Was Jackson Pollock the greatest modern American painter? A quantitative investigation.

Abstract. A survey of the illustrations in textbooks of modern art demonstrates that scholars do consider Jackson Pollock the most important modern American painter, but not by a wide margin over Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, the leading artists of the following generation. The distribution of the illustrations furthermore reveals a sharp contrast in the careers of the major artists of these two generations: the Abstract Expressionists produced their most important contributions late in their careers, whereas their successors innovated early in theirs.

This difference in life ...

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