Jackson Pollock
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50 free Jackson Pollock trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jackson Pollock turned painting into a physical event. He worked fast and from every side of the canvas, and the results split opinion from the start: some critics saw the future of art, others saw a mess. Decades later his pictures change hands for sums that make headlines, and arguments about what is and is not a real Pollock still reach the courts. This quiz collects the fun facts behind the legend: where he came from, who taught him, the patrons and critics who built his reputation, the tools he used, and the odd places his work has turned up since, from album covers to Hollywood films. Every answer comes with a short explanation. It is pitched for curious beginners as much as gallery regulars. If you know one thing about Pollock, you will get a few right; if you can tell his canvases apart, the later questions should still make you think.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What nickname did Time magazine give Jackson Pollock in 1956, the year he died?
Jack the Dripper
Jack the Dripper was Time's jab at the way he poured and flung paint instead of brushing it on. By then he had stopped painting altogether.
Q 02Jackson Pollock's Convergence became which 1964 product, billed as the world's hardest of its kind?
A jigsaw puzzle
A jigsaw puzzle of 340 pieces, sold by Springbok Editions, turned the swirling canvas into a craze. Hundreds of thousands of Americans bought one in 1965.
Q 03Which US agency backed the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a sponsor of Jackson Pollock exhibitions?
The CIA
The CIA backed the group to promote American culture, and some scholars argue his wild canvases were pushed as a weapon against Soviet socialist realism.
Q 04Where did trucker Teri Horton pay $5 for a canvas later argued to be a lost Jackson Pollock?
A thrift shop
A thrift shop in California sold it to her as a gift to cheer up a friend. A fingerprint on the canvas was later matched to a paint can in his studio, though experts still dispute it.
Q 05Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948 reportedly sold in 2006 for which sum, then a record for a painting?
$140 million
$140 million was the reported price of a picture first sold in 1949 for $1,500. It had been the only work bought from that show.
Q 06A legend disproved by conservators says Jackson Pollock painted his 20-foot Mural in how long?
One day
One day of frenzied work, after months facing a blank canvas, was the long-told story. Layers of dried oil paint later showed the job took weeks.
Q 07What marks Jackson Pollock's grave in Green River Cemetery, beside a smaller one for his wife?
A large boulder
A large boulder sits on a hill in what had been a plain local burial ground. After he was laid there in 1956 it became famous as the artists' and writers' cemetery.
Q 08For Hans Namuth's film of him at work, Jackson Pollock painted on which unusual surface?
A sheet of glass
A sheet of glass let the camera record paint landing from underneath. After the cold outdoor shoot, Pollock poured himself a bourbon, reportedly ending two years of sobriety.
Q 09In which US state was Jackson Pollock born, in a town named for the showman Buffalo Bill?
Wyoming
Wyoming kept him for only ten months before his mother moved the family away from the town of Cody. He never went back.
Q 10Instead of artists' oils from a tube, Jackson Pollock poured which everyday liquid onto canvas?
House paint
House paint was thinner than tube oils, so it ran off a stick in long unbroken lines. His wife recalled a can or two of enamel standing beside the canvas.
Q 11Which painter married Jackson Pollock in 1945 and guarded his reputation for decades after his death?
Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner is often credited with tutoring him in modern painting, and one dealer said there would never have been a Jackson Pollock without her.
Q 12Jackson Pollock was a leading figure of which American art movement of the 1940s and 1950s?
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was the first American movement to win international influence, and it moved the centre of the Western art world from Paris to New York.
Q 13Jackson Pollock died in 1956 at the age of 44 in which way, less than a mile from home?
A car crash
Q 21Which Hollywood mogul reportedly sold Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948 in a record-setting private sale in 2006?
David Geffen
David Geffen, the record-label founder who co-founded DreamWorks, later sold a second Pollock, Number 17A, to a hedge-fund manager in 2015.
Q 22Which Australian prime minister approved the record 1973 purchase of a Jackson Pollock for the national gallery?
Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam also decided the price should be made public, and the outcry fed attacks on his Labor government's handling of money.
Q 23Which artist advised that Jackson Pollock's huge Mural be painted on canvas, not a wall, so it could be moved?
Marcel Duchamp
A car crash killed him and one of his two passengers when he lost control of his convertible after a day of drinking. The other passenger survived.
Q 14Where did Jackson Pollock lay his canvases so that he could work from all four sides?
On the floor
On the floor he could walk right around a canvas and feel, as he put it, part of the painting. He said he needed the resistance of a hard surface.
Q 15Where in New York State did Jackson Pollock buy a farmhouse in 1945 and turn its barn into a studio?
Long Island
Long Island gave him quiet in the hamlet of Springs, where the wood-frame home cost $5,000. A patron lent the $2,000 down payment in exchange for artwork.
Q 16Which heiress signed Jackson Pollock to her gallery in 1943 and commissioned a vast canvas for her townhouse?
Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim paid him a retainer of $150 a month, set against whatever his pictures earned. She closed her New York gallery in 1947 and moved to Venice.
Q 17Which magazine asked in 1949 whether Jackson Pollock was the greatest living painter in the United States?
Life
Life posed it as a question in its headline, and that August issue made the painter a celebrity.
Q 18Which actor directed and starred in the 2000 biopic Pollock, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination?
Ed Harris
Ed Harris spent almost ten years getting the film made after his father gave him a Pollock biography, and he did all of the on-screen painting himself.
Q 19Which New York institution gave Jackson Pollock a memorial retrospective just four months after his death?
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art had bought one of his canvases in 1944 for $400, making it the first Pollock to enter any museum collection.
Q 20Which Jackson Pollock painting caused a political scandal when Australia's government bought it in 1973?
Blue Poles
Blue Poles cost A$1.3 million, above the gallery director's $1 million spending limit, so the prime minister had to approve it. Estimates of its value have since run into the hundreds of millions.
Marcel Duchamp was advising the collector who commissioned it. The canvas was so big that Pollock is said to have knocked out a wall in his own apartment to make room for it.
Q 24Which critic, Jackson Pollock's chief champion, gave Number 1, 1950 its poetic title Lavender Mist?
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg supplied the name even though, as the museum that owns the picture points out, there is no lavender paint anywhere on it.
Q 25Which term did critic Harold Rosenberg coin in 1952 that became tied to Jackson Pollock's way of working?
Action painting
Action painting treated the canvas as an arena in which to act, so the finished picture mattered less than the struggle of making it.
Q 26Jackson Pollock's 1947 painting Full Fathom Five takes its title from a song in which Shakespeare play?
The Tempest
The Tempest gives the words to the spirit Ariel, who tells a shipwrecked prince that his father lies drowned on the seabed.
Q 27Which Regionalist muralist taught Jackson Pollock at the Art Students League in New York?
Thomas Hart Benton
Thomas Hart Benton painted rural America in a folksy style, and Pollock often said those traditional lessons gave him something to rebel against.
Q 28Which Mexican muralist introduced Jackson Pollock to liquid paint at an experimental New York workshop in 1936?
David Siqueiros
David Siqueiros rarely got the credit, because Pollock disavowed the link more than once when asked how his pouring method began.
Q 29Who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Jackson Pollock's wife in the 2000 film Pollock?
Marcia Gay Harden
Marcia Gay Harden won the film's only Oscar, and scenes were shot at the couple's real farmhouse and barn.
Q 30Physicist Richard Taylor found which repeating natural patterns in Jackson Pollock's poured paintings?
Fractals
Fractals recur at many scales in natural scenery, and the same computer analysis has since been used to tell real Pollocks from imitations.