Jackson Pollock's influence on modern art

Jackson Pollock became the symbol of New American Painting after world war 2 when New York became the centre of the art world. It was a time when artists began to derive inspiration from their unconscious and Jung and Freud theories offered insight to discovering themselves. Their theories further gave justification to the abstract expressionist automatic method of painting which developed metaphors for the 'collective unconscious'. Pollock's painting Cathedral 1947, is one of his first drip paintings. …

…gestural painting of the 50s as well as in the 'happenings' that began at the end of the decade. Pollock's influence extended into the minimal and process art of the 60s by use of the directness with which the materials are expressed. The detachment from historical time and experience in the world of Jasper Johns and of the pop artists is also indebted to Pollock, even though they rejected his intense assertion of romantic individuality.