Flinging his colors onto the canvas, pouring and dripping his paints in a quintessentially American gesture, Jackson Pollock redefined the art of painting. It was the fate of Pollock's gesture to be mimicked, modified, and denied by artists of immense stature. Drawing from twenty years of experience as an art critic in New York, Carter Ratcliff maps the Manhattan art world, revisiting the world of studios, galleries and artist's bars where these personalities met and clashed. Over the story looms the monumental and tragic figure of Pollock, the measure of all who have felt compelled to challenge him.
