Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock came to New York in 1930 to study under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League on West 57th Street, and ended up breaking every rule his teacher taught. By the late 1940s he was laying huge canvases on the floor and pouring and flinging household paint onto them from all sides, using his whole body. Critics called it action painting, and it made him famous.

He married the painter Lee Krasner, who shaped his career and his legacy, and he died in a car crash in 1956 at forty four. At the Metropolitan Museum, his Autumn Rhythm of 1950 fills a wall in the modern and contemporary galleries. Look at it from across the room first, then walk up close and follow a single line of paint as far as you can.