's unnerving behavior in the final few months before his death.
There is significant art world gossip about Ruth Klingman during this time. She is said to have asked for a list of the best painters in New York at the time and when she was told the best was Pollock, was said to lay claim on him immediately. Within a year of Pollocks death she had started an affair with #2 on the list (Willem de Kooning) which lasted on again off again until 1962. I think the only reason she didn't also have an affair with Franz Kline (#3 on the list) was because he died before her final break up with de Kooning. Because of these stories, her claims in the book that she loves Pollock forever and that he is the only person she ever loved is hollow. It seems she wants the reader to think she is both a sympathetic character and more important than she really was. It comes off as pretentious. It would have made her both more believable and more sympathetic if she would have told of what she has done with her life since the accident in 1956 and perhaps included an honest assessment of her life in the afterward.
However,I would recommend this book, not as a sole source for his biography, but to flesh out other biographies on Pollock.

Still trying to cash in after all these years
A poorly written, self-serving book written by a bit player who is still feeding on Pollock 47 years after his drunken, ignominious death.Pathetic.

Traitorous Art Tart's Account of a Falling Star
Ruth Kligman's account of her "love affair" is tacky, self-serving and poorly written.It's a shame that this adultress continues to live off of a "fame" taken at the expense of the suffering of others through the exploitation of a great artist's demise, a "friend's" death, a undeserving wife, etc. etc.

a memoir of jackson pollock?
I saw the motion picture "pollock" and started to take intrest in the life of Jackson Pollock. when I came across this book I got curious and bought it - what can she possibly write about? I was a little amazed: the book was totaly about her! all she wrote about was herself and pollock's great love for her and how he became depended on her completely. she kept going on and on about how he needed love so despretly and how he was never loved before, totally ignoring his wife, Lee Krasner, and the many years she spent with him, standing beside him and helping him become the appreciated artist he is. she described Krasner as a terrifying angry woman that all she did was terrorize Pollock, when she seemed to forget she had her so called love affair with a married man, invading Krasner's house and living there with Pollock while Krasner was in europe, pretending she was married to him.

I dont think this can be considered a memoir of Jackson Pollock. it does speak of the last months of his life, but it gives very little information about him as a person (beside the fact the he could'nt live without Ruth Kligman) and nothing at all about Pollock as an artist. in fact, in that period of time he did not paint at all. ... Read more

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Visions is a collection of poems inspired by twentieth-century paintings. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Unique and lovely poetry
A friend gave me two of Hofstadter's books. I'm not a great reader of poetry, but "Visions" was truely a unique and lovely collection of poems on paintings that I admire. I've never read anything quite like it. I then read Hofstadter's "House of Peace" very different but wonderful as well.

Poetry? No.
Marc Elihu Hofstadter, Visions: Paintings Seen Through the Optic of Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2001)

After I'd read a few pages of this, I was relatively sure I'd read it before; however, I couldn't find a review of it, so I figured I was just caught in a case of deja vu. Turns out that, no, I did read it back in 2004. But my review seems to have slipped through the cracks, so here I am again, having wasted another four hours of my existence on this godawful mess. You can be sure that this time it's headed off to Half-Price Books so I don't make the same mistake again.

There are a great many aspiring poets who don't understand that poetry is not just prose chopped up into little lines. Thankfully, you see this trend a great deal less among the published set, but there are still times when it rears its ugly head:

"I'm an artist trying to make a work
I've learned to draw well
so I put this white line here,
shade this yellow rectangle just so
and make the orange glow
But it's not quite right
It expresses my soul
but not all of it"
("No. 19, 1949")

I'm not even sure where to start with all that's wrong with that poem. However, it's pretty easy to illustrate what I'm talking about: write it out yourself, taking out all the line breaks, as a paragraph, inserting the necessary punctuation. Do you find it notably changed when you read it that way? If not, then what's the justification for making it poetry and not prose?

An awful book from front to back. I guess the reason I read it again is because I'd blocked it out of my head the first time; I shall endeavor to do so again immediately. *
... Read more

Product Description
Toward a Grammar of Abstraction takes as its point of departure three features of modern art reading: the practive of translating the visual into institutional language, the vocabulary of representation in relation to abstract art, and the prevalence of totalityas a model of art-historical knowledge. ... Read more

Product Description
Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2003 im Fachbereich Kunst - Malerei, einseitig bedruckt, Note: 1,0, Veranstaltung: Action Painting, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Die vorliegende Ausarbeitung ist als Einführung für das Wochenendseminar "Action Painting" zu verstehen. Es handelt sich dabei um eine Gestalttechnik, die von dem Künstler Jackson Pollock entwickelt und ausgeübt wurde. Bevor die Seminarteilnehmer selber nach seinen Prinzipien kreativ werden, möchten wir sie, durch folgendes Referat mit seiner Person vertraut machen, seine Technik erklären und einige grundlegende Definitionen erläutern. Zu Beginn erfolgt daher die Biographie des Künstlers. Es werden Daten genannt, die zum Verständnis seiner Entwicklung notwendig sind, sowie Beziehungen zu Personen, die seinen künstlerischen Stil maßgeblich beeinflusst haben, beschrieben. Zum besseren Verständnis erfolgen Definitionen wichtiger Stilrichtungen und Fachausdrücke, die in Verbindung mit Pollocks Werken, von Bedeutung sind. Der abstrakte Expressionismus wird erläutert, und die Vorgehensweise der "Aktionsmalerei" beschrieben. Hierbei differenzieren wir zwischen unterschiedlichen Verfahren, die Pollock systematisch anwendete. Auch die stilistische Malentwicklung Pollocks bis hin zum Action Painting, soll an dieser Stelle genannt werden. Wir gehen auf die intensive Arbeitsweise, den Ausdruck der spontanen Gefühle und der grenzenlosen Kreativität des Malers ein. Die in seiner Arbeit erkennbaren Grundlagen wie "Aktion, Allseitigkeit und Rhythmik" werden beschrieben. Damit die Seminarteilnehmer einen persönlichen Eindruck gewinnen, zeigen wir Bilder aus unterschiedlichen Entwicklungsphasen des Künstlers. Drei seiner Werke möchten wir hierbei ausführlicher vorstellen. Abschließend sollen mögliche Bereiche der sozialen Arbeit genannt werden, in denen die Anwendung des "Action Paintings" denkbar und eventuell sogar von Bedeutung ist. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: People From Chico, California, Jackson Pollock, Pat Mastelotto, Tracy Chapman, Don Young, Mike Thompson, Aaron Rodgers, Ed Rollins, Joseph Hilbe, Pat Gillick, Big Poppa E, Carla Gugino, Mat Kearney, Niki Tsongas, Clay Dalrymple, Muddy Waters, Bill Wattenburg, John Bidwell, Kyle Lohse, Joe Nelson, Maureen Naylor, Janja Lalich, Doug Lamalfa, Nelson Briles, Robert H. Young, Jerry Harris, Carolyn S. Shoemaker, Amanda Detmer, Isaac Austin, Royal Courtain, Annie Bidwell, Bill Carter, Larry Crane, Kathleen Patterson, Michael Gillis, Russell Hayden, Marion Biggs, Moriss Taylor, Emily Azevedo, Rick Keene, Leslie Deniz, William Morris, Mike Sherrard, Kane Black, Tanya Ballinger, Thomas L. Baptiste. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 196. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Donald Edwin "Don" Young (born June 9, 1933) has been the sole Representative from Alaska in the United States House of Representatives since 1973. He is a Republican. Currently Young is the 7th most senior U.S. Representative and the 2nd most senior Republican Representative, as well as the 2nd most senior Republican in Congress as a whole. Upon the defeat of Senator Ted Stevens, Young became longest-serving member of the Alaska congressional delegation. Young announced in June 2009 that he would run again in 2010. Young was born in Meridian, California. He earned an associate's degree in education from Yuba College in 1952 and a bachelor's degree from Chico State College in 1958. He served in the Army from 1955 to 1957. Young moved to Alaska in 1959, not long after it became a state. He eventually settled in Fort Yukon, a 700-person city on the Yukon River, seven miles (11 km) above the Arctic Circle in Alaskas central interior region. He made a living in construction, fishing, trapping and gold mining. He captained...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=407894 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

More than I ever imagined
I started out with a lot of wrong impressions, including two big ones. A: Pollock only ever did drip paintings. B: they're only drips. A: wrong, and B: wrong.

I came to this book when, quite unexpectedly, I discovered that I needed to know things that his drip paintings were teaching. Part of what convinced me that I needed this information was reading about an analysis of the fractal dimension of these works, and how the dimension grew (i.e., increased in complexity) over his career - that math-y stuff works for me, it helped convince me to look more closely. No, don't expect a clear story, that's as good as I can make it. This book is by no means a catalog raisonne, but has enough of that work to get me started. (BTW, assuming that he discovered and painted some deep laws of perception, he wouldn't be the first or last artist to do so, but those are other stories.)

This doesn't show Pollock's whole ouvre, it shows only part of that in color, and the reproduction (esp. B&W) doesn't rise to contemporary standards - hey, I got the book for a few bucks used, I'm not complaining. Even so, I'm learning what I came to learn - that still has no words, but I find it very satisfying. More than that, I'm learning about the larger body of work in which his fractals are embedded. It has huge energy, more than I ever realized. This author's sampling of Pollock's work shows a mental and physical intensity that perhaps only Picasso surpassed. It shows more, too, but I leave that to others to describe.

Frank devoted some period of her life to creating this book and selecting the representative artworks. Of course, her text will be somewhat breathless and worshipful, given what it cost her. And, like so many art critics, she expresses clear thoughts in utterly unclear phrasing and vocabulary - to tell the truth, I edge quickly past the text to spend more time with Pollock's imagery. Still, amid all that, I find some value in reading about Pollock the man, the very odd man. I came for his thoughts, as laid down in paint on canvas, and Frank has rewarded my search better than I ever hoped.

-- wiredweird ... Read more