That night he broke his already wobbly sobriety, beginning the process of emotional and psychological unraveling that would lead to his untimely death at 44 just five years later. Drunk and with a girlfriend and her pal in tow, he smashed his convertible head-on into a tree. In the mythic narrative that has come to surround the artist, the filming represents the beginning of the end.
A still from the famous film graces the catalog cover for the Museum of Modern Art's 1998 Pollock retrospective. Minter's painting of course chronicles none of the specific events but just as clearly references the episode — as both banal history and burnished legend.