Reading Louis Menand’s The Free World I came across the section on artist Jackson Pollock. I had heard of Pollock and knew he was most famous for his unique ‘drip’ style paintings. What caught my attention about him was how his life ended. Like many, many incredibly talented artists, Pollock was an alcoholic. According to Menand, he had essentially stopped making art in 1954, but kept boozing. He also suffered from depression. On a summer night in 1956, after drinking, he crashed his car with two female passengers. One of the women, along with Polllock, died in the crash. He was just 44 years old.

What sticks in my mind is the connection between his drinking and his life being cut short. As I said, he had quit making art, but who knows if he had lived longer if he wouldn’t have cleaned up and got back down to the business of being creative and blowing people’s minds (the drip art definitely blew people away in the early 1950s!). He also killed another person, a recklessness that I pin on his drinking. What a fucking waste.

Some quick research reveals that he is one of many, many talented artists and thinkers that died in similar circumstances. For instance, others that died in car crashes include Albert Camus and James Dean. Alcohol and/or drugs doomed Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Bonham, and Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.