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Jackson
Pollock - Love and Death on Long Island (1999)
Although it begins with the police report of his death in a 1956
car accident, this BBC effort quickly backtracks to the birth of
Jackson Pollock's fame seven years earlier with the memorable Life
magazine question: "Is he the greatest living painter in the United
States?" While the answer is still hotly debated, the fact that
he became the most famous painter of that time is not. This 46-minute
documentary concentrates on the intense glare of celebrity and its
effect on Pollock's work and life. Because he allowed documentary
makers unprecedented access to his process, this film is loaded
with images of Pollock at work on his physically active--and therefore
dramatically engaging--style of drip painting. His own voiceovers
as well as those of his wife and champion, fellow painter Lee Krasner,
are intercut with more recent interviews with poets, friends, biographers,
and his lover, Ruth Kligman, who survived the deadly crash. Joining
his old acquaintances is Ed Harris, director and star of the 1999
film Pollock, who speaks to the paralyzing combination of self-doubt
and alcoholism that proved this artist's undoing.
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