Terminal Velocity The Death of
Jackson Pollock This August marks the 60th anniversary of the night when Jackson Pollock died, thrown from the wheel of his car into the woods on Springs-Fireplace Road. To this day, Pollock still looms larger than any of the legions of young artists who have followed his phantom to the East End — and a steady stream of curious fans, many of them born long after the great man’s death, still makes the pilgrimage to his gravesite at Green River Cemetery. Jennifer Landes reflects on what happened that night and why.
T
he life of Jackson Pollock has inspired
much myth-making, but the facts of his death on Aug. 11, 1956 — as recorded in The East Hampton Star — tell the story in frank and unadorned terms. Although an obituary appeared as part of the coverage, the reporting didn’t focus on Pollock as an individual, but handled him as one of a total of 10 people who died after smash-ups on the roads of East Hampton and Southampton that weekend. It is only in the third sentence of the front-page coverage that the reader learns that two of the 10 crash victims were Jackson Pollock and, with him, Edith Metzger, a hairstylist from the Bronx who was in the car, along with Pollock’s girlfriend, Ruth Kligman. Kligman was taken to Southampton Hospital with several fractures, but survived. In a front-page story, The New York Times reported the week60
• august 2016
Pollock’s overturned Oldsmobile coupe, after the fatal accident on Springs-Fireplace Road. Photo by Dave Edwardes, The East Hampton Star