Artist Gets Behind the Camera to Create Pollock Squared

Bill Rabinovitch '58 wants the world to know the "real" Jackson Pollock--or a least a different Pollock than the one depicted in the Hollywood film by Ed Harris about the abstract expressionist whose paint-splattered canvases revolutionized the art world in the 1950s. Rabinovitch has spent the last three years filming Pollock Squared, with the help of prominent artists, critics, historians and scholars. "It's a brisk and unorthodox low-tech film," he says. "with a pickup team of NYC artists acting out of heart, not out of Hollywood."

Rabinovitch, a former mechanical engineer and jet pilot, is a working painter and a videographer of New York's contemporary scene. His work hangs in galleries and public spaces including New York City's Canal Street Post Office and WPI's Fuller Laboratories.

Pollock Squared takes a revisionist view that Rabinovitch calls "a bold improv interpretation of one of the most thought-provoking artists of the 20th Century." It begins where the Hollywood version left off, imagining that Pollock survived the car crash that in reality ended his short, tormented life in 1956. In Rabinovitch's version, Pollock travels through time for fantastical encounters with the century's important artists, including van Gogh, Picasso and Warhol.

Legend has it that Pollock's friends jump-started his Blue Poles painting by dribbling paint on canvas, in an attempt to pull the artist out of a period of depression that had paralyzed his work. Rabinovitch gathered some of his own artist friends on the grounds of the Pollock-Krasner House on Long Island for an apocryphal recreation (below) of the famous painting. Now he is appealing to his friends and classmates for financial support to underwrite production and distribution of his film.

For more information on the project, go to www.pollocksquared.com. Contact Bill at rabinart@aol.com or 212-226-2873.

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Last modified: Sep 02, 2004, 11:56 EDT