Pollock was hooked on liquids. He kept himself sober for the purposes of splattering enamel paint over a floor-bound canvas - he had to be in order to justify his pronouncement that with his art 'there is no accident'.
But Pollock had been a drinker from the age of 15. Born in 1912, he drank most days and nights of his life. When intoxicated Pollock raged, fought and chose to do a lot of public pissing - he once ignited a mattress and extinguished the flames by spraying urine over it. When the drink dried up, the paintings flowed; his most productive period being between 1948 and 1951 when he avoided alcohol and abstract expressionism became hip. But he started drinking again the night Hans Namuth shot his famous video of Pollock at work.
Stunted by the pressure of sudden stardom, he got depressed, drunk and unproductive. In 1956 his wife, Lee Krasner, left him and a month later Pollock was killed after driving his a car into a tree, killing one other passenger. It was rumoured to be suicide, more likely it was just an accident.
