Reginald Pollack
Encyclopedia
Reginald Murray Pollack (1924 – 2001) was an American painter known for metaphorical and theme based works of art
. He was also a veteran of World War II
having served in the Pacific Theater of Operations
.
, New York, on July 29, 1924. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City
. Pollack had an identical twin brother Merrill, who was an editor and writer. He was published in The Saturday Evening Post
. Another brother Louis Pollack established the Periot Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York. Pollack and his brothers were routinely taken by their father who was a tailor at Lord and Taylor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
. There they taught themselves to sketch. After serving in the U.S. Armed Forces Pollack using the GI bill traveled to Paris
to study art. There he married his first wife Hanna Ben Dov
, also an artist. He also married his second wife, Naomi Newman, an opera signer while living in Paris. This second marriage produced two daughters, Jane and Maia. His third wife and confidant of 32 years was Kerstin Birgitta Binns, an engineering organizational administrator of Swedish, Danish decent. In 1971 Pollack wrote the book: The Magician and the Child, dedicated to:" Kerstin Brigitta." They married in 1974, and she became his muse. Today she is the curator of the Reginald Pollack Collection.
, (1948-1952) "Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a Mecca for American and European artists...Pollack said the tutelage of the Parisian artists he came in contact with (Alberto Giacometti
, Fernand Leger
, Man Ray
, Francis Poulenc
, Jacques Lipchitz
, and Constantin Brancusi
) made him realize 'my responsibility to civilization ' Pollack spent 14 years in Paris, eight of them living directly next door to the famed sculptor Constantin Brancusi who became his mentor. Pollack said Brancusi was a "modern-day artistic shaman, a holy man as mystically in tune with the primal cosmos as he was impervious to the strains of ordinary existence" The history of Galerie Huit is a remarkable and significant one in the recent history of American art." The artists represented at Galerie Huit were: Rodney P. Abrahamson, Oscar Chelimsky, Carmen D'Avino
, Sydney Geist, Burt Hasen, Al Held
, Raymond Hendler
, Herbert Katzman, Paul Keene, Jonah Kinigstein, Jules Olitski
, George Ortman, Marianna Pineda
, Jack Robinowitz, Haywood Bill Rivers, Robert L. Rosenwald, Shinkichi Tajiri
, Harold Tovish, Hugh Townley and Hugh Weiss.
Pollack's call to responsibility guided his work throughout his life. His memories and revulsion of World War II
where he served in the 87th Mountain Division participating in the invasion of Kiska
in the Aleutians and also in the South Pacific, propelled him to write, O is for Overkill, with his twin brother Merrill. Both were WW II combat veterans. In May 2011 the Lowe Art Museum
at the University of Miami
chose Pollack's Peace March, 1967 to pay honor to his art and political activism. Art critic Alexis Gray wrote:" Reginald Murray Pollack, who studied at New York City's High School of Music and Art before serving in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, was described by his twin brother in a June 1977 Esquire article as " a fine artist, humanist, poetically inclined anti-Vietnam war peace marcher, participant, with other artists, in an antiwar coalition, occasional user of pot and sympathizer with hippies and yippies and most youthful rebels." Accordingly, Peace March captures the Dionysian tone of 1967's Summer of Love. Directly calling on James Ensor's Symbolist- era masterpiece, Christ's Entry into Brussels (1889), which was painted at the peak of the class struggle that followed the formation of the socialist party in Belgium, Pollack adapts Ensor's allegorical illustration of the popular revolt to the anti-Vietnam War sentiment that had gained widespread support throughout America by the late 1960s. During the same year Peace March was completed Reginald Pollack's career was highlighted in the Star Trek
episode "Requiem for Methuselah." In it, the fictional character Mr. Flint, an immortal human from Earth who lived under several aliases over a span of six thousand years, acquires a painting by Pollack that is prominently displayed in his castle on Holberg 917G. In a key scene at Flint's residence, during which Spock explains to a host of dignitaries the significance of Western art since the Italian Renaissance, the Starfleet first officer likens Pollack's career to that of Leonardo DaVinci. Pollack's work is now represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Stanford University, and the New Orleans Museum of Art."
Pollack said:" we must allow experience to enter our daily lives as with the wondering eyes of a new born child, the child discovers things second by second." Upon his move back to the United States in 1960 Pollack became an art instructor and Visiting Critic of Art at Yale University
. Pollack became interested in philosophy and helped establish the Jungian encounter movement in California developing art as therapy. It was at his time that he met his third wife, Kerstin Brigitta and his art became more metaphysical. The year of their marriage he wrote a morality play The War of the Angels, at the National Cathedral. The production was daring ...lasers, computer graphics, NASA
supplied photos, and a musical Rock group. Experiencing the limitlessness of his creativity he produced a painting on vinyl that stood 103-feet by four feet and hung from the top of the Cathedral nave to the ground floor. The installation was in celebration of the safe return of America's astronauts from space. His creativity led him to explore other mediums and new technology. "In 1977, Penn State University held a Pollack painting exhibition and during the University's annual arts festival Reginald produced a light show using neon helium lasers to project abstract images on screen. Also computer-generated images were made to interact with the laser images; accompanying music by Bach and Stravinsky ...these ambitions led him to co-found the nationally known Washington Project of the Arts, which helped many unknown artists exhibit their work, giving them an opportunity to showcase their work. The Project continues to this day."
Until his death at his home in Palm Springs
, California, December 6, 2001, art was always at its center. Pollack's life in art was constant and fruitful. His work is in many private collections and museums throughout the world. His love for his fellow man lives on in what many call Pollack's metaphysical paintings, their dream like quality and colors with palatable energy evoke questions, feelings and ideas. "Over a 60-year career, he participated in more than 80 exhibitions with works in numerous public collections such as The Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The National Museum of American Art, The Hirshhorn Museum and many others as well in numerous private collections”
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
. He was also a veteran of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
having served in the Pacific Theater of Operations
Pacific Theater of Operations
The Pacific Theater of Operations was the World War II area of military activity in the Pacific Ocean and the countries bordering it, a geographic scope that reflected the operational and administrative command structures of the American forces during that period...
.
Early Life
Pollack was born to Hungarian immigrants in Middle Village, Long IslandLong Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, New York, on July 29, 1924. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Pollack had an identical twin brother Merrill, who was an editor and writer. He was published in The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
. Another brother Louis Pollack established the Periot Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York. Pollack and his brothers were routinely taken by their father who was a tailor at Lord and Taylor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
. There they taught themselves to sketch. After serving in the U.S. Armed Forces Pollack using the GI bill traveled to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to study art. There he married his first wife Hanna Ben Dov
Hanna Ben Dov
Hanna Ben Dov is an Israeli abstract painter born in Jerusalem in 1919, died in Paris in 2008-Life & Work:Born in Jerusalem. Father, Ya'ackov Ben-Dov, was a famous Israeli photographer who founded the photography department in the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 1910. Hannah herself attended...
, also an artist. He also married his second wife, Naomi Newman, an opera signer while living in Paris. This second marriage produced two daughters, Jane and Maia. His third wife and confidant of 32 years was Kerstin Birgitta Binns, an engineering organizational administrator of Swedish, Danish decent. In 1971 Pollack wrote the book: The Magician and the Child, dedicated to:" Kerstin Brigitta." They married in 1974, and she became his muse. Today she is the curator of the Reginald Pollack Collection.
Professional Career
Pollack was a founding member of Galerie Huit, the first gallerie in Paris operated by Americans, there were 12 of them, all x-GIs. While in Paris he studied at the Academie de la Grande ChaumiereAcadémie de la Grande Chaumière
The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the VIe arrondissement of Paris, France. The school was founded in 1902 by the Swiss Martha Stettler , who refused to teach the strict academic rules of painting of the École des Beaux-Arts. It opened the way to the "Art Indépendant"...
, (1948-1952) "Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a Mecca for American and European artists...Pollack said the tutelage of the Parisian artists he came in contact with (Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
, Fernand Leger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
, Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz was a Cubist sculptor.Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, son of a building contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania, then within the Russian Empire...
, and Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
) made him realize 'my responsibility to civilization ' Pollack spent 14 years in Paris, eight of them living directly next door to the famed sculptor Constantin Brancusi who became his mentor. Pollack said Brancusi was a "modern-day artistic shaman, a holy man as mystically in tune with the primal cosmos as he was impervious to the strains of ordinary existence" The history of Galerie Huit is a remarkable and significant one in the recent history of American art." The artists represented at Galerie Huit were: Rodney P. Abrahamson, Oscar Chelimsky, Carmen D'Avino
Carmen D'Avino
Carmen D'Avino was a pioneer in animated short film. As one of the leading figures in the avant-garde film movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, his films were regularly seen at Cinema 16, the most successful and influential membership film society in North American history...
, Sydney Geist, Burt Hasen, Al Held
Al Held
Al Held was an American Abstract expressionist painter. He was particularly well known for his large scale Hard-edge paintings.-Background and education:...
, Raymond Hendler
Raymond Hendler
Raymond Hendler was a Philadelphia born action painter whose mature work began in the ferment of postwar Paris. Supported by the G.I. Bill, he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, exhibited at the Musee D’Art Moderne and was one of the founding members of Galerie Huit...
, Herbert Katzman, Paul Keene, Jonah Kinigstein, Jules Olitski
Jules Olitski
Jules Olitski was an American abstract painter, printmaker, and sculptor.-Early life:Olitski was born Jevel Demikovski in Snovsk, in the Russian SFSR , a few months after his father, a commissar, was executed by the Russian government...
, George Ortman, Marianna Pineda
Marianna Pineda
Marianna Pineda was an American realist sculptor who was born in 1925 in Evanston, Illinois. She was married to the sculptor, Harold Tovish....
, Jack Robinowitz, Haywood Bill Rivers, Robert L. Rosenwald, Shinkichi Tajiri
Shinkichi Tajiri
Shinkichi Tajiri was a Dutch-American sculptor of Japanese ancestry . He was also active in painting, photography and cinematography....
, Harold Tovish, Hugh Townley and Hugh Weiss.
Pollack's call to responsibility guided his work throughout his life. His memories and revulsion of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
where he served in the 87th Mountain Division participating in the invasion of Kiska
Kiska
Kiska is an island in the Rat Islands group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska located at . It is about long and varies in width from - Discovery :...
in the Aleutians and also in the South Pacific, propelled him to write, O is for Overkill, with his twin brother Merrill. Both were WW II combat veterans. In May 2011 the Lowe Art Museum
Lowe Art Museum
The Lowe Art Museum is an art museum located in Coral Gables, Florida, a Miami suburb in Miami-Dade County. The museum is run and operated by the University of Miami and opened in 1950. The museum has an extensive collection of art with permanent collections in Greco-Roman antiquities, Renaissance,...
at the University of Miami
University of Miami
The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, a medical campus in Miami city proper at Civic Center, and an oceanographic research facility on Virginia Key., the university currently enrolls 15,629 students in 12...
chose Pollack's Peace March, 1967 to pay honor to his art and political activism. Art critic Alexis Gray wrote:" Reginald Murray Pollack, who studied at New York City's High School of Music and Art before serving in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, was described by his twin brother in a June 1977 Esquire article as " a fine artist, humanist, poetically inclined anti-Vietnam war peace marcher, participant, with other artists, in an antiwar coalition, occasional user of pot and sympathizer with hippies and yippies and most youthful rebels." Accordingly, Peace March captures the Dionysian tone of 1967's Summer of Love. Directly calling on James Ensor's Symbolist- era masterpiece, Christ's Entry into Brussels (1889), which was painted at the peak of the class struggle that followed the formation of the socialist party in Belgium, Pollack adapts Ensor's allegorical illustration of the popular revolt to the anti-Vietnam War sentiment that had gained widespread support throughout America by the late 1960s. During the same year Peace March was completed Reginald Pollack's career was highlighted in the Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
episode "Requiem for Methuselah." In it, the fictional character Mr. Flint, an immortal human from Earth who lived under several aliases over a span of six thousand years, acquires a painting by Pollack that is prominently displayed in his castle on Holberg 917G. In a key scene at Flint's residence, during which Spock explains to a host of dignitaries the significance of Western art since the Italian Renaissance, the Starfleet first officer likens Pollack's career to that of Leonardo DaVinci. Pollack's work is now represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Stanford University, and the New Orleans Museum of Art."
Pollack said:" we must allow experience to enter our daily lives as with the wondering eyes of a new born child, the child discovers things second by second." Upon his move back to the United States in 1960 Pollack became an art instructor and Visiting Critic of Art at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. Pollack became interested in philosophy and helped establish the Jungian encounter movement in California developing art as therapy. It was at his time that he met his third wife, Kerstin Brigitta and his art became more metaphysical. The year of their marriage he wrote a morality play The War of the Angels, at the National Cathedral. The production was daring ...lasers, computer graphics, NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
supplied photos, and a musical Rock group. Experiencing the limitlessness of his creativity he produced a painting on vinyl that stood 103-feet by four feet and hung from the top of the Cathedral nave to the ground floor. The installation was in celebration of the safe return of America's astronauts from space. His creativity led him to explore other mediums and new technology. "In 1977, Penn State University held a Pollack painting exhibition and during the University's annual arts festival Reginald produced a light show using neon helium lasers to project abstract images on screen. Also computer-generated images were made to interact with the laser images; accompanying music by Bach and Stravinsky ...these ambitions led him to co-found the nationally known Washington Project of the Arts, which helped many unknown artists exhibit their work, giving them an opportunity to showcase their work. The Project continues to this day."
Until his death at his home in Palm Springs
Palm Springs
Palm Springs is a desert city in CaliforniaPalm Springs may also refer to:* Palm Springs, Florida* Palm Springs, Hong Kong, a residential development in Yuen Long, Hong Kong* Coachella Valley, also known as the Palm Springs area...
, California, December 6, 2001, art was always at its center. Pollack's life in art was constant and fruitful. His work is in many private collections and museums throughout the world. His love for his fellow man lives on in what many call Pollack's metaphysical paintings, their dream like quality and colors with palatable energy evoke questions, feelings and ideas. "Over a 60-year career, he participated in more than 80 exhibitions with works in numerous public collections such as The Metropolitan Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The National Museum of American Art, The Hirshhorn Museum and many others as well in numerous private collections”
External links
- http://www.reginaldpollackfineart.com/