A five-dollar thrift store painting that might be a lost masterpiece worth tens of millions captures the polarized reactions Jackson Pollock still provokes: meaningless splatter or priceless genius. This episode traces his life from a restless Wyoming childhood and multiple high school expulsions through the influence of Mexican muralists and Native American sand painters, his move to New York in 1930, WPA work during the Depression, a lifelong battle with alcoholism, and Jungian psychotherapy that gave his inner chaos a visual vocabulary.

We break down the mechanics of the drip period from 1947 to 1950, including unprimed canvas on the floor, household enamel paint, sticks and basting syringes, and the shift from evocative titles to plain numbers. We examine Lee Krasner’s essential role as editor, tutor, and career manager, the commercial failure of the black pourings, and the fatal 1956 car crash. Then we follow the strange afterlife of his work: covert CIA sponsorship of abstract expressionist exhibitions during the Cold War, a 1948 drip painting selling for over 180 million dollars, and fractal analysis that can distinguish authentic Pollocks from forgeries with up to 99 percent accuracy.

• The scale of Mexican murals and the horizontal, floor-based approach of sand painting as foundations for the drip style
• The Peggy Guggenheim mural painted in one explosive burst after months of paralysis
• Precursors including Siqueiros’s experimental workshop and Janet Sobel’s all-over drip painting
• Why Krasner was called his Frankenstein and why that label misses the point
• How physicists found nature’s fractal patterns hidden in seemingly random drips