Pollock was introduced to the use of liquid paint in 1936 at an experimental workshop in New York City by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. He later used paint pouring as one of several techniques on canvases of the early 1940s, such as Male and Female and Composition with Pouring I.

Clement Greenberg was probably the single most influential art critic in the twentieth century. He is best remembered for his promotion of the abstract expressionist movement and was among the first published critics to praise the work of painter Jackson Pollock, who he championed as the greatest painter of his generation.

He became famous following an August 8, 1949 four-page spread in Life magazine that asked, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" The painter Lee Krasner, with whom he lived from 1942 until the end of his life, stated in an interview that "in front of a very good painting, he asked me 'Is this a painting?' Not is this a good painting, or a bad one, but a painting! The degree of doubt was unbelievable at times. And then, again, at other times, he knew the painter he was."

Pollock's work after 1951 was darker in color, including a collection painted in black on unprimed canvases. These paintings have been referred to as his "Black pourings" and when he exhibited them at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York, none of them sold. Parsons later sold one to a friend at half the price. These works show Pollock attempting to find a balance between abstraction and depictions of the figure.

On August 11, 1956, at 10:15 p.m., Pollock died in a single-car crash while driving under the influence of alcohol. One of the passengers, Edith Metzger, was also killed in the accident, which occurred less than a mile from Pollock's home. The other passenger, Ruth Kligman, an artist and Pollock's mistress, survived.

Ed Harris received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Pollock. The film was a long-term personal project for Harris, which took almost 10 years to bring to fruition after his reading of Pollock's 1989 biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga. Harris himself did all the painting seen in the film.

No. 5, 1948 was sold on 22 May 2006 for $140 million, a new mark for highest ever price for a painting, not surpassed until April 2011. The painting plays a central role in the film Ex Machina (2015), in which Nathan Bateman, a wealthy tech firm CEO, uses it as an object lesson for the protagonist (Caleb Smith) noting that No. 5, 1948 would never have come into existence if Jackson Pollock only painted what he already knew.