Jackson Pollock : new approaches

Edited by Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel

Date
1999

Publisher

The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed

by H.N. Abrams

ISBN
0870700863, 0810962020

Exhibition URL

www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/226

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—

from our founding in 1929 to the present—is
available online. It includes exhibition catalogues,
primary documents, installation views, and an
index of participating artists.

MoMA © 2016 The Museum of Modern Art

 Mp^aPpw

0M

v ;y.'w

JKa
.>X'Xv>.

Jackson PollockNewApproac

r The Museumof Modern Art New

Jackson Pollock
 h<£^
MJ\ M
0
mu

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Jackson Pollock, organized

by Kirk Varnedoe, Chief Curator, with Pepe Karmel, Adjunct Assistant
Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Mod
ern Art, New York, November 1,1998 to February 2, 1999.

The exhibition was made possible by Bank of America. Generous support

was provided by The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. The reconstruction of
Pollock's studio was made possible by EXORAmerica (Agnelli Group). The
Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of the Eugene V. and Clare E.
Thaw Charitable Trust and an anonymous donor. Additional funding was
provided by TDI. An indemnity for the exhibition was granted by the
Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. This publication is made
possible through the generosity of The David Geffen Foundation.
Produced by the Department of Publications, The Museum of Modern Art,
New York Edited by David Frankel Designed by Steven Schoenfelder,
New York Production by Christina Grillo Printed by Poligrafiche Bolis
SpA, Azzano San Paolo, Italy This book is set in Font Bureau Eagle and
Adobe Stone Serif.
Copyright © 1999 The Museum of Modern Art, New York All works of
Jackson Pollock © 1999 Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society
(ARS),New York Photographs by Hans Namuth, © 1999 Hans Namuth Ltd.
Certain illustrations are covered by claims to copyright cited in the Photo
graph Credits on p. 247. All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 99-076190 ISBN:0-87070-
086-3 (MoMA,T&H) ISBN:0-8109-6202-0 (Abrams)
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York,
New York 10019 Distributed in the United States and Canada by Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., New York Distributed outside the United States and Canada
by Thames & Hudson Ltd, London Printed in Italy
Cover: Jackson Pollock. Number 1A, 1948 (detail). 1948. Oil and enamel on
canvas, 68 in. x 8 ft. 8 in. (172.7 x 264.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. Purchase
JacksonPollock
NewApproaches

Edited by Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York

Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art

Ronald S. Lauder Edward Larrabee Barnes* Isabel Carter Stewart

Chairman of the Board Celeste Bartos* Mrs. Donald B. Straus*
H.R.H. Duke Franz of Bavaria* Eugene V. Thaw**
Sid R. Bass Mrs. Patti Cadby Birch** Jeanne C. Thayer*
Donald B. Marron Leon D. Black G. Richard Thoman
Robert B. Menschel Clarissa Alcock Bronfman Joan Tisch
Richard E. Salomon Hilary P. Califano Paul F. Walter
Jerry I. Speyer Thomas S. Carroll* Thomas W. Weisel
ViceChairmen Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Richard S. Zeisler*
Marshall S. Cogan
Agnes Gund Mrs. Jan Cowles** *LifeTrustee
President Douglas S. Cramer **HonoraryTrustee
Lewis B. Cullman**
David Rockefeller* Elaine Dannheisser Patty Lipshutz
Chairman Emeritus Gianluigi Gabetti Secretary
Paul Gottlieb
Mrs. Henry Ives Cobb* Vartan Gregorian
Ex Officio
ViceChairman Emeritus Mimi Haas
Mrs. Melville Wakeman Hall* Glenn D. Lowry
John Parkinson III George Heard Hamilton* Director
Treasurer Kitty Carlisle Hart**
Alexandra A. Herzan Rudolph W. Giuliani
S. Roger Horchow Mayor of the City of
Barbara Jakobson New York
Philip Johnson*
Werner H. Kramarsky Alan G. Hevesi
Mrs. Henry R. Kravis Comptrollerof the
Mrs. Frank Y. Larkin* City of New York
Dorothy C. Miller**
J. Irwin Miller* Jo Carole Lauder
Mrs. Akio Morita President of The
S. I. Newhouse, Jr. International Council
Philip S. Niarchos
James G. Niven Melville Straus
Peter Norton Chairman of The
Richard E. Oldenburg** ContemporaryArts
Michael S. Ovitz Council
Peter G. Peterson
Mrs. Milton Petrie**
Gifford Phillips*
Emily Rauh Pulitzer
David Rockefeller,Jr.
Anna Marie Shapiro
Joanne M. Stern
 Contents

6 Trustees of The Museum of Modern Art

8 Introduction: Pollock and The Museum of Modern Art

15 Pollock'sSmallness
T.J.Clark

33 A Piece of the Action

Robert Storr

71 A Sum of Destructions
Pepe Karmel

101 No Chaos Damn It

James Coddington

117 Jackson Pollock: Responseas Dialogue

Carol C. Mancusi-Ungaro

121 Plates

155 The Crisis of the Easel Picture

Rosalind E. Krauss

181 Pollock's Nature, Frankenthaler's Culture

Anne M. Wagner

201 Jackson Pollock and the Americanization of Europe

Jeremy Lewison

233 Open-Ended Conclusions about Jackson Pollock

Kirk Varnedoe

246 Index

248 Acknowledgments
 Introduction: Pollock and
The Museum of Modern Art

Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmei

In the forty-odd years since Jackson Pollock's death, in 1956, several generations
of critics, historians, and artists have confirmed his importance in twentieth-
century art. All the while, though, these analysts and creators have been chang
ing our sense of why Pollock is such a crucial figure. The ongoing life of that
process, and the often passionate debates that today surround Pollock and his
legacy, are vividly evident in the nine essays that make up this book. Art histo
rian T. J. Clark focuses on issues of scale and size in Pollock's work, and links the
work's formal characteristics to new understandings of energy in the first era of
the atomic bomb. Robert Storr and Pepe Karmei, curators at The Museum of
Modern Art, rethink Pollock's origins and formation, Storr examining his often
slighted debts to Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Karmei shed
ding new light on the more celebrated confrontation with Pablo Picasso. Supported
by X rays of key paintings and a fresh investigation of Pollock's materials, con
servators James Coddington and Carol C. Mancusi-Ungaro provide unprece
dented insight into the artist's working process, and belie popular notions of his
practices as chaotic. Art historian and critic Rosalind E. Krauss concentrates on
Pollock's legacy among artists of the 1960s and '70s, with an emphasis on the
implications of horizontality in his most radical paintings. Still within the arena
of Pollock's impact on subsequent art, but with a focus on issues of gender, art
historian Anne M.Wagner offers new thinking about Helen Frankenthaler's his
toric response to Pollock. The artist's ambivalent reception in Europe, amid a
broader debate about American culture and commerce, is newly documented
and analyzed by Jeremy Lewison of the Tate Gallery, London, while Kirk
Varnedoe, Chief Curator of the Department of Painting and Sculpture of The
Museum of Modern Art, reconsiders the relationship between Pollock's biogra
phy and his development as an artist, and opposes the traditional assessment of
"expressionism" in his art.
These essays were originally presented at a symposium held on January
23-24, 1999, at The Museum of Modern Art, near the conclusion of the Mus
eum's Pollock retrospective. From the outset, this symposium volume was con-

8
This publication is made possible through the generosity of
The David Ceffen Foundation.
 KIRK VARNEDOE AND PEPE KARMEL

According to the critic Clement Greenberg, Pollock was among the first New
York artists to "discover" this work. Greenberg also said Pollock had told him that
4 the great 1944 painting Gothic was made under the influence of the Demoiselles.
When Pollock began to exhibit, staff and patrons of the institution re
sponded to him actively. The jury for the 1943 Spring Salon at Peggy Guggen
heim's Art of This Century gallery included three Museum figures: Barr; the critic
and collector James Thrall Soby, then Chair of the Acquisitions Committee of
the Museum's Advisory Committee; and the critic and collector James Johnson
Sweeney, the Committee's Vice-Chair, and later the director of the Museum's
Department of Painting and Sculpture. Swayed by the advocacy of the painter
Piet Mondrian, who described the painting Pollock submitted as "the most inter
5 esting work I've seen so far in America," the jury voted to accept it. (Nearly forty
years later, this breakthrough canvas, Stenographic Figure, joined the Museum's
collection.) Soon thereafter, Guggenheim signed Pollock for her gallery, and that
November he became the first American to mount a solo exhibition there. When
that exhibition opened, it was Sweeney who wrote the brochure. Soby visited the
show, and put The She-Wolf on reserve, to be considered for acquisition by the
6 Museum's Advisory Committee. After some debate, the purchase (for $600) was
7 approved. This was the first of Pollock's works to be acquired by any museum.
Barr seems not to have been fully persuaded by Pollock's work, and resisted
suggestions that the Museum acquire pictures from his later exhibitions at Art of
8 This Century. The Museum did, however, include Pollock's 1943 Mural in the
exhibition LargeScaleModernPaintings (1947), where it appeared alongside works
such as Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon, Henri Matisse's 1916-17 Women at a
Spring, Fernand Leger's 1935-39 Composition with Two Parrots, and Max Beck-
mann's 1945 Blindman's Buff. The Museum's next acquisition occurred only after
a change in Pollock's style: in January 1950, it acquired Number 1A, 1948, be
coming the first institution to buy a work made by the pouring or "drip" method
that Pollock had initiated in 1947.9The purchase was a milestone for Pollock and
his wife, Lee Krasner, helping them raise the money to install heating in their
10 Long Island home. Barr included this canvas (along with two other Pollocks) in
his selections for the XXV Venice Biennale in the summer of 1950.
In the interim, Guggenheim had closed Art of This Century and returned
to Europe, taking part of her collection with her and distributing the rest among
American museums and educational institutions. In 1952, she gave MoMA an
other splendid example of Pollock's poured style, Full Fathom Five, of 1947. In
April of that year, Pollock was featured in the 15 Americans exhibition at the
Museum," and in May 1956, he was selected to inaugurate a new series of exhi
bitions intended to feature artists in mid-career. That exhibition, sadly, would be
hastily transformed into a posthumous retrospective, after Pollock's death in a
car crash on August 11. Selected by Sam Hunter, then a MoMA curator, this show

10
 ceived in tandem with the major publication that accompanied the exhibition:
Jackson Pollock, by Kirk Varnedoe with Pepe Karmel. That book's large-format
color illustrations of Pollock's work were intended to offer a comprehensive pic
torial overview of his development. Its introductory essays were written in the
understanding that the Museum would include more diverse scholarly voices,
and a fuller complement of bibliography and exhibition history, in subsequent
publications. This symposium volume is one of those publications, and its for-
mat in contrast to that of the earlier book—has been designed to emphasize
text. For this reason, and to keep this volume modestly priced, we have depended
on smaller illustrations, and ultimately on the reader's ability to refer to the pre
1 vious book for a more lavish visual documentation. JacksonPollock:NewApproaches
is accompanied by Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles, and Reviews, a matching
volume that anthologizes important older texts by or about Pollock that have
become harder to find today. And finally the comprehensive Pollock bibliogra
phy and exhibition history compiled by the Museum's researchers has been
2 made available on the Museum's Website: http://www.moma.org.
This broad program of publications reflects the Museum's long-standing
engagement with Pollock's work. Dating back to his early career, this engage
ment has taken the form of numerous acquisitions, exhibitions, and books—all
reflecting the belief that Pollock is one of the critical figures who has marked,
and continues to shape, the course of modern art. The Museum's great Pollock
paintings are as a rule on view, and certain landmark acquisitions and exhibi
tions are familiar to scholars. But the fuller history of the Museum's relation to
Pollock has been only imperfectly understood, and it seems appropriate to
review that history here.

As is well known, Pollock's formative years as an artist—his late twenties and

early thirties— were strongly affected by his visits to The Museum of Modern Art.
The landmark Picasso retrospective of 1939 organized by the Museum's found
ing director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., played a crucial role in awakening the young
Pollock to European modernism; Rene d'Harnoncourt's 1941 exhibition Indian
Art of the United States reinforced Pollock's interest in tribal art, and allowed him
to witness Native American artists "painting" a picture by pouring sand onto the
floor. The Museum's Joan Miro retrospective of 1943 offered in-depth exposure
to the other European artist (besides Picasso) Pollock said he most admired.
Pollock was especially affected by three Picasso paintings in the Museum's
collection. The first of these, Girl before a Mirror, entered the collection in 1938.
After Guernica was first exhibited in New York, in 1939, it was left on long-term
loan at the Museum, so Pollock was able to study it—and the violent prepara
tory drawings for it—at leisure. Picasso's seminal work of 1907, Les Demoiselles
3 d'Avignon,was purchased by the Museum in 1937 and went on view in early 1939.

9
 KIRK VARNEDOE AND PEPE KARMEL

when the exhibition catalogue appeared, its chronology by Francis V. O'Connor

for the first time established a solid foundation for the study of Pollock's life.
It was also in 1967 that Rubin formally joined the Museum's curatorial
ranks. As one of his first endeavors, he suggested to Sidney and Harriet Janis that
they donate to the Museum their extraordinary collection —over 100 works—of
modern art. The Janises' gift included one small poured Pollock, FreeForm of 1946,
and one late canvas, White Light (1954),17but Rubin, more eager than ever for
the Museum to acquire one of the monumental works of 1950, had his sights set
higher: he persuaded a more-than-willing Sidney Janis to agree to sell up to four
of the eight Mondrians and Legers in his collection in order to finance the pur
chase for the Museum, in 1968, of One: Number 31, 1950 (which was owned, like
18 Blue Poles, by Heller). In the end, happily, two Mondrians more than sufficed.
With this master stroke in 1968 as his starting salvo, Rubin then set out to
build a systematic representation of Pollock's career, in the context of a major
upgrading of its holdings in Abstract Expressionism. The small but telling tran
sitional canvas Shimmering Substance of 1946 was bought the same year, and
arguably the greatest of Pollock's 1951 black pourings, Echo (Number 25, 1951),
was purchased in 1969. In April of 1980, after a decade of negotiations with Kras-
ner, Rubin and the Museum announced that seven key paintings would be ac
quired from Pollock's estate. Four of these—The Flame (c. 1934-38), Mask (c. 1941),
StenographicFigure (c. 1942), and There Were Seven in Eight (c. 1945)—were pur
chases; three —Circle (c. 1938-41), Bird (c. 1938-1941), and the key late picture
Easter and the Totem (1953)—were gifts from Krasner, in memory of Pollock.
19 Given first choice of the works remaining in the estate, Rubin had targeted
pictures that allowed the Museum to represent the whole of the artist's career,
virtually year by year, from his earliest mature ventures to his last resolved
efforts. As part of the same agreement, Krasner also made a promised gift of
Gothic, which eventually became the property of the Museum in 1984. When
Rubin retired as director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, in 1988,
he had been responsible for the arrival of thirteen Pollocks in the Museum. This
unrivaled collection provided the foundation on which the recent retrospective
was built.
This exhibition, and the books accompanying it, are thus the direct prod
uct of a prolonged and intense institutional engagement with Jackson Pollock.
The exhibition allowed the Museum to fulfill its historic role, not just as a repos
itory but as a resource for modern art. We were deeply gratified to see how many
young artists came here to confront Pollock, as Pollock himself had confronted
Picasso here sixty years before. We hope that these books will play a comparable
role in provoking creative work by scholars, critics, and artists.

12
 introduction: pollock and the museum of modern art

opened in December 1956, barely four months after Pollock's death. The next
year, Frank O'Hara, a curator at the Museum as well as an influential poet,
selected a comprehensive Pollock exhibition to be sent to the Sao Paulo Bienal
12 under the auspices of the Museum's International Council. O'Hara's show then
toured to Rome, Basel, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, London, and Paris. The
exhibition exercised a decisive effect on European estimations of Pollock.
In the meantime, The Museum of Modern Art reached for and missed an
opportunity to acquire one of Pollock's monumental poured paintings of 1950.
In the first half of 1956, as the Museum prepared to mount its first Pollock ret
rospective, Barr asked Sidney Janis, then Pollock's dealer, to put a reserve on
Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950. Janis later recalled that the agreed-upon price
was $6,000, but Barr never exercised his option, and after Pollock's death Krasner
increased the price dramatically: in 1957, Janis told Barr the same painting would
cost $30,000. 11Barr balked, and Autumn Rhythm was acquired instead by The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. The need to acquire one of Pollock's large paint
ings remained evident, though; and another opportunity seemed to present
itself in 1958, when William Rubin, then a noted art history professor and col
lector, who would later join the Museum as curator of the collection, proposed
to buy Number 32, 1950 from the artist's estate, and make it a promised gift to
the Museum. Krasner had wanted the Museum to purchase Pollock's large Blue
Poles: Number 11, 1952, when its original owner had moved to sell it. (The even
tual purchaser was Ben Heller.) But she felt unable to devote much time to the
14 proposed sale of Number 32, since she was busy with an important commission.
Negotiations extended well into January 1959. Rubin was willing to pay $35,000,
15 which would have been a record price for Pollock. He even devised a complex
arrangement by which he would have purchased Blue Poles from Heller, then
exchanged it with Krasner for Number 32.16Nothing availed, and Rubin and the
Museum finally gave up hope. It would be almost a decade before Rubin and
Janis, playing dramatically different roles, finally solved the dilemma of acquir
ing a monumental Pollock for the Museum.
The year of 1967 was a crucial one for the crystallization of Pollock's stature
among postwar American artists, for the spread of his influence on younger
artists, and for his presence in the Museum's collection. In April, William Lieber-
man (then a MoMA curator) organized the most thorough retrospective until
then of Pollock's work. As Rosalind Krauss discusses elsewhere in this volume,
the exhibition helped inspire a radical shift in contemporary art toward an aes
thetic of horizontality and "anti-form." This was also a crucial year for Pollock
studies: even before the exhibition opened, Rubin began publishing "Jackson
Pollock and the Modern Tradition," a seminal series of articles in Artforum.
Among other things, Rubin's argument for the artist's roots in European mod
ernism forcefully refuted the myth of Pollock as a naive, "cowboy" artist. Then,

11
 introduction: pollock and the museum of modern art

Notes

1. In order to keep this book to a other funds. The price to the Museum of glue sizing—it would take some
modest size and price, we have had is $650. Could you go and look at it of the wrinkles out of it. Perhaps
to omit the lively discussions that soon. You may like another Pollok when I'm in next time I can do it
followed the original presentation [sic]better. But I honestly believe, after museum hours. It wouldn't
of each paper. Audiotapes and tran though it is not my business, that a take more than ten minutes."
scripts of these discussions may be Pollok would be a fine thing for us to 12.A memo from Helen Franc to "Mrs.
consulted in the Museum Archives. have from the Advisory Committee." Shaw and Department," dated April
2. From the Museum's home page, In the files of the Department of 4, 1967, in the files of the Department
go to "Research Resources," then to Painting and Sculpture. of Painting and Sculpture, details the
"DADABASE" (the Museum library), 7. The acquisition was supported by differences between the 1956 show
then to "Search the Catalog." Run the art historian Meyer Schapiro and and the traveling show of 1957;
a "Basic" search on "Pollock, Jack by Sidney Janis, then a collector and although they were similar in size,
son." The bibliography should writer, later a leading dealer. It was they shared only nineteen paintings
appear under its own heading in resisted by Rindge, and by Stephen in common. The catalogues in differ
the "Results" screen. The procedure Clark and A. Conger Goodyear, two ent languages that accompanied the
to follow may change over time, but important trustees. Rindge's response traveling exhibition, however, con
the Museum will make every effort is recorded in a memo of November tained versions of Sam Hunter's intro
to ensure that the bibliography 27, 1943, to Janis and Schapiro; duction to the 1956 New Yorkshow.
remains easily available. Clark's and Goodyear's in a letter of 13.Janis, interviewed by Paul Cum-
3. Les Demoisellesd'Avignonwas ex March 7, 1971, by Soby, in the files mings, Part II, August 1, 1972, pp. 374-
hibited at the Jacques Seligmann gal of the Department of Painting and 75, Archives of American Art, Smith
lery, New York, in 1937, from which Sculpture. Janis discusses the acquisi sonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
it was purchased by The Museum of tion in Rubin, "Introduction," Three Janis's recollections are confirmed by
Modern Art. The Museum, however, Generationsof Twentieth-CenturyArt: a letter of March 22, 1957, from Janis
was constructing its 53rd Street build The Sidneyand Harriet Janis Collection to Barr, in which "Autumn Rhythms"
ing, and did not exhibit the painting of The Museumof ModemArt (New is offered at a price of $30,000. In the
until 1939. See Judith Cousins and York:The Museum of Modern Art, James Thrall Soby papers, Box 50, III
Helene Seckel, "Chronology of Les 1972), p. xiv. (1957), the Museum Archives.
Demoisellesd'Avignon,1907 to 1939," 8. The lukewarm response of Alfred 14. Barr, letter to Rubin, November 7,
in William Rubin, Seckel,and Cousins, H. Barr,Jr., to Pollock's 1945 exhibi 1958, and Miller, letter to Rubin, Nov
Studiesin ModernArt 3: Les Demoiselles tion, and his reluctance to acquire ember 17, 1958. In the files of the De
d'Avignon(New York:The Museum of additional work at that time, is partment of Painting and Sculpture.
Modern Art, 1994), pp. 196-202. recorded in a memo of April 6, 1946, 15. In a memo to Barr on December
4. In 1981, Charles Cooper and Fran in the files of the Department of 10, 1958, Miller reported that Rubin
cis Frascina, who were making a film Painting and Sculpture. But Monroe "agreed that if it should suddenly
on the Demoiselles,told Cousins (then Wheeler, later the Museum's director seem more to our advantage to try to
a researcher at the Museum) that in of publications, purchased Painting (c. purchase the picture ourselves he
their interview with Clement Green- 1944) from the 1945 show, and gave would of course relinquish his claim
berg the critic had insisted that the the picture to the Museum in 1958. to priority." In a later memo to Barr,
Demoiselleshad at first been less 9. The acquisition of Number1A, 1948 of January 30, 1959, Miller wrote,
noticed by New Yorkartists than was actually preceded by the purchase, "Bill Rubin phoned me on January
Girl beforea Mirrorand Guernica. in January 1949, of Number4, 1948: 26th with news that he has been
Greenberg had apparently insisted Gray and Red,a drip painting on paper, forced to relinquish his hopes of buy
that Pollock was among the first to shown in Pollock's second exhibition ing from Lee Pollock the painting by
"discover" the painting, and that the at Betty Parsons. A year later, this Jackson Pollock Number32, 1950."
evidence of this engagement was small work was traded as part of the In the files of the Department of
clearest in Gothic.Matthew Rohn told purchase price for the larger painting. Painting and Sculpture.
Cousins of a similar conversation in 10. Steven Naifeh and Gregory White 16. Rubin recalled this last gambit in
which, according to Greenberg, Smith, in JacksonPollock:An American conversation with Kirk Varnedoe in
Pollock remarked that Gothicwas Saga (New York:Clarkson N. Potter, November 1998.
painted "under the inspiration of the 1989). pp. 624-25, suggest that 17.See ThreeGenerationsof Twentieth-
Demoiselles."Cousins, memo in the approximately $1,500 of Pollock's CenturyArt, pp. 118-19.
files of the Department of Painting $6,500 income in 1949-50 derived 18. See ThreeGenerationsof Twentieth-
and Sculpture, The Museum of from the sale to the Modern. This was CenturyArt, p. 206. This information
Modern Art, June 26, 1981. the year in which Pollock and Lee has been supplemented by discus
5. See Jimmy Ernst, A Not-So-Still Krasner were able to afford to install sions with Rubin. On the Heller col
Life:A Memoirby JimmyErnst (New central heating and hot water. lection, see William Seitz, The
York:St. Martin's Press/Marek, 1984), 11.Pollock wrote to the curator of 15 Collectionof Mr. and Mrs. Ben Heller,
pp. 241-42. Americans,Dorothy Miller, thanking exh. cat. (New York:The Museum of
6. In a memo of November 9, 1943, her for the "wonderful" installation Modern Art, 1961).
to Agnes Rindge, a Vassar College art and commenting, "There was proba 19. "Major Pollock Acquisitions
history professor and a member of bly extra work for you (or was there?) Announced by The Museum of
the Acquisitions Committee, James in my staying away. At any rate I Modern Art," press release, April
Thrall Soby wrote, "Agnes: I took the think it was wise of me." Photocopy 1980, in the Museum Archives.
liberty of reserving the picture in of handwritten letter dated April 14,
Peggy Guggenheim's show by Pollock, 1952, the Museum Archives, Dorothy
She-Wolf.If the Advisory Committee C. Miller Papers. Pollock also makes a
is not interested in buying it perhaps comment of technical interest, writ
we can get it for the Museum through ing, "I wish I could give No 7 a coat

13
 manipulable scales—is one nightmare of modern life, from which modernist art
sometimes tries to shake us free. Scale, on the other hand, is unabashedly
metaphorical, and accepts size as a mere effect of representation. The size of a
map is a literal matter; the scale of a map is its literal size put in relation to some
other signified size, literal or imaginary— it does not matter which.
Some modernist art, as I said, wished to lay hold of the true size of things
again. Some—certainly not all. Picasso accepted the size of a painting as a con
venience, art-world-conventional through and through— all the way down, as
they say in the trade. The actual physical dimensions of the Demoisellesd'Avignon
are irrelevant, except as support to the virtual, metaphorical scale of the bodies
inside it. (I put on one side the Demoiselles's general proclamation of masterpiece
grandeur, which certainly is relevant, not to say essential. But this is an assertion
of scale, not size. It is Picasso's way of making it clear to everyone that this is the
same kind of picture as Delacroix's Femmes d'Alger or Courbet's Demoiselles de la
Seine.) Whereas Matisse's Music, for example, is consumed with the idea of its
own empirical dimensions. Every mark is intended to iterate—to make appre
hensible—how large (in this case how ludicrously large, given the paucity of
incident in the scene on show) the colored canvas literally is. When people talk
2 about Matisse's color as expansive, they are surely not wrong. But I would say
that in a truly successful Matisse, color expands exactly to the edge of the
frame—it is given enough velocity and inner turbulence to make the actual big
ness of the canvas apprehensible, and to shock us with the fact of how much and
how little is needed, pictorially, for that to take place. In order for size to occur
to a viewer under modern conditions, great (or at least unusual) feats of paint-
ing are necessary. Size is a truly difficult subject; if it is tackled, painting may dis
cover resources and dimensions in itself that it never knew it had.
There is, to repeat, a difference of opinion within modernism (maybe at the
heart of modernism) concerning this whole set of assumptions. Mondrian is an
artist of scale, Malevich an artist of sizes. This is to pass no aesthetic judgement on
either, just to suggest that making modernist art (particularly modernist abstrac
tion) seems to involve opting for one idea of largeness and smallness over another.
Pollock, I believe, was an artist of sizes. He had an idea of painting retriev
ing, and dramatizing, its own dimensions, and therefore gaining access to a new
range of (more effective) metaphors. This was naive of him, I guess; but the
naivete drove his best work. And if one wants a suitably eloquent (and naive)
modernist voice to sound the same note verbally, then I would opt for Wallace
3 Stevens, in his beautiful poem from the late 1940s, "Large Red Man Reading."
In the poem, ghosts return to earth to hear the large red man reading,
aloud, from great blue (or maybe purple) tabulae. The ghosts are us—ordinary, dis
embodied modern subjects, always on the lookout for someone to read reality
over again to us and put us in mind of what it is like. And the large red man is

16
 Pollock's Smallness

T. J. Clark

Or, la question se pose, de savoir si le modele reduit . . . n'offre pas, toujours etpartout,
le type meme de I'oeuvre d'art. Car il semble bien que tout modele reduit ait vocation
esthetique—et d'oii tirerait-il cette vertu constante, sinon de ses dimensions memes?—
inversement, Vimmensemajorite des oeuvres d'art sont aussi des modeles reduits. . . .
D'autre part, on peut se demander si Veffetesthetique, disons d'une statue equestreplus
grande que nature, provient de ce qu'elle agraudit un homme aux dimensionsd'un rocher,
et non de ce qu'elle ramene ce qui est d'abord, de loin, pergu comme un rocher,aux pro
portions d'un homme.

[So the question arises, whether the "reduced version" is not the very model of
the work of art, whenever and wherever we encounter it. For surely it seems that
all reduced versions of things have an aesthetic purpose, or effect; and what is it
that produces this effect, if not simply the version's size? Conversely, the im
mense majority of works of art are reduced versions of things. . . . One might
wonder if the aesthetic effect even of an equestrian statue, larger than lifesize,
comes not from its blowing up a man to the dimensions of a rock, but rather,
from its reducing what looked, from a distance, to be a rock to the proportions
of a man.]
1 —Claude Levi-Strauss,La PenseeSauvage, 1962

My subject is the size and scale of Pollock's paintings, and the size and scale of the
events taking place inside them. This is a central modernist issue—meaning it is
a technical and formal one, but for that reason expressive and metaphorical. It
needs saying straightaway that size and scale are different. Normally speaking,
size is literal —a matter of actual, physical intuition. It involves grasping how big
or small a certain object really is, most likely in relation to the size of the
grasper's upright body or outspread arms. Of course this assessment is relational,
which is to say, metaphorical; but equally obviously, the relating of everything
to body size and reach of the hand is primordial, part of our evolutionary inher
itance. Size is experienced as immediate, as given in the nature of things. And
the loss of just that immediacy and self-evidence—the feeling that in conditions
of modernity things no longer have sizes of their own, but only virtual and

15
 T. J. CLARK -

Fig. I. Pollock's1950 exhibition at the Betty Parsons Callery, New York, viewed facing Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950.
Photograph by Hans Namuth

dimensions— in terms of the physical conditions of his studio, and the opportu
nities he knew would be offered by the space of the Betty Parsons Gallery (fig. 1),
one might almost say to monstrous dimensions— in the paintings of 1950. As if
Pollock believed (again, wonderfully and naively) that there might be a point, if
you got a painting big enough, where the sheer size of the field, and the number
of painterly incidents within it, would overwhelm metaphor and put the world
in its place. This might even be the frame of reference within which to think, as we
still need to, about why Pollock's version of abstraction came so abruptly to an
end at the moment of its triumph.
All this amounts to saying (certainly not for the first time) that abstraction
for Pollock was a kind of literalness, a return to the world—or might potentially
be, if paintings could be big enough or small enough. I think both dimensions
counted. We should remember that the big paintings of 1950 were accompanied
by a series of preternaturally little ones—paintings consumed by their own lit
tleness, and as determined to articulate that nuclear concentration as Autumn
Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 (plate 5) and Number 32, 1950 (plate 3) were on stating
and restating their superhuman expansiveness. There is a whole other side to
Pollock's production in 1950, that is to say, which runs deliberately contrary to
the one we normally concentrate on. We should enter into the record fifteen or
so square paintings, twenty-two by twenty-two inches roughly, done in the
course of the year in oil and sometimes enamel or aluminum, thrown on Mason-
ite or composition board, or occasionally on the Masonite's coarse-grained back
side. Apparently the little squares of Masonite may have been "found objects,"
4 made available to Pollock for free. But whether the size was chosen or accepted,

18
the modernist —not Pollock specifically (Stevens at the time was freshly enthu
siastic for Dubuffet, the proud new owner of a painting by Rene Pierre Tal Coat,
and drafting a catalogue essay for an exhibition by Marcel Gromaire; for an old
man touching seventy, French allegiances were precious), but enough like
Pollock to be imagined as such, fifty years on. The large red man is reading, I like
to think, from Pollock's beloved D'Arcy Thompson, the book called On Growth
and Form—maybe the chapter entitled "On Magnitude." The ghosts are a little
skeptical. We moderns always want more from art than it can offer. But the
poem, even in spelling out the ghosts' impossible wishes, of course has the
words themselves, in their cadence and purity of diction, grant those wishes
nonetheless:

They were those from the wildernessof stars that had expected more.

There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality,

That would have wept and been happy, have shiveredin the frost
And cried out to feel it again, have run fingersover leaves
And against the most coiled thorn, have seizedon what was ugly

And laughed, as he sat there reading, from out the purple tabulae,
The outlines of being and its expressings,the syllablesof its law:
Poesis,poesis,the literal characters,the vatic lines,

Which in those ears and in those thin, those spended hearts,

Tookon color, took on shape and the size of things as they are
And spoke the feelingfor them, which was what they had lacked.

I suppose it is particularly the phrases in the last four lines that seem to conjure
up Pollock, rather than Dubuffet or Tal Coat: the idea of lines being literal as well
as vatic, and the way that therefore, for the ghosts, the lines "took on color, took
on shape and the size of things as they are / And spoke the feeling for them,
which was what they had lacked."
"The size of things as they are." Let me repeat that this dream of literalness
is naive, and no doubt can drive a painter who takes it seriously to distraction.
Because in painting of any complexity, the "real" size of the painting, and the
actual size of marks within it, do inevitably become virtual —subject to interpre
tation, to reworking in the mind. And therefore a painting, like Pollock's, that
thinks it cannot attain to a genuine complexity without somehow hanging onto,
or rearticulating, the "real" that the virtual obscures, is in a fearsome double bind.
This was the bind, I believe, that finally dictated Pollock's move to colossal

17
 T. I. CLARK

Fig. 4. Jackson Pollock. Number 22, 1950. 1950. Enamel on Fig. 5. Jackson Pollock. Number 19, 1950. 1950. Oil on
composition board, 22% x 22% in. (56.4 x 56.4 cm). Masonite, 23 'Ax 23 in. (59.7 x 58.4 cm). Destroyed
Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Albert M. Creenfield and
Elizabeth M. Creenfield Collection

Parsons as a whole. I count, from the record, at least thirteen twenty-two-by-

twenty-two-inch paintings in the show, and actually I am inclined to think that
5 the catalogue raisonne undercounts by one. The paintings are diverse. Some are
luminous and intricate, like Number 15, 1950. (The Masonite here was covered
with a careful, consistent gray ground; then with pours of white, blue, and brown;
then green, followed by a gray-white; then black, with pink and yellow swirled on
top of it; then black again, and brown; an all-but-final scattering of red; and lastly
a throw or two more of the pink.) Some pictures are a touch heavier and more
explosive (fig. 4). One or two—for instance Number 19, 1950, which we know was
hung at Parsons (fig. 5)—are as instant and impatient as Pollock ever got.
No one is saying that all the small paintings of 1950 are unqualified suc
cesses. A reviewer at the time, in the little magazine The Compass, dismissed
them as "chic refinements of [Pollock's] own more vigorous style. These panels
are tame copies," says the reviewer, "seemingly designed to beguile less daring
buyers. Here Pollock is at his weakest and less sincere. Significantly more and
6 more silver and metallic paint substitutes for true color decoration." I deeply
disagree with this as a verdict on the best of the small paintings, and certainly
as a verdict on their purpose and effect in the show. But they are a strange and
heterogeneous group. I understand why the selectors of the current retrospective
opted to leave them out altogether, preferring a few of their slightly larger and
more vertical brethren done in 1949.
Nonetheless, I believe that the absence of the 1950 miniatures skews our
sense of Pollock's ambitions for modernism, at the moment when his painting
reached most confidently for "the size of things as they are." Again, the Parsons

20
Fig. 2. Pollock's 1950 exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, with Autumn Rhythm on the left. Photograph by
Hans Namuth

Fig. 3. Jackson Pollock. Number 15, 1950. 1950. Oil on Masonite, 22 x 22 in. (55.8 x 55.8 cm). LosAngeles County
Museum of Art, Purchase Award

what matters is the fierceness and seri

ousness of Pollock's engagement with
it, as part of what he was doing at a key
moment in his work.
Thirteen of these paintings were
hung alongside—or rather, I would say,
stacked in ironic juxtaposition to—
Autumn Rhythm and company in the
crucial show at Betty Parsons in
November-December 1950. You will
notice two columns of four of these
paintings hung to either side of Autumn
Rhythm, and there is another installation
photo that makes the collision of sizes even more dramatic (fig. 2). The latter
photo is clear enough for it to be possible to tell which small paintings are which.
The one next to the bottom, for instance, is Number 15, 1950 (fig. 3), now in the
Los Angeles County Museum —a work representative, I think, of the pictures
visible in the two main stacks, but not necessarily of the small paintings at

19
 T. J. CLARK

Jackson Pollockhas put the . . . labyrinth at an infinite and unreachable distance, a

distance beyond the stars—a non-human distance. ... If one felt vertigo before
Pollock'sdifferentiationsof space, then truly one would be lost in the abyss of an
endlessdefinition of being. One would be enclosed,trapped by the labyrinth of the
picture-space.But we are safelylooking at it, seeing it steadily and seeing it whole,
from a point outside. Only man, in his paradoxicalrole of the superman,can achieve
such a feat of absolutecontemplation:the sight of an imageof space in whichhe does
12 not exist.

Which is to say (I am sure correctly) that Pollock's art is one that aims con
stantly at a radical, incommensurable, truly elating scale—at infinite extension
or intension, preposterous depth or complexity, absolute elevation. It is
Nietzschean, as Tyler insists. In other words, deeply, intransigently metaphori
cal—aiming for a painting in which all identities are shattered and transfigured.
Be aware that even the image of Ocean in Pollock's notebook entry is double-
edged: "My concern is with the rhythms of nature . . . the way the ocean moves."
Yet the ocean is partly to be understood as a figure of otherness and incommen
surability, of something whose dimensions and movements are ultimately im
pervious to the mind. The sea is "inhuman," to use Stevens's word for it in "The
13 Idea of Order at Key West": "The sea was not a mask." Art "concerns" itself with
the ocean's rhythms (how modest and formal is Pollock's choice of noun here)
not in order to imitate an aspect of nature but to get to the point where the
physical world might appear in a painting, indeed inhumanly, "like a body
14 wholly body, fluttering its empty sleeves." Remember also that Tyler's clinch
ing word "superman" would have rhymed horribly in late 1950 with the new
coinage "superbomb," which Truman had ordered built in January, and which
Teller and Sakharov were racing, so the papers regularly told their readers, to
make real and deliverable. Of course this is right. Pollock's paintings are steeped
in metaphor. Zarathustra and Oppenheimer are their gods—as well as Claus
Fuchs, whose principled treason was another fact of the year. (Bear in mind
Pollock's stubborn Stalinism.) All I would say further is that Pollock believed, in
my view, that in order to arrive at metaphors adequate to the time, and make
those metaphors pictorial, pictures had to attain to a state of absolute literal-
ness—of overtness and articulacy —about the dimensions they possessed. And
this is the Pollock effect. True scale—true elation and terror and endlessness (the
scale of experience in 1950)—is reached through the medium of true size.

An obvious problem follows. What is going to happen within the picture to sus
tain or enforce this literalness? What kind of handling or linear rhythm or part-
to-whole relation will enable a level of complexity —of true metaphorical sur
prise—without that complexity drawing the eye and mind away from physical

22
 installation photographs tell the story. We should not assume, as too much of
the writing on Pollock (including my own) has been prone to, that enormity was
all there was to Pollock's abstraction in its last phase, and that the abstraction
ended because enormity could not save it. Bigness too was relational, as the
Parsons hanging was at pains to spell out. Bigness needed smallness in order to
register as such. But the hope seems to me to have been that the two opposite
terms—the cosmologically large and the critically, atomically compressed—
would confirm one another in their literalness and cancel out the middle space
between them, the space of virtuality and mere scale. Cancel out the space, in
other words, where most painting had operated most of the time—including a
lot of Pollock's painting in 1948 and 1949.

Here is the point to draw breath. For some readers must have been wondering,
over the last page or so, how my stress on Pollock as an artist of literal, absolute
largeness and smallness can possibly tally with the actual flexibility of the
painter's formats, and with his often deeply metaphorical sense of the kind of
extension and spatiality he wished his painting to conjure up. "There was a
reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or
7 any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was." How on earth does
that remark square with a notion of literal size? "My concern is with the
rhythms of nature . . . the way the ocean moves . . . the Ocean's what the
8 expanse of the West was for me." "Energy and motion made visible," as the
9 famous page in Pollock's papers has it. There is maybe something of literalness
to this formulation, though having motion and energy be visible in a still trace
is already dangerously counterfactual. And in any case Pollock immediately runs
on to "human needs and motives," and "memories arrested in space," which last
is a mind-twisting metaphor if ever there was one. This page, as I understand it,
shows us Pollock enumerating the things he believes his reduced versions are
really of.
And I agree with him. I agree with him even about the illusion of endless
ness and oceanic expansiveness, and of past time somehow being crystallized
and frozen into a kind of spatiality. Of course Pollock's paintings survive, and
become more compelling, because the years shuck off their incidental extrem
ism and lay bare their essential, human content —which is desolate and in
domitable at the same time. "I just can't stand reality." "I saw a landscape the
likes of which no human being could have seen." "There is no accident, just as
10 there is no beginning and no end." "The greatest poverty," to quote Wallace
Stevens again, "is not to live / In a physical world, to feel that one's desire / Is
11 too difficult to tell from despair." That, sadly, could be Pollock's motto. Or
maybe this, from Parker Tyler:

21
T. j. CLARK

Fig. 6. Jackson Pollock.

Number 27, 19SO. 1950. Oil
on canvas, 49 in. x 8 ft. 10 in.
(124.5 x 269.2 cm). Whitney
Museum of American Art,
New York. Purchase. The
painting is usually hung
horizontally; it was shown
vertically, as here, in the
1950 exhibition at the Betty
Parsons Callery

24
 fact? By "iterating" literal size, Pollock did not mean merely repeating it, or fill
ing it with as little as possible. His painting was cram-full of incident, and meant
15 to be. The crowding was part of the point. But what kind of crowding? What
kind of incident?
Answers to these questions exist, of course, almost from the beginning of
Pollock criticism. Tyler was partly trying to provide one. The best answers turn
on the notion of "all-overness," as stated first, unforgettably, by Clement Green-
berg and Michael Fried. What I have to say on the subject does not contradict
their classic argument, it seems to me, but tries slightly to shift its terms. I do not
think, to put it baldly, that the discussion of all-overness in modernist writing
quite grasps the special character of the relation between incident and totality,
or crowding and uniformity, in Pollock. This is what I shall try to do now.
Let us put the word "all-over" aside. Let us conceive of Pollock's originality
in terms of the relation between part and whole, and particularly smallness and
largeness. The large, in Pollock, is made up of an accumulation of the small, but
of a kind in which the small does not cede existence, somewhere along the way
to making the large, to a realm of intermediate, or "human-size," or "figural"
shapes. Maybe the word I am looking for here is Gestalt. Largeness in Pollock is
made out of an unregenerate, unsublated smallness. No wonder it made Ru
dolph Arnheim squirm.
The purpose of the picture-maker is to find a state in which largeness and
smallness confront one another again as real, perceivable dimensions to experi
ence; and that, it turns out, involves the annihilation of the middle ranges (the
mediations, the figures) of scale. I believe the hanging of the Parsons show in
1950, with its tiny stacks of implosions next to its paintings as big as the gallery
space would allow, was meant partly as a key to what happened to largeness and
smallness within each painting, not just between Autumn Rhythm and its imme
diate neighbors.
Of course I am not saying that largeness and smallness are the only dimen
sions of experience Pollock was interested in, or thought painting should return
to. I take it we agree that the paintings he did from 1947 to 1950 are (wonder
fully) various in their ambitions, and in the materials for those ambitions. There
are paintings, like Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950 (plate 6), bent on coloristic
evenness and openness (Lavender Mist managing, God knows how, to be fragile
and vaporous but at the same time hard as a rock); others, like the 1947 Alchemy,
on doom-laden dark and congestion; others, like Number 32, 1950, on uncon
trollable spasm and discontinuity, as if wanting to signify some new absolute
ness—some true ne plus ultra —of non-location and velocity. There are others
again, like the sublime Number 5, 1948, given over to the notion of radical ver
tical or lateral extension that Pollock hints at in his remarks about painting's
having no beginning and ending —paintings whose space reaches out for the

23
T. J. CLARK

27, 1950 has become central to our understanding of Pollock because it is now
easy to see Namuth's extraordinary black and white film of the work in progress;
and no other Pollock document, I feel, gives half such a vivid impression of what
denying, ignoring, and destroying actually meant, in technical terms. The movie
is a revelation. And what it shows us most poignantly is the sheer relish, the nos
talgic demonstrativeness, with which Pollock begins—begins exactly with medi
ate, human-size configuration. He revels in the slow exquisiteness of controlled
accident when hand and stick are operating at this scale, as if the picture's on
togeny depended on its recapitulating the whole phylogeny of modernist mark-
making —only the better to paint it out. To deny and destroy it quite literally. It
is this last move (which of course the movie does not show) that is truly the
challenge to interpretation. What the movie does show is the explicitness with
which the last move was prepared, as if the fine-tuned intermediateness of every
thing in the early states of Number 27, 1950—the intermediacy not only of scale
but of figurative suggestion, shapes hovering in the space between pattern and
configuration, or figure and trace—had to be there in order for it to be clear what
non-mediacy, or immediacy, was. When it came. When it obliterated.
Like most great modernists, Pollock had the equivocal down. His line could
equivocate in its sleep. But unlike most modernists, he wanted to destroy that
capacity in himself, and thereby maybe in modern painting as a whole. The
future of modernism as he conceived it lay in escaping the equivocal (which had
become a comfortable, essentially arty margin) and entering a genuinely plural,
polyphonic space. Not to equivocate in drawing, but to proliferate.
I should enter a qualification here. Not all Pollock drip paintings, obvious
ly, are like Number 27, 1950. I do not personally take the picture to be one of
Pollock's greatest triumphs (though it looked a lot better in the retrospective,
hung next to the similarly sized Number 3, 1950, than I expected it to). Not all
final stages of a Pollock drip painting involve the literal elimination of middle-
scale, cursive or even roughly "figurative" line-shapes. In fact the real triumphs
often come—in Number 1, 1949, for prime example, or Number 28, 1950, or even
a picture like Number 17A, 1948—at the point where a last layer of whiplash trac
ery seals down the small-piece continuum, but in such a way as not visually to
register as a contradiction of it, still less as a move back, at the last moment, to
piece-by-piece, human-scale drawing. The velocity of the final tracery seems to
preclude such a reading. The traces are seemingly moving too fast—they are too
much inflected by the interference of the field below them —for them to bring
back the ghosts of demarcation or uprightness or separable organism. That is, all
the ghosts that we see Pollock conjuring, truly like a shaman dribbling sand, in
the first layer of Number 27, 1950—but ghosts that are conjured, I am saying, the
better to be exorcised.
Maybe we could go farther. Perhaps we should understand the peculiar tri-

26
 pollock's smallness

Fig. 7. Pollock's 1950 exhibition at the Betty Parsons Callery, New York, with Number 27, 19S0 on the far right.
Photograph by Hans Namuth

inhuman, or the extraterrestrial, "fluttering its empty sleeves." "The sight of an

image of space" (I agree with Parker Tyler) in which the mere viewer does not exist.
All these descriptions apply. The word "fluttering" is good for one main
kind of Pollock linear rhythm. We are still at the start of describing Pollock's pic
tures' specific aesthetic effects, and escaping at last from the singular "Pollock"
and his equally singular "drip paintings." But I think, to apply a previous point
now more specifically to these paintings' internal organization, that largeness
and smallness are the conditions of this aesthetic variety. Painting, as Pollock con
ceived it, would not find any new and interesting kinds of color, or configura
tions of space, or expressiveness of handling, unless it put the large and small in
unmediated relation to one another. It is this relation which releases the possi
bility of the aesthetic.
Of course Pollock was aware of the enormity of this proposition, or prac
tice. Why was it, after all, that painting could now generate adequate accounts
of experience only if it positively eliminated mediate, "human-size" dimension?
Was that not to deny painting the very realm in which it normally reveled, and
discovered new orders? "You've got to deny, ignore, destroy a hell of a lot to get
at truth," as Pollock put it to himself in 1955.16These questions presently come
into focus, I think, in and around Number 27, 1950 (fig. 6). (I reproduce the
painting, incidentally, hung the way up we know Pollock settled for in the Par
sons show [fig. 7]. It is visible on the far right in the installation shot. Whether
it was hung vertically in order to save space is a matter for debate, but even if it
were, that would still speak to its intrinsic character. At the level of architec
ture —at the level of belonging to a possible public life—I am sure Pollock's paint
ings were meant to be pragmatic objects, adaptable to contingencies.) Number

25
 T. J. CLARK

Fig. 9. Jackson Pollock. Number 6, 1950

(Autumn Landscape).1950. Oil on canvas,
35 x 36 in. (88.9 x 91.4 cm). University of
California, Berkeley Art Museum.
Anonymous gift

Fig. 10. Hans Hofmann. Fantasia, c. 1943.

Oil, Duco, and casein on plywood, Si'Ax
/8
s 36 in. (130.9 x 93 cm). University of
California, Berkeley Art Museum. Gift
of the artist

Smallness is various. It dictates no one kind of handwriting. But the script,

I am saying, is ultimately the same. These paintings are looking for ways to make
their own size irrefutable —to make each painting occupy its twenty-two by
twenty-two inches for ever and ever, endlessly, like an angel jockeying for posi
tion on the head of a pin. I should mention that the idea for the present line of
argument first occurred when, a year or so back, I hung a small exhibition in

28
 pollock's smallness

umph of the works I am singling out

as turning on an intuition that here,
in these pictures, a superhuman or
non-human space and time have
been established so firmly that the
ghosts of the original (familiar) scale
and duration could be reintroduced,
in a last act of bravura—but precisely
as shapes without substance now,
afterimages, memories. ... Is this
ultimately how we should under
stand even the cryptic notation
"memories arrested in space"? The
memory is that of intermediate
Fig. 8. Jackson Pollock. Number 20, 1950. 1950. Oil on scale. And the space that arrests it is
Masonite, 22/4 x 22/4 in. (56.5 x 56.5 cm). University of
Arizona Museumof Art, Tucson.Gift of Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. the space of the small and the large
face to face.

This leads me back to the small paintings of 1950, and their presence in the
Parsons exhibit. For surely a further question occurs, and I believe occurred to
Pollock in practice. How could this strange dialectic of sizes work (or could it
work?) without a certain literal largeness as one of its poles? That is, could paint
ing work—could it generate the kind of radical relation between part and whole
on which Pollock thought painting now depended —when mere smallness ruled,
when somehow it seemed visually to consume largeness and intermediacy both?
When, to adopt and modify Fried's intuition about Courbet, a painting was
made out of the mere morceau,the immediate jet? Turn back, for example, to Num
ber 19, 1950 (fig. 5). The point of several such paintings from 1950 is exactly
their illusion of the punctual, the thrown-off-in-a-single-gesture. They are paint
ing as ejaculation— the word meant grammatically more than physiologically.
Though again I do not want to give the impression that the small paintings all
conceived of their smallness in these protozoic terms, or even that their overall
logic led necessarily in this direction. Some of them certainly reflect the belief
that the big could be included in the little—maybe concentrated and epito
mized. I shall go out on a limb and say that Number 20, 1950 (fig. 8), which is
now in the University of Arizona Museum in Tucson, is the canvas next to the
top of the stack to Autumn Rhythm's left. Certainly there were pictures of much
the same kind in the show. And the kind is counterposed, I would say quite
deliberately, to Number 19, 1950's barbaric yawp. We are back, as so often with
Pollock, in the realm of mastery, not infancy—performance, not spasm. The first
movements in the black and white movie are still showing through.

27
T. J. CLARK

not Lautreamont or Isadora Duncan. His paintings are deeply about beauty made
in the face of surveillance and de-skilling. Namuth eventually bore the brunt of
Pollock's anger and panic because at one level he was the foreman, the quality
controller —watching another human being wrest the possibility of order and
depth from working conditions designed to make order and depth unavailable.
Pollock's metaphors are multilayered. His large and small may be partly nuclear,
partly addressed to the world of Fermi and Teller; but they are also, deeply, about
what it means to make things under ordinary modern conditions, according to
the dictates of a certain (in its way equally monstrous) division of labor. Small into
large may obey the logic of criticality, but, just as much, the logic of Adam Smith.
But this too, I realize, is not the place to end. I do not want to dwell finally
on the process but on the product. And I do not want the reader's space to be
filled with alternative, or even multiple, metaphors, but with everything in Pol
lock's pictures, and in the way they were hung at Parsons, that finally eludes meta
phorical framing—or, rather, stands back from such a framing, at a distance, out
side us, inhumanly, fluttering its empty sleeves. The room at Parsons is emptied
of viewers. Large and small, the pictures do the emptying. They stand there im
placably, in a space (to borrow Tyler's idea) in which we mere subjects do not
exist. They are as much mere objects as pictures can be and still be pictures at all.
Of course that last is a real qualification. It is the crucial qualification, on
which any coming to terms with Pollock turns. "And still be pictures at all. ..."
How do we speak about these pictures' literalness, in other words, and about that
literalness being somehow charged with meaning? How can language possibly
prevent this "somehow" from being pulled back again into the field of
metaphor? That is, of specific meanings being played with and opened to uncer
tainty, rather than the opposite movement (which I think is the one that
applies) of deep indeterminacy being opened to the possibility of meaning, but
always only to the possibility —to a possibility appearing against the flow or the
odds. "Inhumanly" is one way of putting it. "Literally" and "implacably" are two
others. But they are all metaphors. "Literally" is the wildest metaphor of all. And
pictures call for metaphors, no doubt: it is part of their counting as pictures that
they call forth this human and humanizing activity. But the room at Parsons
absorbs whatever words we speak in it. It is cork-lined. It calls for an endless
minute of silence. It asks us to recognize, again to quote Stevens, "that one's
desire / Is too difficult to tell from despair"—that any to and fro of affect now
ends with its key terms, in their very extremity, unrecognizable and unwritable.
Therefore the best that art can now do is to stay with the difficulty, and give it
appropriate sizes.

30
 Berkeley of Hans Hofmann and the New York School. This allowed me to put our
own museum's Number 6, 1950 (fig. 9)—at thirty-five by thirty-six inches it is sig
nificantly bigger than the Parsons panels, but still, I think, engaged in the same
wager—alongside Hofmann's poured painting Fantasia (fig. 10), from 1943, and
(stretching my brief a little, but staying in period) a tremendous late-40s
Dubuffet. I was not prepared for how small the Pollock looked—and was meant
to look, I thought. It was instinct with its own littleness. It wanted to create the
illusion of molecular compression, of course on the verge of turning into its
opposite— explosive, destructive force. (Not exploding, but reaching critical
mass.) Pollock's paintings are profoundly of their time. Serge Guilbaut was right
to intuit in them a truly horrifying, truly horrified sense of fusion and fission,
17 small and large, nucleus and particle scatter. What was new to the cold war
sense of space was the notion —a commonplace notion, leaking uncontrollably
from Los Alamos to The New Yorker— of small and large as instantly convertible,
as terrible immediate transforms of each other. This is the smallest painting I
have ever seen, I remember exclaiming in front of Number 6, 1950. And then I
looked again at the Parsons installation photos. I realized I had seen nothing yet.

This gets part of the way, I think, toward an understanding of Pollock's purposes
as he painted out the underlayers of Number 27, 1950: he was looking for the
moment at which the small became the large, indeed as it did when the voice
over the microphone intoned the final three-two-one-zero. He was looking for a
way to make that monstrosity beautiful. A way to imagine —to enact —small and
large overtaking the human and discriminate. He wanted, of course, to make the
idea fully and only pictorial. The least hint of anecdote, and painting would be
back again in the realm of the therapeutic.
This gets us part of the way. I am not saying that it is the only, or even the
main, sense I take Pollock's small and large to have. I turn to the paintings
Pollock did at this time with a long horizontal format, almost like unwound
scrolls; and I go back and back to the sequences of Namuth's color movie
(including the movie's outtakes) that show the actual rhythm of their making.
Pollock's movements are repetitive and mechanical —done with the abstracted,
monotonous neatness of the obsessive compulsive. Two steps, squat down, stick
in can, stick out of can, throw and twist. . . . Two steps, squat down, stick in can. . . .
And on it goes, quickly, stiffly, joylessly. (I know this impression is abetted by the
speeded-up nature of Namuth's footage, but the speed-up seems in the end to
tell the truth of the action.) Pollock moves up and down his canvas like a prole
tarian keeping pace with an assembly line, or a lunatic pacing his cell. He is
working for Ford, or doing his best for Violet de Laszlo. His version of "automa
tism" looks finally more like robotics than shamanism. He is going through the
motions, not breaking through to the Blue Unconscious. His muse is H. C. Earwicker,

29
 Notes

1. Claude Levi-Strauss,La Pensee 9. Pollock, poem-manifesto, in ot 4,

Sauvage(Paris: Plon, 1962), p. 34. p. 253.
2. See, for example, Yve-AlainBois, 10. Pollock, as reported by his homeo
"On Matisse: The Blinding," October path, Elizabeth Hubbard, in ot 4,
68 (Spring 1994): especially pp. 96- p. 275; as reported by Lee Krasner,
99, 105-12. in Friedman, "Interview with Lee
3. Wallace Stevens, "Large Red Man Krasner Pollock," JacksonPollock:
Reading," The CollectedPoemsof Blackand White, exh. cat. (New York:
WallaceStevens(New York:Knopf, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, 1969),
1955), pp. 423-24. © 1950 by p. 9; and on the soundtrack of Hans
Wallace Stevens. Reprinted by per Namuth's film JacksonPollock,1950,
mission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. quoted in ot 4, p. 262.
The poem was first published in 11.Stevens, "Esthetique du Mai,"
The Aurorasof Autumn (1950). For CollectedPoems,p. 325.
Stevens's interests in painting in 12. Parker Tyler, unedited typescript
the late 1940s, see Joan Richardson, of "Jackson Pollock: The Infinite
WallaceStevens:The Later Years, Labyrinth," in Archives of American
1923-1955 (New York:William Art, Pollock Papers 3048:548-49,
Morrow, 1988). partly published in Magazineof Art,
4. My thanks to Helen Harrison, March 1950. For further discussion
director of the Pollock-KrasnerHouse see Michael Leja, ReframingAbstract
and Study Center, for pointing this Expressionism:Subjectivityand
out at the Museum of Modern Art Painting in the 1940's (New Haven
symposium. Two of the pictures listed and London: YaleUniversity Press,
in the catalogue raisonne as part of 1993), pp. 315-16, 368-69.
the Parsons show are described as 13. Stevens, "The Idea of Order at
painted on composition board, not Key West," CollectedPoems,p. 128.
Masonite. Does this register a real 14. Ibid.
difference of support, or just differ 15.Compare the discussion of Pol
ent owners' conventions of descrip lock's "intensity" in Michael Fried,
tion? If the former, then it seems "Optical Allusions," Artforum37 no.
that Pollock made further twenty- 8 (April 1999): 97-101, 143, 146.
two-inch squares of his own, using 16. Pollock, notebook, c. 1955,
another support, perhaps looking for quoted in Friedman, JacksonPollock:
new relations between thrown paint EnergyMade Visible,p. 229.
and ground (both the "composition 17.See Serge Guilbaut, How New York
board" squares feature enamel paint Stolethe Idea of ModernArt (Chicago
prominently, whereas most of the and London: Chicago University
Masonite works are in oil alone). Press, 1983), especially pp. 96-97.
For details on the small paintings Guilbaut risks a more literal connec
and their exhibition history, see tion than I do between the 1946
Francis Valentine O'Connor and paintings ShimmeringSubstanceand
Eugene Victor Thaw, JacksonPollock: Eyesin the Heat and the imagery, and
A CatalogueRaisonneof Paintings, imaginary, of the first Bikini tests.
Drawings,and Other Works(New Horrifying as the suggestion may be
Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1978; to a certain version of formalism, it
hereafter referred to as ot), vol. 2, still attaches to Eyesin the Heat in a
pp. 100-4, 108-10, 112-13, 126. way I find impossible to shrug off.
5. I do mean "inclined." The paint My emphasis here is on 1950, not
ing at the bottom of the left stack in 1946; and 1 am saying that Pollock's
fig. 1 seems to have a darker ground response to the "nuclear" had by
than the rest, and might just be that time been transposed into more
Untitled [Greenand White Square] exclusively pictorial (practical, tech
(ot 2, p. 103), which the catalogue nical) terms; but that does not mean,
raisonne does not list as shown at in my view, that Pollock's reimagin-
Parsons. But of course the visual ing of the small and the large, and
evidence is elusive, not to say will-o'- the immediate, uncontainable nature
the-wisp. of the conversion of one into the
6. Anon., in The Compass,December other, was any the less deeply a
3, 1950. Quoted in O'Connor, Jack response to the specific horror of an
son Pollock,exh. cat. (New York:The epoch. I am happy, in other words,
Museum of Modern Art, 1967), p. 57. to join Guilbaut in the rogues'
7. Jackson Pollock, quoted in [Berton gallery of historicism.
Roueche], "Unframed Space," The
New Yorker,August 5, 1950, p. 16.
8. Pollock, notebook, c. 1955.
Quoted in B. H. Friedman, Jackson
Pollock:EnergyMade Visible(New
York:McGraw-Hill, 1972), p. 228.
 ROBERT STORR

widely disseminated by Life magazine and recycled by art world insiders —was
that of the know-nothing man-child from no-place-special who beat Picasso at
his own game.
Determined to rescue Pollock from this caricature, and also to reengineer
the art-historical foundations of the monument erected to the painter's genius
by more discerning advocates, William Rubin refuted the idea of Pollock's "mete
oric" rise to fame in a series of articles published in 1967. Rubin argued for a
more focused but also more far-reaching account of Pollock's aesthetic origins:
"To reduce history to a formula in which everything comes out of everything
else is to parody the discipline. But to properly consider the sources of a style is
to help understand and characterize it. Sometimes an artist is able to meld stylis
tic conceptions and components held antithetical in earlier art into a viable and
4 richer whole."
The fact is that Pollock's "originality" has nothing to do with either aesthetic
"virginity" or clear, paradigm-sorting foresight. Pollock neither leapfrogged over
his contemporaries with prescient naivete nor systematically worked through art
history as Arshile Gorky, de Kooning, or Philip Guston did. Desperately, often
clumsily, he grappled with whatever options were within his reach, regardless of
the established logic of styles, hoping to open up the initially narrow scope of
his visual culture and technical range. Fighting for his life as an artist from first
to last, he tried anything that he responded to emotionally and that he thought
he could use. A synthetic painter, Pollock was not radical by virtue of inventive
ness—precedents can be named for almost every aspect of his work. He was,
however, radical in his unanticipated applications of things he had learned dur
ing his catch-as-catch-can process of appropriation and imperfect assimilation.
In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard warns against the tendency to
5 "explain the flower by the fertilizer." The disquieting marvel of Pollock's fully
realized work brings home the truth of this. No truly comprehensive account of
its genesis is possible, since too many fragments are missing, and the dimensions
that remain accessible are, like the figurative substrata of his abstract paintings,
so skillfully veiled that we may speak about them only with caution.
Sifting this evidence reminds us that the stakes are high, since our selection
of things we can say with some certainty, and the emphasis we place on those
things, make every difference in the partial reckoning we must settle for before
confronting the work. In such reckonings, inclusion or omission of apparently
incidental details, or the relative weight given to essential facts, is of vital impor
tance. For it is these value-laden choices that afford the leverage with which dif
ferent members of the vast family of Pollock students have tried to pull the cov
ers to their side of the bed. The context in which Pollock is portrayed, and the
company he is thought to keep, become a litmus test of scholarship, critical scru
ples, and changes in ideological and historical perspective. No issue cuts closer

34
 A Piece of the Action

Robert Storr

Jackson Pollock's work is a reef on which theories crack. How many art writers
embarking on the summary essay or code-breaking research paper have been
turned back by the magnitude of his accomplishment. And how many others, at
the point of completion, have come to grief by misjudging the strangeness of
that achievement's fitful and unfinished evolution.
The desire to "explain" Pollock is treacherous in exact proportion to the rel
ative paucity of reliable information about him, and the conflicting nature of
what we have. No other artist of his generation has been second-guessed more
often or from more points of view. Pollock's reticence, combined with the ven-
triloquistic quality of so many of his published statements and attributed
remarks, have provided an open invitation for interpretations ascribing motives
1 that can never satisfactorily be confirmed or denied. Pollock's anomalousness,
and his corresponding availability as a standard-bearer for causes or a test case
for "critique," keeps the waters around his work roiling. As Willem de Kooning
was quick to recognize, "Every so often a painter has to destroy painting.
Cezanne did it. Picasso did it with cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our
2 idea of the picture all to hell." Since then, countless would-be heirs to this frac
tured legacy have tried to pick up the pieces and claim Pollock for their own,
but, too often, they have oversimplified the complexity that makes him such a
polyvalent cultural symbol.
First in line were those who, with the artist's ambivalent cooperation, cre
ated Pollock "the American original." The sophisticated version of this persona
was advanced in stages by Harold Rosenberg: phase one was the painter as rusti
cated coonskinner, ambushing the redcoat armies of European cultural colonial
ism from behind the rocks and trees of his native sensibility; phase two was the
"action painter" who abandoned traditional studio routines and went to the
easel with nothing more than a material in his hand and the inchoate aim of
3 doing something "to that other piece of material in front of him." The unso
phisticated, often antagonistic, but hugely popular incarnation of this view—

33
 ROBERT STORR

Lee Krasner, and Rubin. While their observations differ in detail, the primary
thrust is the same: to prepare a place for Pollock at the high table of modernism
and to downplay anything that might call his right to such a position into ques
tion, including anything —and here the trouble starts—that might reveal the full
extent or implications of the false starts, detours, and inconvenient but endur
ing affinities that marked his ascent.
Greenberg comes first in every way. His review, in The Nation, of Pollock's
debut exhibition of 1943 heralded the advent of an important American talent —
"the most powerful painter in contemporary America and the only one who
10 promises to be a major one," he would write four years later —and set down the
basic hierarchies that Greenberg would henceforth employ in his campaign to
establish the artist and control the interpretation of his work. In it he credited
Pollock with "having got something positive from the muddiness of color that
11 so profoundly characterizes a great deal of American painting," then drew a
connection to the mural (while clearly favoring Pollock's smaller pictures), and
concluded by placing Pollock in the context of recent art—"Pollock has gone
through the influences of Miro, Picasso, Mexican painting and what not" —while
12 also declaring the artist his own man.
Thereafter Greenberg's agenda was consistent in its logic but varied in its
emphasis. The striking change was that "Mexican painting" disappeared from
13 the lineup. Picasso and Joan Miro, incidentally supported by Vasily Kandinsky,
Piet Mondrian, Georges Braque, and the Surrealists, became Pollock's
antecedents, although the Surrealists soon ceded their place (due to Greenberg's
distaste for "literary" or "illusionistic" painting) and Cubism became Pollock's
only important jumping-off point, with Miro rechristened a late or post-Cubist
for consistency's sake. "Pollock's 1946-50 manner really took up Analytic Cub
14 ism from the point at which Picasso and Braque had left it," Greenberg wrote
on one occasion, and, on another, that Cathedral (1947) reminded him "of one
15 of Picasso and Braque's masterpieces of the 1912-1915 phase of Cubism." In
yet another article he used this lineage to segue into his Hans Hofmann-derived
theory of the picture plane: "Pollock's strength lies in the emphatic surfaces of
his pictures, which it is his concern to maintain and intensify in all that thick,
fuliginous flatness which began—but only began —to be the strong point of late
16 Cubism." In making these correlations Greenberg disregarded the fact that Pol
lock was the least involved in Cubism of all the Abstract Expressionists. The
artist Steve Wheeler remembered that he "had no interest in the nature of Cub
ism as such. He didn't want to talk about it," and Harold Lehman, another asso
17 ciate of Pollock's early years, says much the same thing. Nor was there any sus
tained Cubist phase in his work. The Picasso who attracted him was the Picasso
of the mid-1920s and the late 1930s.
Greenberg's early and insistent reference to mural painting is skewed in

36
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

to the root of "the Pollock problem" in this regard than that of the place accorded
the Mexican muralists.

The importance of Thomas Hart Benton to Pollock is beyond dispute, since

Pollock made it so. Had the younger painter been less openly beholden to his
mentor, Benton's centrality to the Pollock story might have been considerably
diminished by those who found his reactionary ideas, Buckeye themes, and
grandiose cartooning embarrassments best left in Depression-era obscurity. But
Pollock insisted on thanking Benton. In a 1950 New Yorkerinterview he stated
his reasons in terms that any struggling artist could appreciate: Benton, he said,
"gave me the only formal instruction I ever had, he introduced me to Renais
sance art, and he got me a job in the League cafeteria. I'm damn grateful to
6 Tom." Such frank indebtedness was palatable to the modernists who supported
Pollock's work only because of his equally forthright rejection of Benton's aes
thetics. Thus, in the same interview, Pollock added that Benton "drove his kind
7 of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting." Pollock's
best explanation of this dynamic came earlier, in 1944: "My work with Benton
was important as something against which to react very strongly, later on; in
this, it was better to have worked with him than with a less resistant personality
8 who would have provided a much less strong opposition."
Pollock's farewell salute to his teacher not only honorably excused him
from any further association with Benton's backward-looking attitudes, it sup
plied the evolving narrative of postwar American art with a dramatic turning
point in which the crisis between the chauvinist fathers and the internationalist
sons was resolved decisively in favor of the sons, but without oedipal rancor.
Benton's reciprocal respect for his protege sealed the truce.
No comparable acknowledgment of Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro
Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera can be found in Pollock's public statements. Virtually
everything we know about his response to these artists comes from private let
ters or conversations recalled by family and friends. In general when the Mexi
can muralists have been discussed in relation to Pollock, their artistic impact has
been minimized in terms not dissimilar from those used for Benton. In the short
hand of most versions, their brand of modern —or, as some argue, antimod-
ernist —art was a phase Pollock went through before he became himself, some
thing he had to work out of his system before true modernist painting was pos
sible for him.
Granted, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, writers such as Frank O'Hara,
Sam Hunter, Bryan Robertson, Rosenberg, and Lawrence Alloway did acknowl
9 edge the influence of the muralists, but in weighing or overlooking their impor
tance with regard to the Pollock we have inherited, three commentators occu
pying interconnected positions are principally responsible: Clement Greenberg,

35
 ROBERT STORR

Pollock was up to in that all-determining interval. In fact it was the period of his
greatest engagement with Siqueiros and Orozco.
Other points of Krasner's show similar lapses. Asked about Pollock's deci
sion to paint horizontally rather than vertically, Krasner replied, "I don't have
the remotest idea of why he wanted to work on the floor. . . . The only thing I
remember hearing was that he had seen the Indian sand painters working on the
22 ground." Of course Pollock himself had talked about sand painting in response
to similar inquiries, but he knew, as she knew, that in 1936, five years before see
ing Navajo sand painters at The Museum of Modern Art, he had taken part in
Siqueiros's Experimental Workshop, where paints were poured, dripped, and
splattered on horizontal boards. Siqueiros had also preached the gospel of the
new synthetic paints, and Krasner, in the same interview in which she men
tioned the Navajo, went into considerable detail about Pollock's interest in new
paints and thinners, the technical books in his library, and his efforts to per
suade the DuPont company to mix pigments that would flow more freely than
the commercial brands. But of Siqueiros Krasner spoke not a word.
"Jackson Pollock and the Modern Tradition," the series of four articles penned
by Rubin in 1967, modified but consolidated the Greenberg-Krasner view of Pol
lock. Even more so than they, Rubin strove not merely to assert Pollock's hege
mony but to establish his unimpeachable modernist bloodlines. As the title and
exhaustive argumentation of Rubin's articles make clear, his goal was to rescue
Pollock from romantic or nationalist rhetoric and to put an end to any sugges
tion that the painter had been born on the wrong side of the modernist bed. "At
its core," he wrote, "Pollock's art is not primitive or provincial. It is phenome
nally complex, subtle and sophisticated, and it developed amid, and reflected,
the rhythms, fluxes, convergences and confrontations of a metropolitan urban
environment. It was, like all other serious painting of our time, firmly rooted in
23 the European traditions."
In debunking Pollock's sui generis status, Rubin departed from Greenberg's
logic by restoring Surrealism to Pollock's heritage while adding late Monet to the
24 list of artists from whom Pollock had wittingly or unwittingly extrapolated.
Rubin also distanced himself from Krasner by gently suggesting that her perpet
uation of the sand-painter story was unhelpful in securing for Pollock the man
tle of the School of Paris. "Not a little of what has been written about Pollock,"
he remarked, "reflects the 'meteor' myth in which he comes to his crucial role
from virtually nowhere— certainly from outside the main tradition of modern
painting. To be sure, this view sometimes allows for the importance of the
Mexican muralists, Picasso and the literary side of Surrealism in Pollock'spre-1947
(i.e., his pre-drip)painting [italics added]. But as to antecedents of the all-over drip
Pollocks we hear of virtually nothing but the Navajo sand painters. Impression
25 ism, Cubism and Surrealist automatism go unmentioned."

38
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

much the same way. In 1943, he chided Pollock for "zigzagging between the
18 intensity of the easel picture and the blandness of the mural." Just a month or
so later, however, Pollock produced Mural for Peggy Guggenheim (plate 1), and
from that time on, Greenberg was urging Pollock to make the move toward the
wall. Once again, though, the paradigm he cited was post-Cubist. "Since
Mondrian, no one has driven the easel picture quite so far away from itself [as
19 Pollock has]," he wrote, expunging with a typically sweeping generalization
the entire Mexican mural movement.
Greenberg was not all wrong. His correlation between Pollock's skeined ex
panses (filled with right-angled fragments and tonal modulations) and Analytic
Cubism was a provocative leap of the imagination. There is, however, a differ
ence between theories or inferences of causality and the analysis of correspon
dences between entities with partially or entirely distinct genealogies. The erasure
of the Mexicans after 1943 not only falsified the historical record, it made it im
possible for Greenberg fully to appreciate what Pollock was struggling with before,
during, and after the great "drip" paintings of 1947-50; and in the decades since
it has seriously distorted the vision of those who have seen Pollock through his eyes.
Krasner didn't buy Greenberg's description of Pollock as a "late Cubist" —
and it was she, after all, who had taught Greenberg much of what he knew on
the subject —but in other respects her taste and motives coincided with the crit
ic's. Both championed Pollock as the preeminent painter of his day, and Picasso's
heir; both bit their tongue about Pollock's pre-Picassoid past. In fairness, Krasner
didn't meet Pollock until 1942, and so lacked firsthand knowledge of his activi
ties before his conversion to European modernism under her tutelage and that
of John Graham. Neither did she have much sympathy for his former passions:
a student of Hofmann's, she was a disciple of the School of Paris from the out
set, and an enemy of Benton and all he stood for. Politically motivated painting
was a particular bete noire: "My experience with Leftist movements in the late
1930s made me move as far away from them as possible because they were
emphasizing the most banal, provincial art. They weren't interested in indepen
dent or experimental art. ... To me, and to the painters I associated with, the
20 more important thing was French painting." Yet, when asked whether she had
anticipated Pollock's return to the figure in 1951, she answered that old sketch
es in his studio had helped her to grasp it: "Well, of course, I had one advantage
that very few others had —I was familiar with his notebooks and drawings, a
great body of work that most people didn't see until years later, after Jackson's
death. I'm not talking about the drawings he did as a student of Benton, but just
after that, when he began to break free, about the mid-thirties. For me all of
Jackson's work grows from this period; I see no more sharp breaks, but rather a contin
21 uing developmentof the same themes and obsessions [italics added]." This extraor
dinary assertion is made all the more so by the failure to describe what, exactly,

37
 ROBERT STORR

artists eager to participate in and propagandize social change: in Mexico it was

Jose Vasconcelos, in Russia Anatoly Lunacharsky. In both cases artists in direct
contact with Western European avant-gardes returned to their homeland and
attempted to apply the models they had learned, though in Mexico those models
were subsequently jettisoned or absorbed into styles based on a revival of Renais
sance mural design. In both countries extraordinary resources were put at the
disposal of artists for a brief time, after which they were forced to emigrate or to
accommodate to a conservative retrenchment. The full backing of the Mexican
government lasted a scant three years, 1923 to 1926, after which the support for
the most radical painters, Orozco and Siqueiros, was withdrawn.
By 1927, Orozco was in New York. In 1929 the city's Art Students League
exhibited 113 works by the artist, while others were on more or less permanent
display at the nearby Delphic Studios, and his prints could just as easily be seen
at the Weyhe Gallery. For much of that time Orozco made New Yorkhis base, travel
ing from there to paint his Prometheus at Pomona College, California, in 1930,
and to Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, to paint a fresco cycle in 1934.
Closer to home, he painted murals at the New School in Manhattan in 1930, and
the portable Dive Bomberand Tank for The Museum of Modern Art in 1940 (fig. 1).
Meanwhile Rivera went to San Francisco, where he painted a mural in 1930.
In 1932 he was among the first contemporary artists to be given a one-person
exhibition at the three-year old Museum of Modern Art—only Henri Matisse and
27 Charles Burchfield preceded him. In 1932-33, Rivera painted other much-pub
licized murals for The Detroit Institute of Arts and, in 1933 in New York, for the
New Workers School and for Rockefeller Center, a work infamously destroyed
just after its completion.
Siqueiros, the youngest of the three, had only one major commission in
Mexico before he left the country, in 1932. Arriving that same year in Los
Angeles, he quickly made up for missed opportunity and organized a so-called
Block of Mural Painters with which he collaborated on a large exterior mural,
The Workers'Meeting.That same year he was given an exhibition at the Stendhal
Ambassador Galleries in Los Angeles, covering work he had done while in polit
ical exile in Taxco two years earlier, and he completed two more exterior murals,
TropicalAmerica and Portrait of Present-DayMexico.In 1936, Siqueiros visited New
York, and stayed in the city to establish the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop.
This recitation of well-known facts is intended to remind readers of some
thing easily forgotten, or easily taken for granted on the excuse that the facts are
known: the broad American impact of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros for most of
the period between the world wars. The Big Three were not just news (because of
the scale and topicality of their work, say), nor were they merely creatures of the
committed Left. Leading art institutions, galleries, and patrons devoted atten
tion to them, and saw them as a serious avant-garde. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., for one,

40
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Whether or not one accepts all the correspondences Rubin proceeds to enu
merate, the underlying problem remains the extent to which Pollock's encoun
ters with European tradition were, from the outset, filtered through peculiarly
American interpretations of that tradition —first Benton's and then those of
Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, all of whom were steeped in a rich painting cul
ture based on European models, all of whom, to a greater or lesser extent, had
dealt with Cubism and its consequences, and two of whom powerfully informed
Pollock's expressionism before he encountered similar qualities in Kandinsky or
Picasso. (Even the case for Parisian modernism subsequently made to Pollock by
the Polish immigrant Graham was qualified by the latter's often exotic autodi-
dacticism.) Put another way, Pollock learned the modernist lingua franca not from
native speakers but from teachers with pronounced regional accents, which,
combined with his own provincial inflections, he never entirely shook off.
When tracing the precedents for Pollock's drip technique, meanwhile,
Rubin focused almost exclusively on the history of Surrealist automatism, begin
ning with Francis Picabia's spilled-ink drawings of 1917, Miro's and Andre
Masson's aleatory experiments of the mid-1920s, and so on down through
Gordon Onslow-Ford's and Wolfgang Paalen's pourings of 1938-39. He also has
tened to mention Hans Hofmann and Max Ernst, both of whom turned to a drip
technique in 1942-43, or at roughly the same time Pollock did, as well as the
work of the amateur painter Janet Sobel (the only "influence" outside the canon
given Rubin's full attention), who was brought to Pollock's notice by Greenberg
in 1946. Only briefly, however, did Rubin touch on Pollock's experience in the
Siqueiros workshop, implicitly privileging the importance of things the artist
saw—or might have seen—in magazines and galleries over a studio practice in
26 which he actually engaged.

What, then, remains to be said about Pollock and the Mexicans? A great deal.
First one must dispense with a collective noun. Talk of "the Mexican mural-
ists" as if Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros represented the same thing is the origin
of many of the errors that plague discussion of these artists. Other than the
shared opportunity to paint walls, a belief in the existence of a public for public
art, and the conviction that the language required to address that public was fig
urative, "los TresGrandes"—the Big Three—agreed on little and acted, for the most
part, independently of one another, even at cross-purposes. The details matter.
During the teens and '20s of this century, a political revolution in Mexico
coincided with an artistic one. This conflation of a social avant-garde and an aes
thetic one is the stuff of modernist legend, and it occurred in one other place at
much the same time —the Soviet Union. As different as the art of these two
countries was, their experiments were close in several ways. In both instances an
intellectual near the seat of revolutionary power secured state patronage for

39
ROBERT STORR

Rivera's painting is measured, structured, decorative, eclectic, and illustra

tive. Orozco's is disjunctive in its composition and seemingly abrupt in its exe
cution; his graphic strokes lacerate, their accumulation squeezes volume out of
mass, and the accretion of such masses or husks of masses overwhelms the pic
torial space. Both artists looked back to Renaissance paradigms, Rivera to remake
them in his own image, Orozco to see how much of the intensity of contempo
rary experience they could convey, and how much stress they could take. Si-
queiros's work is contrastingly expansive. Always harnessed to complex perspec-
tival armatures, his forms are orderly, exaggerated, geometricized, and general.
Alone among the Big Three, Siqueiros actively followed the experiments made in
other media by other avant-gardes. Through the Russian film director Sergei
Eisenstein, whom he met in Mexico in 1931, he learned about montage and about
extreme pictorial angles, and by 1933 was applying those lessons to the spatial
problems of modern muralism. Later, collaborating with the Spanish designer
Josep Renau and looking to the example of the German photomontagist John
Heartfield, Siqueiros refined these graphic strategies and deepened his explora
tion of the use of mechanical-reproduction techniques in the environmental
paintings he envisioned. He also embraced new paints, in particular the Duco
enamel and other nitrocellulose mediums that were developed in the early 1930s.
Neither consistently "revolutionary" in its politics nor consistently "con
servative" in its aesthetics, the example set by the Big Three boxed the compass
of Pollock's own contradictory impulses and aspirations, answering to his simul
taneous needs to strike out in expressive frustration and to seek security in
apprenticeship, to be avant-garde and to find a way into tradition.

Until recently the accounts of Pollock's work that recognized his involvement
with the muralists have tended to underestimate its extent and to deal superfi
cially with its specifics. Lack of information about Pollock's contacts with
Orozco, Siqueiros, and Rivera or with their work, and about the general context
in which those contacts took place, explains some of these lacunae, but lack of
curiosity sometimes explains that scarcity of facts. Neglect in this regard con
cerns not just things known yet left unspoken, but research never undertaken,
or undertaken too late. Unfortunately most of those who shared Pollock's early
years have passed from the scene without being extensively questioned. Of his
close associates of the 1930s and '40s, only Harold Lehman is still living. Lor the
rest we must rely on the statements of Axel Horn, Pollock-family correspon
dence, parts of existing interviews, the art-historical investigations of Prancis V.
O'Connor, Stephen Polcari, Laurance Hurlburt, Irene Herner, Ellen Landau, Lisa
Mintz Messinger, and Jiirgen Harten, and the biographies by B. H. Priedman,
Landau, Jeffrey Potter, and Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. Even so, the
facts add up to more than has been made of them.

42
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Fig. I. Jos6 Clemente Orozco. Dive Bomber and Tank. 1940. Fresco, 9 x 18ft. (275 x 550 cm), on six panels, each panel 9 x
3 ft. (275 x 91.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Commissionedthrough the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund

consecrated large parts of the program of The Museum of Modern Art to Latin
American art in general, and in his famous "torpedo" diagram, describing the
forward thrust of modern art, as he revised it in 1941, he gave Mexican art a sta
tus equal to American and in advance of European, in the torpedo's head. The
Museum's acquisition of works by Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco—including the
commission of Dive Bomber and Tank—not only promoted those artists among
the modernist elite, it also ensured that their work was regularly on public view.
Then as now, the divisions among the Big Three were often overlooked.
Some of these divisions were matters of personal or professional rivalry, but their
artistic differences were of greater consequence. A naturally facile stylist, Rivera
had lived in Paris and had painted in both a vaguely symbolist and a Cubist
manner. His synthesis of these tendencies was a form of neoclassicism that recast
the European "return to order" of the 1920s in heroic revolutionary guise. Orozco
traveled only briefly in Europe, studying the Italian Renaissance and Spanish
Baroque masters for the most part from afar, while also delving into Mexico's
vernacular pictorial traditions. The idiosyncratic result was an angry expression
ism at war with an austere proto-classicism, as if El Greco and Jose Guadalupe
Posada were observing the ruins of Giotto. Siqueiros for his part started out mim
icking Spanish art nouveau, jumped to decorative grandiosity in his murals at
the National Preparatory School in 1922-23, retreated into hard, quasi-primitive
easel pictures that recall both the Mexican retablo tradition and the sinister syn
thesis of Cubism and neoclassicism affected by the fascist painter Mario Sironi,
and then returned to a full-bodied Baroque manner, with an emphasis on vio
lent motion that directly incorporated elements of Italian Futurism.

41
 ROBERT STORR

during a "red squad" police raid before they could be exhibited). Kadish later
recalled that "Siqueiros coming to L.A. meant as much then as the Surrealists
35 coming to New York in the '40s." From New York, Jackson wrote Sande, "The
36 experience with Siqueiros must have been great,—am anxious to see the job."
During a short visit to Los Angeles, Jackson finally saw The Workers'Meeting and
met Siqueiros, though he had mixed feelings about the man and his approach.
Back in New York in 1933, Pollock watched Rivera work on his ill-fated
walls for Rockefeller Center, and shortly after saw him paint portable murals for
the New Workers School on West 14th Street. But his aesthetic loyalties were
37 already fixed: "Orozco is the real artist," he had told Kadish the year before.
Mural painting was by this time an established practice among Pollock's friends:
in 1933, Kadish, Guston, and Lehman collaborated on a mural for the Workers'
Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and then in 1934, with Siqueiros's patronage,
Guston and Kadish painted a huge wall in the palace of Maximilian in Morelia,
Mexico. Pollock took Benton's mural class at the League, then, in 1935, passed
to the Mural Division of the newly created Works Progress Administration, al
though he soon transferred to the Easel Division. The flurry of stylistically varied
paintings that he produced that year included a "lewd" Orozcoesque mural on
the wall of his Houston Street loft, conceivably inspired by the luridly eschato-
logical Catharsis that Orozco painted that year at the Palace of Fine Arts in
Mexico City. Also in 1935, Guston and Kadish stayed in Jackson's studio after a
trip to Mexico, where they had seen many of the major site-specific works of the
Big Three; they spoke with Pollock excitedly about Orozco and Siqueiros.
By 1936 the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop had opened its doors. Its
goal was to be "a laboratory of traditional and modern techniques in art, the
purpose being to find the proper technical methods to correspond with the
industrial life of the U.S. ... because we firmly believe that so-called modern
38 techniques in art are in reality archaic—consequently anachronistic." Siqueiros
proposed to teach the uses of the spray gun, new industrial paints, photography,
and film. The workshop's activity included creating floats and heroic pictures for
Communist Party and Popular Front gatherings, testing Siqueiros's menu of
painterly novelties, and watching or helping him produce his own easel paint
ings for patrons like George Gershwin and for the trade.
Brought to the workshop by Sande, Jackson this time hit it off with
39 Siqueiros. "They had a great rapport," Kadish recalled. But as Lehman remem
bers it, "Jack at the workshop, simply helped out. He did mainly construction
and fill-in painting. Thematic concept and development, applied to painting,
was simply not his thing. Neither was the handling of forms in a solid 3-dimen-
sional manner— realistic yet savagely expressionistic as well." Still, "He was a real
valuable member nonetheless and there was real affection and respect for him
from everyone. S[iqueiros]. considered him extremely 'simpatico.' Though he

44
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Pollock was introduced to Mexican muralism when he was still in his mid-
teens. A 1929 letter from his brother Charles is the first reference to them in the
record: "Are you familiar with the work of Rivera and Orozco in Mexico City?
This is the finest painting that has been done, I think, since the sixteenth cen
tury. . . . Here are men with imagination and intelligence recognizing the imple
28 ments of the modern world and ready to employ them." Charles's excitement
immediately affected Jackson, who shortly replied that he would like to go to
29 Mexico "if there is any means of making a livelihood there." Locating an arti
cle on Rivera in CreativeArt, urged on him by Charles, Jackson found in the same
issue a piece by Orozco declaring that "the highest, the most logical, the purest
30 strongest form of painting is the mural." In a letter to Charles, Jackson wrote,
"I became acquainted with Rivera's work through a number of Communist meet
ings I attended after being ousted from school last year. He has a painting in the
Museum now. Perhaps you have seen it, Dia de Flores. I found the Creative Art
31 January 1929 on Rivera. I certainly admire his work."
Although Pollock's friends Lehman and Guston paid visits to the Arensberg
collection, rich in Cubism and de Chirico, he himself never made the pilgrim
age, concentrating instead on the old masters. "He talked about Tintoretto, El
Greco," Lehman remembers; "he was not looking at modern art. Modern art for
32 him was Diego Rivera." In June of 1930 Charles visited Los Angeles. A local
exhibition confirmed his interest in Mexican painting, and a trip with Jackson
to see Orozco's recently finished Prometheus at Pomona College completed their
conversion. Years later Jackson would call Prometheus "the greatest painting done
in modern times," and until at least the late 1930s he kept a reproduction on his
33 studio wall.
In September of 1930, Pollock moved to New York and signed up for classes
with Benton, who was hostile to Picasso but endorsed Orozco. (Both Benton and
Orozco took El Greco as a model, as would Pollock.) During the awkward but
headlong art-world immersion of Pollock's first fall in New York, he witnessed
Orozco painting the New School murals, and on at least one occasion met the
Mexican artist at Benton's apartment. His initial enthusiasm for "public art" can
be gauged from a 1933 letter to his father Roy, claiming that Benton had "lifted
art from the stuffy studio into the world and happenings about him, which has
34 a common meaning to the masses." The political language was untypical of
Jackson, and may have been a gesture to Roy Pollock's social radicalism more
than an expression of his own, but the fervor of his remarks bespeaks a discov
ery basic to his artistic awakening.
Jackson's brother Sande and friends Lehman and Reuben Kadish were all in
Los Angeles in 1932 to help Siqueiros paint TropicalAmerica on Olvera Street—a
work involving the innovative use of sprayed, pigmented cement. Lehman and
Guston also assisted Siqueiros in the creation of portable mural panels (destroyed

43
 ROBERT STORR

Square: "We were going to put out to pasture the 'stick with hairs on its end/ as
Siqueiros called the brush. Spurred on by Siqueiros, whose energy and torrential
flow of ideas and new projects stimulated us all to a high pitch of activity, every
thing became material for our investigation. . . . We sprayed through stencils and
friskets, embedded wood, metal and paper. We used thin glazes or built up thick
globs. We poured [lacquer], dripped it, spattered it, hurled it at the picture sur
face. . . . What emerged was an endless variety of accidental effects. Siqueiros
42 soon constructed a theory and a system of 'controlled accidents.'"
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in late 1936 ended Siqueiros's par
ticipation in the workshop. Without his ingenuity and ambition, its only func
tion remained the production of propaganda, and Pollock drifted away.
Increasingly at the mercy of his drinking while also increasingly invested in his
own work, he ended his involvement with collective projects of this sort. Still,
the summer after his stint at Siqueiros's workshop, Pollock visited Dartmouth to
see Orozco's Epic of American Civilization (1932-34), images from which soon
began to show up in his drawings—sometimes grafted onto borrowings from
Picasso, whom he would finally discover after seeing Guernica and the Picasso
retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 1939. Henceforth Picasso would
become increasingly important to Pollock. Even so, in 1940 he went to the
Museum to watch Orozco paint Dive Bomberand Tank. With Guernica fresh in his
memory from the previous year, the dialogue between the mural-scale work of
Orozco and that of Picasso was in a sense direct.
In late 1939 or early 1940, William Baziotes conducted a paint-dripping
experiment in the studio of Gerard Kamrowski in an attempt to prove to Pollock
that Surrealist automatism superceded Siqueiros's techniques. Pollock held back.
"Kamrowski felt Baziotes had 'made his point,"' write Naifeh and Smith, "but
43 Jackson was still 'puzzling it out.'" Around the same time, Pollock tried squeez
ing whole tubes of paint directly onto a canvas at the workshop of printer
Theodore Wahl. By 1943, when he made his first purely abstract use of dripped
or squeezed pigments, he was no longer "puzzling it out."

Far from being an incidental or immature interest, Pollock's engagement with

the Mexican muralists lasted over a decade, from his brother's letter of 1929
through his last encounter with Orozco in 1940. Given his truncated education
and eclectic enthusiasms, no other formative experience was of equal duration,
and few were of comparable intensity. In this connection it is worth repeating
Krasner's verdict on the drawings of the mid- to late 1930s: "For me all of
Jackson's work grows from this period; I see no more sharp breaks, but rather a
44 continuing development of the same themes and obsessions."
In that same interview, Friedman asked Krasner whether Pollock's "black
paintings" of 1951 owed a debt to Guernica. "If so," Krasner replied, "it was an

46
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Fig. 2. David Alfaro Siqueiros. Collective Suicide.1936. Enamel on wood with applied sections, 49 in. x 6 ft. (124.5 x
182.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Dr. Cregory Zilboorg

rarely spoke up in discussions, and never took the lead in collective work, it is
obvious that he did observe." And what he observed, Lehman believes, was "the
use of sand, assorted objects and materials, textures and etc: above all the ex
ploitation of accidental effects produced by the action of solvents on lacquers,
pouring, spattering, spraying . . . and perhaps not least—was our habit of plac
40 ing the panels flat on the floor during the preliminary phase of painting."
Siqueiros's many ways of preparing panels for figurative images included
punching a hole in a paint can and letting it swing, simply spilling the pigment
out so it would marble, and jigsaw-cutting wood or fiberboard forms on which
to spread the paint. It is also likely that Pollock witnessed the use of a spray gun
and stencils to silhouette the figures in the most important demonstration piece
of Siqueiros's New York sojourn, CollectiveSuicide (1936; fig. 2). Pollock certainly
saw one other significant technique, used for a float on which he worked with
Lehman: "A feature of this project was our hand prints, representing the protest
ing victims of fascism, and applied to the surface throughout the design. These
came through a mass of banners, signs, etc. which were in turn superimposed on
streams of paint thrown every which way in long skeins, the whole reflecting vio
41 lent rhythm and movement —from one end of the float to the other."
Horn, another Benton-student-turned-Siqueiros-assistant, concurs with Leh
man, but his account is more evocative of the heady atmosphere on Union

45
ROBERT STORR

Fig. 5 (left). Jos6 ClementeOrozco.

Cortes.1938-39. Fresco, 45 square
meters. InstitutoCulturalCabanas,
Guadalajara

Fig. 6 (below).Jackson Pollock.

Untitled,c. 1938-41.Pencil and colored
pencil on paper, 14%x 10in. (36.2 x
25.4 cm.). The MetropolitanMuseum
of Art, NewYork.Purchase, anonymous
gift, 1990

Fig.7 (opposite top). Jackson Pollock.

Bald Womanwith Skeleton,c. 1938-41.
Oil on the smooth side of fiberboard
attached to stretcher, 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x
60.9 cm.). CourtesyJoanT.Washburn
Callery, NewYork

provides iconographic material for many of

Pollock's sketchbook drawings, as well as for
the so-called "psychoanalytic drawings" he
made in 1939. These later doodles work out a
synthesis of Orozco and Picasso that is never
completely undone, and recurs strikingly in
the "black paintings" of 1951, linking one "slow
burn" to another.
For the rest—and there is much more —
one may turn to the work of scholars who
have identified Pollock's specific borrowings
from Orozco: heavy crosses and crucifixions;
machinelike body parts, derived from Oroz-
co's transformation of Cortes in armor into a
symbol of the industrial age (figs. 5 and 6);

48
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Fig. 3. JoseClemente Orozco. Man of Fire. 1938-39. Fresco, 127square meters. Instituto Cultural
Cabahas, Cuadalajara

Fig. 4. Jackson Pollock. Untitled, c. 1939. Enamel on Limoges porcelain bowl, diameter ll/« in., depth
S in. (diameter 28.3 cm, depth 12.7cm). Location unknown

45 awfully slow burn." Yet such "slow burns" are as

typical of Pollock's assimilation process as are
his more forthright imitations —of Benton,
say, or of Picasso or Miro. Although Prome
theus struck Pollock as "the greatest paint
ing done in modern times" when he saw
it in 1930, his work most obviously
influenced by Orozco did not appear
until 1938. Little of Pollock's work from
his first years in New York survives, but
judging from what does, the earliest picture
to evidence the "Orozco effect" is The Flame
(c. 1934-38), a generalized approximation of
Orozco's imagery and style that strangely anticipates
the Mexican artist's grand and much reproduced Man of Fire fresco of 1938-39
(fig. 3). A minor work possibly inspired by the same painting is a porcelain bowl
that Pollock made around 1939 (fig. 4). Orozco's Dartmouth cycle meanwhile

47
 ROBERT STORR

Civilization (1932-34; fig. 8). Untitled

[Naked Man with Knife] (c. 1938-40), like
several red conte sketchbook drawings, a
gouache of c. 1938-41 (fig. 9), and the later
Black and White Painting III (c. 1951; fig 17)
evoke Orozco's Barricade (1931; fig. 10); the
head of a woman in profile in Composition
with a Woman (c. 1938-41) closely resem
bles that of the main figure in Orozco's
Allegoryof Mexico(1940). Untitled [Composi
tion with Donkey Head] (fig. 11) and Compo
sition with Ritual Scene (both c. 1938-41)
call to mind aspects of the horizontal com
positions of Orozco's frescoes at the New
Fig. 9. Jackson Pollock. Untitled, c. 1938-41. School, at Dartmouth, at the Supreme
/,
3 Gouache on paper, 22V. x I7 in. (57.8 x 45.1 cm).
The Metropolitan Museumof Art, Gift of Lee
Court in Mexico City, and at the Hospicio
Krasner Pollock, 1982 Cabanas in Guadalajara (fig. 12).

Fig. 10. Jos4Clemente

Orozco. Barricade.1931.Oil on
canvas, 55 x 45 in. (139.7x
114.3cm). The Museum of
Modern Art, New York. Given
anonymously

50
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

serpents reminiscent of
Quetzalcoatl; skulls; horses;
bulls; predatory bird heads;
phalanxes of riotous stick
figures; piled corpselike
figures; quasi-religious
compositions that recall
Renaissance depositions;
eroticized violenceand ana
tomical contortions; piled-
up fractured volumes; a
frenzied bundling of brush
or graphic strokes; a compulsive reiteration of contours that implodes
volumes; an elision of contours that fuses shapes, making it impossible to
separate one mass from another; and a dark earth-tone palette of harsh greens,
46 reds, yellows, and blacks—the slash-and-burn colors of Orozco.
Some of Pollock's compositions may be traced to a single source. The cen
tral figure in Bald Woman with Skeleton (c. 1938-41; fig. 7) is plainly modeled on
the skeleton in the Gods of the Modern Worldpanel from Orozco's Epic of American

Fig. 8. Jos6 Clemente Orozco. Gods of the Modern World (The Epic of American Civilization, panel 17). 1932-34. Fresco,
10 ft. x c. 14ft. 7 in. (304.8 x 444.5 cm). Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H. Commissioned by the
Trustees of Dartmouth College

49
 ROBERT STORR

"Benton taught Pollock about ideals of beauty," Pollock's friend Peter Busa
47 told Friedman; "these Mexicans taught him that art could be 'ugly.'" While this
is true, it is more true of Orozco than of Siqueiros, whose painting did not use ugli
ness as a deliberate expressive means so much as it courted vulgarity in a drive
to overpower the spectator and modernize the Baroque. Pollock's interest in Si
queiros mirrored his attraction to Benton, and reflected his always frustrated de
sire for structure and system. Orozco answered to his deepest creative impulses.
Horn recalls, "The Mexicans . . . provided us with a direction away from the
parochialism in which most of us had been caught. Being mural-minded, or
wall-eyed as someone once said, Jack . . . was deeply stirred by the Mexican
artists' ability to combine social revolutionary themes with a widespread public
usage of their talents to create a new artistic language. . . . the possibilities inher
ent in the experimentation at the Siqueiros workshop offered [Pollock] a way out
48 of his lack of technical facility." But Pollock hesitated before taking that "way
out." Not only is the timing of his most concentrated dialogue with Orozco out
of sync with his initial infatuation with the artist, it follows ironically close on
the heels of his experience in the Siqueiros workshop. It is as if the young
American had spun out from his encounter with the latter into the orbit of the
former, ready at long last to experiment with the language of his long-standing
hero. With minor or qualified exceptions there were no immediate signs of
Siqueiros's influence on Pollock's painting. Conceivably the maelstrom of waves,
poles, and flags in Pollock's Untitled[Compositionwith Figuresand Banners] (c. 1934-
38) was a response to Siqueiros's Stop the War and Birth of Fascism (first version;
fig. 13), both of 1936. It is also possible that the Whore of Babylon figure in the
Birth of Fascism was a model for the monstrous mother in Pollock's Untitled
(Woman) of c. 1935-38 (fig. 14). The spray gun-retouched lithographs Untitled
[Landscapewith Steer](c. 1936-37) and Figures in a Landscape (1937) represent the
only known examples of Pollock's immediate use of the experimental techniques
taught by Siqueiros during the 1930s, though evidence of sprayed paints appears
49 later in Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950 (plates 17 and 18).
Pollock's reluctance to apply Siqueiros's lessons is noteworthy. There was
no other precedent in his experience for allover treatment of the sort found in
several of his own early works. But when he chose to do something resembling
the muralist's preparatory surfacing, he stuck to traditional tools; and this
remained true for years after he took part in Siqueiros's team. Once again, the
standard chronologies of his work make the exact sequence of events a guessing
game. Untitled [Overall Composition] (c. 1934-38) is the first instance in which
Pollock covered an entire canvas with marks and colors of equal vibrancy. It is
hard to imagine that the work represents anything other than the first step in a
technique adapted from Siqueiros, which, however, he for some reason chose
not to carry forward to the point of superimposing an image upon this prepared

52
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Fig. II. Jackson Pollock. Untitled [Composition with Donkey Head], c. 1938-41. Oil on canvas, 2l/» x 50 in.
(55.6 x 127cm.). The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Major Acquisitions Centennial Fund; Estate of
Florene Schoenborn; through prior acquisitions of Mary and Leigh Block, Mr. and Mrs. Carter H.
Harrison, Marguerita S. Ritman, and Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Borland

Fig. 12.Jos6 Clemente Orozco. La Belicosidad (The Spanish Conquest: War Scene).1938-39. Fresco, 45 square meters.
Instituto Cultural Cabartas, Cuadalajara

More correspondences of this kind exist, and others will no doubt be

brought to light. But the iconographic details matter less than the general atti
tudes Orozco's work encouraged, and the vocabulary of form construction and
destruction it made available. Orozco's inner fury matched Pollock's volcanic
anxiety, but, more significant from an aesthetic perspective, his disregard for bal
anced design and measured gesture, his tendency to overload paintings until
they came apart at the seams, and his "un-French" aggressiveness of affect were
more important, setting a standard that lay within both Pollock's own emotional
range and, no less significant, his technical grasp.

51
ROBERT STORR

Fig. 15. David Alfaro Siqueiros. Portrait of the Bourgeoisie.1939-40. Pyroxylin on cement, 100 square meters. In the
stairway of the Sindicato Mexicano de Electristas, Mexico City. Sala de Arte Publico David Alfaro Siqueiros-Consejo
Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes-lnstituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (CONACULTA-INBA)

Fig. 16. Diagram

of Siqueiros's
composition for
Portrait of the
Bourgeoisie,Mexico
City, by Dolores
Valdivia Hurlburt

54
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Fig. 13(above). David Alfaro

Siqueiros. Birth of Fascism(first
version). 1936. Pyroxylin on
masonite, 24 x 29"/« in. (61 x
76 cm). Sala de Arte Publico
David Alfaro Siqueiros-
Consejo Nacional para la
Cultura y las Artes-lnstituto
Nacional de Bellas Artes
(CONACULTA-INBA)

Fig. 14(left). Jackson Pollock.

Untitled (Woman), c. 1935-38?
Oil on fiberboard, 14/» x iO'Ain.
(35.8 x 26.6 cm). Nagashima
Museum, Kagoshima City

ground. The She-Wolf (1943; plates 25 and 26) shows Pollock pursuing Siqueiros's
course all the way, but in a personal idiom. Reading down through the layers, it
would seem that the painting was begun with washes of dilute pigment daubed
and spattered in a modulated patchwork of blues, greens, reds, yellows, and
grays that the artist subsequently cropped and brushed over with opaque paint
to delineate the picture's animal form.
The She-Wolf accords with Siqueiros's model procedurally but not stylisti
cally, which explains why it has been so easy to ignore or make little of that
aspect of its origins. But Pollock's separation of formal strategies from formal
solutions is instructive. In this respect, the basic conservativism of his ideas

53
 ROBERT STORR

Fig. 17.Jackson Pollock.

Blackand WhitePainting
III. c. 1951.Enamelon can
vas, 35x31 in. (89x79
cm.). Privatecollection

Around the same time, Krasner remembered watching him paint "heads, parts of
bodies, fantastic creatures," then covering them with webs of pigment. "Once I
asked Jackson why he didn't stop painting when a given image was exposed. He
54 said, 'I choose to veil the imagery.'" These are the mechanisms of repression in
operation. But we know that during this same period, Pollock's friend Tony
Smith—who would later paint a sculpture, Eighty-One More (1970), a deep
"Orozco" red, and whose brother, Joseph, had contributed to Orozco's Dart
mouth mural —was actively encouraging a renewal of Pollock's interest in their
by-then-unfashionable hero. Pictures confirm the connection: Black and White
Painting III (fig. 17), for example, recalls not only earlier Orozco-like crucifixion
imagery but Orozco's Barricade (fig. 10), in The Museum of Modern Art since
1937, while Number 11, 1951 and Number 14, 1951 (fig. 18) reprise crammed,
horizontal paintings of Pollock's such as Untitled [Composition with Donkey Head]
(fig. 11), Man, Bull, Bird, and RecliningFigure, all from c. 1938-41, when Pollock
was most under Orozco's influence.
Pollock's debt to Siqueiros was more deeply submerged, and more closely
tied to technique. Absent direct graphic or thematic borrowings, one looks to
methodology, while listening to the undertones of Pollock's rhetoric for clues to

56
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

about painting at this time can never be underestimated. Siqueiros's teaching

broke too many conventions all at once for Pollock to accept in a single stroke.
As exciting as the Mexican's innovations were, and as essential to Pollock's
breakthrough canvases of the later 1940s as they would ultimately be, Pollock
took them on one at a time, translating the first in the series—allover composi
tion —back into the language of brush and palette before moving on to try drip
ping on top of rather than under brush-and-palette pictures later in 1943.
Furthermore, Siqueiros's style raised some of the same obstacles Pollock had
faced in Benton and would face again in Picasso: whereas Orozco crushed per
spective and reduced volumes to simple contrasts of light and dark, Siqueiros's
intricate perspectival puzzles and full-bodied figures required spatial organiza
tion that Pollock was simply incapable of mastering. There are no Siqueiros-type
paintings in Pollock's production because, after his failure to learn the rudiments
of classical modeling and Renaissance mise-en-scene from Benton, he was acutely
aware that much of what Siqueiros did was inaccessible to him. It was as if he
suffered a kind of pictorial dyslexia in his ability to coordinate three-dimen
sional geometries. But remove volume from the elliptical constellations in
schematic drawings of Siqueiros's Portrait of the Bourgeoisie (figs. 15 and 16),
spreading them flat across a rectangular plan, and Pollock's looping, pyrotech
nic gesture maps over them with intriguing congruence. The issue is less a mat
ter of sources than of sympathetic chords resonating between two very different
bodies of work. "Jack did not have a logical mind," according to Benton, "but he
did catch on to the contrapuntal logic of accidental form construction quite
quickly. In his analytic work he got things out of proportion but found the
50 essential rhythm." Unable to paint Siqueiros's way and disinclined to paint for
Siqueiros's reasons, Pollock nevertheless gradually absorbed the Mexican artist's
techniques while responding to his essential, space-spinning rhythm.

Harold Bloom's theory of the "anxiety of influence" —according to which the

poet/son creatively misreads the work of the poet/father —has become a critical
51 commonplace. The notion that the "repressed" always reasserts itself, in forms
altered by previous denial, is likewise a Freudian staple. The compound effects of
such imaginative misprision and of conscious or unconscious repression require
that we assess the transmission of artistic ideas not only by resemblances but by
attenuations and distortions, not only by what is said but by what is left unsaid
or never quite said. Evasions of this order easily blur with tactical reticence; no
less an artist than Richard Serra once told a friend, "You are only as good as the
52 obscurity of your sources." Pollock seemingly arrived at a similar conclusion.
Pollock never spoke of Orozco or Siqueiros in public; in private he occa
sionally tipped his hand. Writing to Alfonso Ossorio, in 1951, about works in
53 progress, Pollock noted that "some of my early images [are] coming thru."

55
 ROBERT STORR

acquainted with Siqueiros's doctrine of "controlled accident," and to Siqueiros

himself. Pollock was cutting his ties with the unacknowledged past, yet acknowl
edging those ties in denying them.
Pollock's pairing of artistic technique and industrial technology in his
remarks to Wright also echoes Siqueiros, and is atypical of his statements or con
versation elsewhere. "My opinion," he says, "is that new needs need new tech
niques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making
their statements. It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age,
the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or
of any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique." And, "The modern
artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical means of repre
senting objects in nature such as the camera and the photograph. The modern
artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world—in other
59 words—expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces." Compare
these observations to Siqueiros's 1934 manifesto "Toward a Transformation of
the Plastic Arts," a prototype for Siqueiros's program in New York: "Art move
ments should always developin accordancewith the technical possibilities of their age.
Modern technique and mechanics have made such enormous progress that they
60 can enrich our creative capacities beyond our wildest imagination."
Paraphrasing Siqueiros in this way, Pollock left the door open for later critics to
propose a correspondence between his own atomization of pictorial form and
61 field and the dawn of the nuclear age. In fact, though, his interests were not at
all forward-looking in this sense; his basic orientation both psychologically and
culturally was retrospective or archaeological, a matter of unearthing arche
types—and then reburying them —rather than creating metaphors for revolu
tionary science. Pollock's statement has a different significance than its literal
meaning: his choice of words and their futuristic ring are undigested rhetorical
remnants of his involvement with Siqueiros.
By 1950, Pollock was remaking from the inside out what he had taken from
the Mexican artist. His contribution went beyond just treating the aleatory
effects arrived at by dripping as an abstract image (rather than as a set-up for fig
62 uration, as Siqueiros had); he pulled a new pictorial continent out of Siqueiros's
grab bag of studio tricks. Where Siqueiros tended to condense mottled colors in
opaque masses, Pollock put underpainted areas into play with applied lines,
allowing an interpenetration of spatial layers. He gave himself a mesh that was
almost infinitely flexible, infinitely adjustable, in the tightness or openness of its
weave. The result was painting that optically receded and advanced yet remained
intensely tactile and unequivocally of the surface. Siqueiros had diluted paint
with thinners to create explosive or miasmic details; Pollock refined this novel
variant on wet-into-wet painting to the point where he could control the periph
eral "blooming" of his enamel filaments, drawing with the graying or silvering

58
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

his ulterior promptings. His remark of 1947 in Rosenberg's magazine Possibilities,

for example —"I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such
55 as the easel, palette, brushes, etc." —is not just a statement of fact, it is a delayed
echo of Siqueiros's campaign against "the stick with hairs on its end." At around
the same time, declaring his intent to "paint large movable pictures which will
function between the easel and mural" in his application for a Guggenheim
Fellowship, Pollock conjures the portable murals made in Siqueiros's Los Angeles
workshop by Lehman and Guston, as well as Orozco's frescoes at The Museum
56 of Modern Art.
Unlike Pollock's Rosenberg-edited comments in Possibilities or Greenberg-
coached Guggenheim application, the artist's 1950 interview with William
Wright was spontaneous. There the voice of an earlier mentor is unmistakable,
and Pollock's attempts at disguising its source are revealingly obvious. A ques
tion from Wright about why he paints as he does elicits this: "I paint on the floor
57 and this isn't unusual —the Orientals did that." In Possibilities three years
before, the precedent for working on the floor had been Native American sand
painting, as it would be again in Krasner's account; Siqueiros is conspicuous in
his absence, apparent though unnamed. Probed about his control over dripped
or poured pigments, Pollock replies, "With experience —it seems to be possible
to control the flow of the paint, to a great extent, and I don't use—I don't use
58 the accident —'cause I deny the accident." On one level this is a straightforward
rejoinder to the popular belief that his method was mad or haphazard; on another
the emphatic "I deny the accident" is directed to art-world contemporaries

Fig. 18. Jackson Pollock. Number 14, 1951. 1951.Enamel on canvas, 57% in. x 8 ft. 10 in. (146.4 x 269.2 cm). Tate Gallery,
London. Purchased with assistance from the American Fellowsof the Tate Gallery Foundation, 1988

57
 ROBERT STORR

has compared Pollock's drip pictures to Andy Warhol's Oxidation Paintings, in

effect ratifying the Naifeh and Smith reading and treating Warhol's retrospec
tively competitive joke as evidence that Pollock's work was the invitation to a
66 general "pissing contest" in American art.
But these imposed narratives fall away like excess baggage in the face of the
paintings themselves. The unburdened, untethered nature of Pollock's work
demands it. When it came in 1947—and even Krasner is unsure of the precise
moment —Pollock's resort to the floor was purely instrumental. You can't "drip"
on vertical canvas; you can only apply paint and let it drip after the painterly
gesture is complete. That was de Kooning's way from 1944 onward. Pollock had
another idea: unrolling canvas on the floor gave him room to maneuver. Yet this
prosaic decision made in cramped quarters had immense poetic consequences.
Although Pollock crawled out onto his canvas and stepped into it, the painterly
zone that determined the strange levitational gestalt of his most abstract works
was not the floor itself so much as the interval between his arm and the picture
67 plane. Pollock referred to the great drip paintings as "memories arrested in space,"
but Krasner aligned that metaphor with his way of working: "He is not drawing
68 on the canvas so much as in the air above it." In short, the floor caught the
residue of moves made independently of it.
Pollock did something else to release his pictures from the Vitruvian axis
conventionally projected onto painting. Though he sometimes executed paint
ings from one side only, he had access to all sides, and his interventions often
came from multiple angles, destroying the usual sense of an a priori top and bot
tom, left and right. De Kooning achieved this compass-spinning effect by rotat
ing his canvases on the easel; Pollock did so by circling them on the floor. Thus
Pollock exploited gravity to summon an antigravitational reality that for all its
visual and tangible immediacy —its opticality and physicality —was neither ver
tical nor horizontal in any mimetic or metaphoric sense, but always unto itself,
and, whether laid flat, hung high, or, like some works in the 1950 show at Betty
Parsons, abutted to the meeting place of floor and wall, always conditional in its
relation to either plane.

Pollock certainly knew Orozco's description of the mural as the "highest, the
most logical, the purest and strongest form of painting," for it appeared in the
issue of CreativeArt that he discussed with his brother Charles in 1929. He would
also have known that Siqueiros, by 1933, had repudiated easel painting alto
gether (although the artist continued to make small-format pictures throughout
his life). Against this background, and the background of Pollock's association
with "wall-eyed" artists of his own generation (Guston, Kadish, his brother
Sande), Pollock was abidingly ambivalent toward muralism. The dilemma he
addressed in his Guggenheim statement underscores this. Looking for a middle

60
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

that he anticipated in his primary lines as solvents bit into them. Paintings such
as Number 11A, 1948 (Black, White and Gray) (p. 148, fig, 7) and the X ray-like
Untitled (White on Black I) (c. 1948) display this virtuosity, while the use of tur
pentine- or benzine-diluted washes results in the stains and bleeds of Enchanted
Forest (1947; plate 36). Where Siqueiros added sand, glass, jigsaw-cut relief ele
ments, and so on, to texture his pictures or give them sculptural body, Pollock
allowed the detritus that found its way into his paintings to objectify the entire
painting process, such that the paint-tube caps, cigarettes, and other flotsam in
Full Fathom Five (1947; p. 104, fig. 2) underscore the "realism" of every painterly
mark in their vicinity. And where Siqueiros sometimes chipped away his quick-
drying, brittle nitrocellulose paints to rough up a passage or erase an unsatisfac
tory result, Pollock chiseled and scraped away the "negative" forms in Out of the
Web:Number 7, 1949 to expose the mid-stratum of the fiberboard as a color, leav
ing scored and skinned patches of the original paint inside the contours of these
excavated arabesques as a kind of shading or modeling of the otherwise flat
shapes. Furthermore, Pollock's practice of slicing figures out of paintings such as
Untitled (Shadows: Number 2, 1948), Untitled (Cut-Out) (c. 1948-50), and Untitled
(Cut-Out Figure) (1948), and of using both the positive, excised form and the neg
ative, mask or template form as the basis for new images, recalls the stencil-cut
ting methods used by Siqueiros, but applied to a different, collage-related pur
pose. Finally, recalling Lehman's description of the May Day float Pollock saw at
the Siqueiros workshop, the handprints in Number 1A, 1948 (plate 2) may in part
be traced back to techniques used there.
Painting on the floor was standard in the Siqueiros workshop. Pollock
adopted the procedure, but eventually realized possibilities never imagined by
his predecessor. The transformation of the vertical easel painting into an expan
sive horizontal has given rise to much exegesis. Tony Smith was among the first
to assign metaphoric content to it; thinking like the architect and sculptor he
was, while also evoking Pollock's attachment to the fields around his Long Island
house, Smith said, "[Pollock's] feeling for the land had something to do with
his painting canvases on the floor ... it seemed that the [canvas] was the earth,
63 that he was distributing flowers over it." This pastoral vision, however, rein
troduces into the picture an implicit horizon line that Pollock's method was
intended to eliminate.
Other interpretations associate Pollock's spillage of paint on the floor with
physical debasement and bodily fluids. Once again, Smith spoke first: in the
drunken state in which he and Pollock jointly made the first forays onto the
unblemished canvas of Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952, Smith said of the violently
64 splotched painting, "It looks like vomit." Pollock biographers Naifeh and Smith
link Pollock's drip technique to childhood memories of his father pissing on a
65 rock, and so to masculine display generally. In the same vein, Rosalind Krauss

59
 ROBERT STORR

That said, the mural was intermittently a central concern of Pollock's, from
his most productive years on through to the very end. From the early 1950s until
the painter's death, Tony Smith kept insisting that "great art demands an appro
71 priate scale," and his prolonged but ultimately unsuccessful bid to design a
church around an ensemble of Pollock's painting was conceived in support of
this belief. Pollock's efforts to secure mural commissions linked aesthetic ambi
tion to economic survival, but resulted in only one project, for the Geller House
in 1950—another instance of "an easel picture, just bigger." Parallel to Smith's
church was the architect Peter Blake's plan to build an "Ideal Museum" in which
Pollock's paintings would be suspended "between earth and sky," and mirrors
72 reflecting them would infinitely extend their imagery. The architecture curator
Arthur Drexler of The Museum of Modern Art discussed Blake's model in these
terms: "In the treatment of the paintings as walls, the design recalls an entirely
different kind of pictorial art; that of the Renaissance fresco. The project suggests
a reintegration of painting and architecture wherein painting is architecture, but
this time without message or content. Its sole purpose is to heighten our experi
73 ence of space."
Theoretically we have come full circle—from the frescoes of the Mexican
muralists, which were directly inspired by Renaissance painting, to holistic
spaces that translate the Renaissance idea of the unity of painting and architec
ture into the language of modernist abstraction. But despite his on-again, off-
again interest in the ideas put before him by Smith and Blake—ideas reinforced
but also qualified by his experiences of the 1930s—Pollock never really came to
terms with the fundamental aesthetic challenges inherent in these proposals.
The settings for or relations among pictures seem to have interested him only
when prompted; they were never decisive factors in how he conceived or exe
cuted his work. There are no groups of his paintings that cohere as a series or
whose sum is greater than its parts, and he left the placement of individual can
vases or panels to others.
The cul-de-sac in which Pollock found himself in the early 1950s was not
simply a matter of booze and fame, or of the conflict between abstraction and
figuration. Nor, to the extent that he struggled to vary his painterly attack so
long as he painted at all, was it even an issue of repeating himself. Implicit in all
that Pollock had achieved by that time was the problem of painting's situation.
Confronting that problem head-on was the unfinished business of his career,
and his failure to do so sealed his fate as surely as any of the other contingencies
that closed in around him.
Published just two years after the artist's death, Allan Kaprow's article "The
Legacy of Jackson Pollock" raised this question squarely, but answered it at paint
ing's expense. Pollock's method had been exhausted, Kaprow argued: "The act of
painting, the new space, the personal mark that builds its own form and mean-

62
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

term "between the easel and mural," Pollock seemed to be looking ahead to the
latter as the future and back on the former as, in his own words, "a dying form."
In fact the opposite was true.
The question of painting's site was not a new or incidental issue to Pollock's
contemporaries after the war. "Architectonics" was a central concern for the
Mexicans, as a result of their public commissions, and of the challenge of inte
grating modern art into heavy colonial structures. All of the Big Three spoke or
wrote about the problem, and anticipated the day when it might be possible to
collaborate with architects in creating buildings where murals were a structurally
determining component rather than an afterthought. An echo of this preoccu
pation can be heard in Charles Pollock's 1929 letter to Jackson: "My interest in
mural painting definitely related to architecture has lead me lately to think of
69 returning to Los Angeles if I could get work with Wright."
Pollock never made the same "definite" connection between mural paint
ing and architecture. Lacking substantial commissions and largely indifferent to
the public ideals of Depression-era mural painting, he had little external motive
for thinking along these lines. Even when he undertook his mural-scale work for
Peggy Guggenheim, he seems not to have considered the formal aspects of the
problem, nor was he encouraged to. To help Pollock past the block that had
delayed his work on the painting, Peter Busa told him, "Look, Jack, this isn't the
Project [i.e., the Works Progress Administration]. You don't have to get the plan
70 approved by a committee. Treat it like an easel picture, just bigger." And that is
exactly what Mural is—an easel picture, just bigger. The cavalcade of stick figures
that animates the painting's expanse —figures strongly reminiscent of Orozco's
depictions of masses of people in motion, as in The Dictators (1936-39) —almost
diagrams the formal possibilities inherent in the lateral scanning of the image by
an ambulatory spectator, but Pollock did not fully exploit those possibilities in
Mural, nor did he pursue them in later paintings. Siqueiros's Plastic Exercise of
1934 and his Portrait of the Bourgeoisieof 1939-40 were designed with just such
a spectator in mind, and the lessons he drew from the first of these two experi
ments in compound perspectives, shifting scale, extreme foreshortening, and
multiple vantage points were the topic of lectures given at the New School and
must have been in the air at the Union Square workshop.
Although Pollock painted numerous big pictures, comparatively few are of
mural proportions, and with the exception of friezelike canvases such as Lucifer
(1947), Number 7A, 1948, White Cockatoo: Number 24A, 1948, and Number 2,
1949, he made no works with obvious "architectural" implications until the
summer of 1950, when in rapid succession he completed Number 32, 1950 (plate
3), One: Number 31, 1950 (plate 4), and Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 (plate
5). Afterward, only Number 11, 1951, Convergence:Number 10, 1952, Portrait and
a Dream (1953), and Blue Poles approach the same grandeur.

61
 ROBERT STORR

behalf. Smith's church project was an outgrowth of discussions among patrons

eager to sponsor a modern chapel like the one Matisse was then creating at
79 Vence, France. But Matisse's Epicurean approach to the "decorative" was at odds
with Pollock's defiantly antibourgeois attitudes. Conceivably Greenberg or Kras-
ner might have interceded to unsnarl this socio-aesthetic knot and clarify the
promise of Matisse's advances beyond easel painting, but it seems they did not.
Meanwhile, situational painting of the kind indicated by Pollock's work fell
outside the scope of Picasso, the other deity of Pollock's circle. As influential as
the mural-scale Guernica had been on Pollock, it was an exception in Picasso's
oeuvre, and stood apart from the space it occupied as a self-contained work of art.
Since Pollock's death, other painters have responded to the challenge his
work posed but did not meet. Yves Klein's 1957-59 sponge murals for Gelsen-
kirchen are one example, Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross works are
another, as are Mark Rothko's groups of canvases for the restaurant at the Four
Seasons in New York, for the de Menil Chapel in Houston (both of these designed
by Philip Johnson), and for Harvard University. In the 1970s, David Novros
painted true frescoes in the Manhattan loft of Donald Judd, among other places,
and in the 1980s Robert Ryman made a suite of paintings for a single room for
the collector Gerald Elliot. Ellsworth Kelly has recently embarked on several pub
lic commissions, and Robert Mangold has experimented with architectonic anom
alies in serial works, though he has yet to execute such a series for a specific loca
tion. Frank Stella has labored on numerous architectural and quasi-architectural
projects aimed at giving painting added dimensions within spaces expressly
designed or redesigned for it, and Sol LeWitt, though not a painter, has con
ceived many integrated interiors. The fact remains, however, that the prospects
Pollock's work identified for painting (as distinct from performance or installa
tion) but did not follow through on are still largely unexploited.
At this point, to dsk, once again, "What was the relationship between Pol
lock and the Mexican muralists?" may seem anachronistic or simply perverse.
The purpose, however, is not to address more gaps and errors in the critical lit
erature, but to benefit from an unexpected perspective on a historical turning
point and the impasse it created for painting. Looking back on Pollock's predica
ment in the 1950s, one wonders whether the "best" point of departure he could
have chosen at this point was the least rather than the most likely one —Si-
queiros rather than Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, or any other European mod
ernist. Though this was the moment when Orozco partially reclaimed his loyalty,
Siqueiros's notion of an all-encompassing painting was potentially the more
open-ended formal match for Pollock's total but already problematic command
of the allover painting. Moreover, Siqueiros's inability or unwillingness to reject
ideology for the sake of the aesthetic possibilities he had discovered left the way
clear for Pollock to assert himself without constraint. Like Benton, Siqueiros rep-

64
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

ing, the endless tangle, the great scale, the new materials are by now cliches of
college art departments." The space that Pollock had opened up remained—
"some of the implications inherent in these new values are not as futile as we all
began to believe. . . . Not all the roads of this modern art lead to ideas of final
ity"—but Pollock himself "was unable because of illness or for other reasons to
do anything about this. He created some magnificent paintings, but he also
74 destroyed painting." His example, then, pointed beyond the medium of paint
ing. "Pollock ignored the confines of the rectangular field in favor of a continuum
going in all directions simultaneously, beyond the literal dimensions of any
work. ... In an older work, the edge was a far more precise caesura: here ended
75 the world of the artists; beyond began the world of the spectator and reality."
Thanks to Rosenberg's portrait of the "action painter" and Hans Namuth's widely
circulated films and photographs of Pollock at work, that limitless space was
soon crowded with salvaged "reality" and bodies in motion that brought artists
and spectators together in performative collaboration.
Even before Pollock's death, members of the Gutai group in Japan had
made this aesthetic leap, and soon after it European artists followed suit. In 1960,
the Austrian Giinter Brus covered the walls of his studio with paper and painted
a total gestural environment, but by 1962 he was writing in his diary, "Pollock
talks of the endless picture —he wants (as far as I can understand it) the picture
to be part of the universe ... I find this way of thinking out of date. Yes, I want
to see paintings in the same way (and thus, really, to do away with paintings and
make them into a section cut out of the world)—but this world should . . . con
tain not just the marks I've made, but rhythms, screams, sleep, bean soup, long
76 haired dachshunds, typhoons, ceaseless melodies, etc, etc, etc." Around the
world, artists and critics thus began to view Pollock's truncated career as em
blematic of the "destruction" of painting from within, leaving neo-Dada and its
cargo of found objects, intellectual conceits, and riddling gestures to fill the
void. But in jumping to these conclusions, avant-garde art bypassed the hurdle
in front of which Pollock had balked.
Discussing the "Ideal Museum" with Blake, Pollock once complained to the
77 architect that "the trouble is you think I am a decorator." This contempt for
decoration was shared by many of his contemporaries, and grew more acute as
the market for Abstract Expressionism took off in the mid-1950s: the risk of co-
optation was keenly felt. Rosenberg, in his double-edged characterization of the
Pollock-like "action painter," had warned against "apocalyptic wallpaper" —art
78 with the aura of existential struggle but the function of ornament. The alter
native was for artists to control the circumstances in which paintings found
themselves, to make paintings for a place in which they were the raison d'etre
rather than the backdrop.
This was the option that both Blake and Tony Smith explored on Pollock's

63
 ROBERT STORR

logically sequential and roughly parallel to the general thrust of modernism does
violence to the facts and obscures the reasons for and limitations upon his sin
gular importance.
The riddle that must be addressed but will never be completely solved was
best described by one of Pollock's contemporaries, George McNeil, one of the
many artists of their generation who looked to Paris in the certainty that Matisse
and Picasso pointed the way ahead. McNeil's rueful admiration for Pollock
speaks volumes to those who, unwilling to cope with the detours their hero
took, prefer to minimize the confusion still surrounding his life and art in order
to make him the standard-bearer of their modernist teleologies. "What was inter
esting about Pollock," for McNeil, "is that he came from very bad influences like
Benton and the Mexican muralists and other antipainterly influences, and yet
somehow, in a kind of alchemy, he took all the negatives and made them into a
positive. It's a mystery. The rest of us were following the right path and there
84 fore the magic didn't issue."
McNeil's puzzlement has been widely shared for half a century. But while
the mystery of Pollock will never be exhausted, the dynamic polarities of his art
were always there to be reckoned with. Taking full account of them is the test of
seriousness. When American criticism concedes that Pollock's engagement with
influences that offended mid-century formalist thinking is in the final analysis
central rather than peripheral to his art, it will at long last have overcome its
myopia and outgrown the provincialism of which that myopia was a symptom.

66
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

resented "something against which to react very strongly, later on." Pollock did
push off from Siqueiros in his refinement of the drip technique, but he did not
take the next step, and amnesia or antipathy toward Siqueiros within his New
York cohort ensured that no complex analysis of what muralism in its fully
evolved state could mean for abstract painting was ever developed. Site-specific
painting was the road not taken.

Pollock's genius was his dividedness, his attraction to antithetical ideas. Gestural
painting bound such opposites together for a while. Then they fell out of solution.
The last five years of Pollock's career saw an inversion of an artist's usual
development. Whereas most painters work through influences and provisional
manners toward a signature style that they then try to extend, Pollock spent his
last years fitfully cultivating the several different types of painting that consti
tuted the precipitated elements of his once-synthesized allover pictures.
Although he produced individual works of merit, he could not sustain the effort.
Unlike de Kooning, Pollock could not find enough in painterly nuance alone to
satisfy his larger aesthetic needs.
As A1Held once said of de Kooning, Picasso had given artists of the 1940s
80 and '50s "a language you could write your own sentences with." Many did just
that. Pollock, though, had invented a language of his own—but failed to under
stand how far it could take him. "It seems obvious that here was a man who was
stuck in syntax and wanted to get out," the poet Ann Lauterbach remarked on
81 leaving the recent retrospective. Having gotten out, he remained trapped by a
limited sense of the formal constructs his syntax-free "sentences" might fill.
Unable to paint his way out of the corner, Pollock was at the same time inca
pable of freeing himself conceptually from the tenacious conventions of the
"easel" picture, which continued to haunt his floor-painted works. The bitter
irony is that within his own experience a paradigm for what might be attempted
already existed.
Although cracks in the Pollock myth have widened, and scholars are now
pursuing lines of inquiry previously discouraged by mainstream critics and his
torians, a tendency to clean up Pollock's act persists. Greenberg once said that
Pollock's "culture as a painter" made him especially sensitive to the medium's
82 true nature. It was precisely the breadth of Pollock's painting culture and the
extremes between which it positioned him that made him an exception among
his peers, but his efforts to reconcile these extremes taxes the imagination of
those uncomfortable with contradictions and prone to linear thinking. In reality,
artistic accomplishment is seldom represented by the progress from A to Z in
roughly alphabetical order, but more closely resembles the round-about move
83 ment from A to B and from there, perhaps, to C, by way of Q, Z, H, and D.
Pollock followed just such an unpredictable course. To describe his evolution as
ROBERT STORR

tions of Marc Chagall, Lyonel Fein- shop were still alive and accessible: ered at The Detroit Institute of Arts,
inger, and Jackson Pollock," p. 165. New York-area artists Lehman and 1986. In Lehman's archives.
19. Greenberg, quoted in Naifeh and Claire Moore (formerly Claire Mahl), 41. Ibid.
Smith, JacksonPollock:An American and Axel Horn (formerly Axel Horr), 42. Horn, "Jackson Pollock: The
Saga, p. 556. who published his article "Jackson Hollow and the Bump," pp. 85-86.
20. Lee Krasner, quoted in Bruce Pollock: The Hollow and the Bump" 43. Naifeh and Smith, Jackson
Glaser, "Jackson Pollock: An Inter (The CarletonMiscellany1 no. 3 Pollock:An AmericanSaga, p. 415.
view with Lee Krasner," Arts 41 [Summer 1966]: 80-87) the summer 44. Krasner, quoted in Friedman,
no. 6 (April 1967): 37. before Rubin's series began to appear. "An Interview with Lee Krasner
21. Krasner, quoted in B. H. Fried Siqueiros too was alive and accessi Pollock," p. 7.
man, "An Interview with Lee Krasner ble, in Mexico; he died in 1974. 45. Ibid.
Pollock," JacksonPollock:Blackand 27. The Museum's founding director, 46. Writers who have drawn specific
White, exh. cat. (New York:Marl- Alfred H. Barr,Jr., met Rivera in iconographic correspondences be
borough-Gerson Gallery, 1969), p. 7. Moscow in 1929, on the same trip tween Orozco's work and Pollock's
22. Krasner, quoted in Barbara Rose, that put him in contact with include O'Connor, Stephen Polcari,
"Jackson Pollock at Work: An Inter Aleksandr Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Ellen Landau, and Lisa Mintz Mes-
view with Lee Krasner," Partisan and Vladimir Tatlin. singer, in texts cited in the first para
Review47 no. 1 (1980): 85. 28. Charles Pollock, letter to his graph and elsewhere in these notes.
23. Rubin, "Jackson Pollock and the brother Jackson Pollock, in Naifeh 47. Peter Busa, quoted in Friedman,
Modern Tradition," p. 14. and Smith, JacksonPollock:An JacksonPollock:EnergyMade Visible,
24. There is no record of Pollock's AmericanSaga, p. 143. p. 29.
interest in or response to Claude 29. Jackson Pollock, letter to his 48. Horn, "Jackson Pollock: The
Monet, much less to Monet's late, brother Charles Pollock, in Francis Hollow and the Bump," p. 86, and
"allover" water lily paintings in par Valentine O'Connor and Eugene in Naifeh and Smith, JacksonPollock:
ticular. This is not surprising since Victor Thaw, JacksonPollock:A An AmericanSaga, p. 288.
Pollock never visited Europe, where CatalogueRaisonneof Paintings, 49. These lithographs were in all
these works could be seen at Giverny Drawingsand Other Works(New likelihood made at the print studio
in the early 1950s—as Ellsworth Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1978; of Leonard Bogdanoff, just around
Kelly did—nor were examples to be hereafter referred to as ot), 4:207. the corner from Siqueiros's work
found in the permanent collections 30. Jose Clemente Orozco, "New shop. Pollock's Coal Miners (1936)—
of the major New Yorkmuseums. World, New Races and New Art," probably also printed in Bogdanoff's
The Museum of Modern Art acquired CreativeArt 4 no.l (January 1929): studio—is pure Orozco in its archi
its WaterLilies(c. 1920) three years 44-46. tectural masses and angular figura
after Pollock's death, and mounted 31.Jackson Pollock, letter to Charles tion. Bogdanoff went on to develop
its Monet exhibition a year after Pollock, in ot 4:208. and market synthetic paints such as
that. Rather than Pollock's learning 32. Lehman, conversation with the acrylics and Magna under the name
about alloverness from Monet—or author, 1998. Leonard Bocour, pursuing on his
somehow extrapolating from Monet's 33. See Naifeh and Smith, Jackson own some of the changes in paint
example without being fully con Pollock:An AmericanSaga, p. 298. technology anticipated by Siqueiros
scious of it—Americans learned to 34. Jackson Pollock, letter to his and Jose Gutierrez when they were
appreciate that quality in Monet father Leroy Pollock, dated February working around the corner from him
from Pollock. Rubin's argument 3, 1933. In ot 4:214. in 1936. On the use of the spray in
retroactively reverses that dynamic 35. Kadish, quoted in Friedman, LavenderMist, see James Codding-
of affinities. The "Monet effect" on JacksonPollock:EnergyMade Visible ton's essay in the present volume.
American painting of the period can (New York:McGraw-HillBook 50. Thomas Hart Benton, quoted in
be found instead in the work of Company, 1972), p. 11. O'Connor, "The Genesis of Jackson
Milton Resnick and Joan Mitchell, 36. Jackson Pollock, letter to his Pollock: 1912 to 1943," Artforum5
both "second generation" Abstract mother Stella and brother Sande no. 9 (May 1967): 17.
Expressionists (or "Abstract Impres Pollock, 1932. In ot 4:216. 51. Landau, Pepe Karmel, and Rosa
sionists" as the generally prejorative 37. Kadish, quoted in Naifeh and lind Krauss all cite Harold Bloom in
label was applied) belonging to the Smith, JacksonPollock:An American texts on Pollock. See Landau, "Jack
Europe-oriented, de Kooning faction Saga, p. 219. In the conversation son Pollock und die Mexikaner,"
of the Tenth Street community. See Kadish is remembering here, Pollock Siqueiros/Pollock-Pollock/Siqueiros,
Irving Sandler, "The Influence of was comparing Orozco with Siqueiros. exh. cat. (Dusseldorf: Kunsthalle
Impressionism on Jackson Pollock Apparently around three years later, Dusseldorf, 1995), vol. 2, Essays/
and His Contemporaries," Arts 53 Pollock was still telling Kadish, Dokumentation,pp. 38-54, and
no. 7 (March 1979): 110-11. "Orozco is the real man"; see Jeffrey Karmel and Krauss in their essays in
25. Rubin, "Jackson Pollock and the Potter, To a ViolentGrave:An Oral the present volume. For their source
Modern Tradition," pp. 14-15. Historyof JacksonPollock(New York: see Bloom, The Anxietyof Influence:
26. Rubin's description of Pollock's G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1985), p. 49. A Theoryof Poetry (London and New
involvement with Siqueiros is based 38. Lehman and Siqueiros, "The York:Oxford University Press, 1973).
on comments in a letter written by Siqueiros Experimental Workshop," 52. Richard Serra, quoted by Chuck
Charles Pollock, who, unlike his draft prospectus in Lehman's Close, in conversation with the
brothers Sande and Jackson, had no archives. author.
active involvement with the 39. Kadish, quoted in Naifeh and 53. Pollock, letter to Alfonso Ossorio,
Siqueiros Experimental Workshop. Smith, JacksonPollock:An American dated June 7, 1951. In ot 4:261.
When "Jackson Pollock and the Saga, p. 285. 54. Krasner, quoted in Friedman,
Modern Tradition" was written, at 40. Lehman, notes for a lecture on "An Interview with Lee Krasner
least three participants in the Work Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, deliv Pollock," p. 7.

68
 A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Notes

I am very grateful to Kirk Varnedoe Siqueiros seemed to me in every way viewpoints of Paris." This is the art-
for asking me to write this essay, and the energizing force that he appears historical equivalent of cutting to
to Pepe Karmel, his curatorial collab in the memory of Reuben Kadish, the chase. Hunter, "Jackson Pollock,"
orator in the Pollock exhibition, for Axel Horn, Harold Lehman, and oth The Museumof ModernArt Bulletin
his generosity in making his research ers. While in Mexico I made a con XXIVno. 2 (1956-57): 8. The short
available to me. In addition to the certed effort to see all of the murals chapter headed "The Mexicans" in
works cited below I am indebted to by him and his generation that I Frank O'Hara's 1959 monograph on
the following texts, all of which have could, and, in a later-day version, I Pollock talks mostly about Diego
contributed to the ongoing re witnessed some of the harsh social Rivera but acknowledges Pollock's
valuation of Pollock's relation to the and political circumstances that gave preference for Siqueiros and Orozco,
Mexican mural tradition: Jurgen rise to the mural movement. In the if in a qualified way: "The drawings
Harten, "When Artists Were Still end, the experience was more disillu and paintings done during this
Heroes," in Siqueiros/Pollock- sioning than inspiring, but I came period of Pollock's interest in Orozco
Pollock/Siqueiros,exh. cat. (Diissel- away from it with an abiding respect and Siqueiros, however, seem to me
dorf: Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, 1995), for what the muralists attempted, a to be studies of their unabashedly
pp. 43-57; Laurance P. Hurlburt, conviction that Orozco was an dramatic treatment of subject—it is
The MexicanMuralists in the United important artist deserving of far not art which interested him here,
States (Albuquerque: University of greater recognition, and a renewed but their convictions. American
New Mexico Press, 1989); Lisa Mintz appreciation of how ideology clouds 'social content' paintings in the
Messinger, "Pollock Studies the judgment. This essay is based in 1930s and early 1940s seem very
Mexican Muralists and the Surreal large part on what I learned at that tentative by comparison." Nothing is
ists: Sketchbook III," in The Jackson time, with the last lesson being said about the impact of these two
PollockSketchbooksin The Metropoli applied not only to the "naive" poli painters on Pollock's formal or tech
tan Museumof Art (New York:The tical aspirations of the 1930s and nical approach. O'Hara, Jackson
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997), after, but to "sophisticated" aesthetic Pollock(New York:George Braziller,
pp. 61-84; and Stephen Polcari, position-taking of the 1950s onward. 1959), pp. 14-15.
"Orozco and Pollock," AmericanArt,
10. Clement Greenberg, "The Present
Summer 1992, pp. 36-57, and 1. Of course an artist's work is never Prospects of American Painting and
"Jackson Pollock: Ancient Energies," wholly dictated by his or her inten Sculpture," 1947, in ArrogantPurpose,
Abstract Expressionismand the Modern tions, and may indeed run counter 1945-1949, vol. 2 of ClementGreen
Experience(Cambridge and New York: to them. But whether such inten berg: The CollectedEssaysand Critic
Cambridge University Press, 1991), tions are fulfilled or contradicted, ism, ed. John O'Brian (Chicago: at
pp. 233-62. I also owe thanks to they are, to the degree to which they the University Press, 1986), p. 166.
Miriam Kaiser of the Sala de Arte can be ascertained, significant. 11.Greenberg, "Review of Exhibitions
Publico Siqueiros, Mexico, for sup 2. Willem de Kooning, quoted in of Marc Chagall, Lyonel Feininger,
plying information in the Siqueiros Rudi Blesh, ModemArt USA:Men, and Jackson Pollock," 1943, in Per
archives, and to Anna Indych, who Rebellion,Conquest,1990-1956 ceptionsand Judgments,1939-1944,
assisted me in locating bibliographic (New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), vol. 1 of ClementGreenberg:The
material on several fronts, and pp. 253-54. CollectedEssays,p. 165.
whose scholarly enthusiasm is espe 3. Harold Rosenberg, "The American 12. Ibid, p. 166.
cially appreciated. Action Painters," Artnews51 no. 8 13. In his essay "'American-Type'
Finally I would like to acknowl (December 1952). Collected in The Painting," Partisan Review,Spring
edge my debt to David Alfaro Traditionof the New (New York: 1955, Greenberg wrote that Pollock
Siqueiros. In 1971, having been Horizon Press, 1959), p. 25. "compounded hints from Picasso's
through the events in France of 4. William S. Rubin, "Jackson Pollock calligraphy in the early '30s with
May 1968 and subsequent upheavals and the Modern Tradition," Artforum suggestions from [Hans] Hofmann,
in America, I was convinced that art 5 no. 6 (February 1967): 15. [Andre] Masson, and Mexican paint
and politics could somehow be 5. Gaston Bachelard, The Poeticsof ing, especially Siqueiros." But this
brought together in a unified prac Space(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), brief mention of muralism was the
tice. Based on that hope I contacted p. xxvi. only exception, and prompted no
Siqueiros (through the expatriate 6. Jackson Pollock, quoted in [Berton further analysis of the issue.
American artist Elizabeth Catlett) Roueche], "Unframed Space," The 14. Greenberg, quoted in Steven
and was invited by him to join the New Yorker26 no. 24 (August 5, Naifeh and Gregory White Smith,
team working on his last major pro 1950): 16. JacksonPollock:An AmericanSaga
ject, the Polyforum Cultural in 7. Ibid. (New York:Clarkson N. Potter, Inc,
Mexico City. I could not have been 8. Pollock, in "Jackson Pollock: A Publishers, 1989), p. 535.
less well prepared either artistically Questionnaire," Arts & Architecture 15. Greenberg, "Review of Exhibi
or politically for the reality I discov 61 no. 2 (February 1944): 14. tions of Worden Day, Carl Holty, and
ered. Nevertheless, Siqueiros received 9. The Chronology of Sam Hunter's Jackson Pollock," in ArrogantPurpose,
me graciously, gave me the opportu catalogue for the Pollock exhibition 1945-1949, p. 202.
nity to work both on the Polyforum at The Museum of Modern Art in 16. Greenberg, "The Present pros
and at his studio in Cuernavaca, wel 1956 notes "at least one call" by pects of American Painting and
comed me into his house, and spent Pollock on Siqueiros's New York Sculpture," p. 166.
hours explaining his ideas, his work, workshop, and briefly mentions Jose 17.Steve Wheeler, quoted in
and his actions—including his per Clemente Orozco. "Even when re Naifeh and Smith, JacksonPollock:
spective on the attack on Leon Trot sponding sympathetically to Mexi An AmericanSaga, p. 358; Harold
sky, which Joseph Losey came to can painting," Hunter wrote, "Pol Lehman, conversations with the
Mexico to discuss with him in prepa lock's interests were being diverted author, 1998.
ration for a film while I was there. to Picasso and the fresher formal 18. Greenberg, "Review of Exhibi-

67
 55. Pollock, "My Painting," Possibili 66. Krauss, The Optical Unconscious
ties no. 1 (Winter 1947-48): 79. (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press,
56. Pollock, application for a Guggen 1993), pp. 270, 276-77.
heim Fellowship, 1947. In ot 4:238. 67. Pollock, quoted in Naifeh and
57. Pollock, in William Wright, Smith, Jackson Pollock: An American
"An Interview with Jackson Pollock," Saga, p. 540.
broadcast on radio station WERI, 68. Krasner, quoted in Rose, "Jackson
Westerly, R.I., 1951. Published in Pollock at Work: An Interview with
Hans Namuth, Rose, Krauss, et al., Lee Krasner," p. 90.
Pollock Painting, ed. Rose (New York: 69. Charles Pollock, letter to his
Agrinde Publishers Ltd., 1980), n.p. brother Jackson Pollock, quoted in
58. Ibid. Naifeh and Smith, Jackson Pollock: An
59. Ibid. See also a Pollock holo American Saga, p. 143.
graph statement of 1950, in the 70. Busa, quoted in Naifeh and
artist's archive, and published in ot Smith, Jackson Pollock: An American
4:253: "Technic is the result of a Saga, p. 467.
need new needs demand new 71. Tony Smith, quoted in ibid.,
technics total control p. 613.
denial of the accident ." 72. Peter Blake, No Place like Utopia:
60. Lehman's descriptions of the Modern Architecture and the Company
aims of the Union Square Workshop We Kept (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
echo Siqueiros's language in much 1998), p. 110.
the same way as Pollock's words do 73. Arthur Drexler, quoted in ibid.,
here. The terms and slogans used in pp. 112-13.
the workshop would seem to have 74. Allan Kaprow, "The Legacy of
been deeply inscribed in the memo Jackson Pollock," Artnews 57 no. 6
ries of Siqueiros's assistants. (October 1958): 55.
61. See, for example, Serge Guilbaut, 75. Ibid., p. 56.
How New York Stole the Idea of Modern 76. Giinter Brus, in From Action
Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom Painting to Actionism: Vienna 1960-
and the Cold War, trans. Arthur Gold- 196 5. Giinter Brus, exh. cat. (Klagen-
hammer (Chicago: at the University furt: Ritter Verlag, 1988), pp. 126-27.
Press, 1983), p. 97, and T. J. Clark's 77. Blake, No Place like Utopia, p. 113.
essay in the present volume. 78. Rosenberg, "The American Action
62. Siqueiros's experiments with Painters," in The Tradition of the New,
poured, dripped, and spattered paint p. 34.
are quite unlike the exercises in 79. In an undated letter to Ossorio
automatism attempted by Francis from 1951, Pollock wrote, "Have you
Picabia, Joan Miro, Masson, and seen the Mattisse [sic] Church and
others of their circle. His use of design or is it terribly far from
industrial or commercial enamels Paris?" In ot 4: 258. Pollock was cer
inflected his abstract grounds with tainly curious about the project,
a materialism utterly different in fac- then, although he appears to have
ture and perceptual impact from the made no further comment on it.
dreamy ethers and Rorschach mind- 80. Al Held, quoted in Naifeh and
scapes of Surrealism. Pollock plainly Smith, Jackson Pollock: An American
responded to the poetry of the latter Saga, p. 714.
group, but opted for the physicality 81. Ann Lauterbach, conversation
of Siqueiros, and vastly expanded its with the author, 1998.
technical and expressive range. 82. Greenberg, quoted in Naifeh and
63. Tony Smith, quoted in Naifeh Smith, Jackson Pollock: An American
and Smith, Jackson Pollock: An Ameri Saga, p. 556.
can Saga, p. 541. I have followed 83. I owe this metaphor to Peter
Naifeh and Smith's example in sub Schjeldahl, who used it in conversa
stituting the word "canvas" for tion with me.
"glass" in the original quotation (in 84. George McNeil, quoted in Naifeh
Francine du Plessix and Cleve Gray, and Smith, Jackson Pollock: An Ameri
"Who Was Jackson Pollock?," Art in can Saga, p. 338.
America 55 no. 3 [May-June 1967]:
52), since Smith's views here do not
restrict the metaphor to Pollock's
brief experience of painting on glass,
in reference to which Smith's state
ment was made.
64. Tony Smith, quoted in Naifeh
and Smith, Jackson Pollock: An Ameri
can Saga, p. 6.
65. Naifeh and Smith, Jackson
Pollock: An American Saga, p. 541.
 PEPE KARMEL

- i

Fig. I. Pablo Picasso. Painter and Model.1926. Oilon canvas, 54/. in. x 8 ft. 5/. in. (137.5x 257 cm). Mus6ePicasso, Paris

4 shaded facets that produce a similar effect in Analytic Cubist paintings.

Greenberg's argument requires us to believe that Pollock jumped in a single
bound from the rectilinear grid of 1910-12 Cubism to the looping web of his
own mature work, without any of the intermediary studies that allow us to fol
low his absorption of Guernica, for instance. In fact, Pollock absorbed not one
but several of Picasso's styles, and in most of these cases we can trace the process
of diffusion and absorption virtually step-by-step.
Much of Picasso's evolution was visible to artists in New York, thanks to a
series of exhibitions held by the Valentine and Seligmann galleries in the late
1930s, and followed by the great Picasso retrospective of 1939 at The Museum of
Modern Art. Aspects of his work not represented in these exhibitions could be
studied in the pages of Cahiers d'Art, which published numerous studies and
drawings as well as finished paintings.
From the late 1930s through the end of his career, Pollock responded to
many aspects of Picasso's oeuvre. But the most important antecedent for his
work is a group of pictures that have received curiously little attention from
either Pollock or Picasso scholars: Picasso's interlace paintings of 1926, such as
Painter and Model (fig. 1). These works rephrased the allover field of Analytic
Cubism in a language of curves instead of straight lines, pointing a way beyond
the orthodoxy of contemporary abstraction. As the critic Carl Einstein com-

72
 A Sum of Destructions

Pepe Karmel

If strong artists deal with the anxiety of influence (to borrow Harold Bloom's
indispensable term) not by avoiding it but by incorporating and transforming
the work of their precursors, Pollock's artistic evolution can be understood as the
story of his changing response to, and eventual transcendence of, his European
sources. Above all, it is the story of his long wrestling match with Picasso—a
wrestling match conducted at long distance. Some of Picasso's most important
works Pollock could have known only in reproduction. Others he would have
absorbed secondhand, through paintings and drawings by other artists who had
been influenced by Picasso at an earlier date. When Freud died, in 1939, W. H.
Auden wrote that he had become "a climate of opinion." So too, in the 1930s
and '40s, Picasso's ideas and innovations were so widely diffused that no artist
1 could completely escape them. Lee Krasner recounted that when she and
Pollock were still living in New York, she once heard something fall in his stu
dio and then Pollock yelling, "God damn it, that guy missed nothing!" She went
in to see what had happened. "Jackson was sitting, staring, and on the floor was
2 a book of Picasso's work."
Pollock's relationship to Picasso is hardly news: scholars have often noted
his reworkings of motifs from paintings such as Girl before a Mirror (1932) or
Guernica (1937). Even more important than these individual borrowings, how
ever, are the different structural models offered by Picasso's pictures. Of these,
the most often discussed is the example of "allover" composition that Pollock
supposedly found in Analytic Cubism. Several critics have echoed Clement
Greenberg's statement that "by means of his interlaced trickles and spatters,
Pollock created an oscillation between an emphatic surface . . . and an illusion
of indeterminate but somehow definitely shallow depth that reminds me of
what Picasso and Braque arrived at thirty-odd years before, with the facet-planes
of their Analytical Cubism. . . . Pollock's 1946-1950 manner really took up
3 Analytical Cubism from the point at which Picasso and Braque had left it." The
problem is that the "interlaced trickles and spatters" that create the oscillation
between surface and depth in Pollock look nothing like the straight lines and

71
 PEPE KARMEL

Fig. 3. Pablo Picasso. La Crucifixion.1927.Drawing.Publishedin Cahiersd'Arti, 1927

interlace style appeared in the work of Masson, who, like Ernst, spent the war
years in New York. His work of these years is often close to Pollock's work of the
time, while his drawings and paintings of the mid-1920s closely anticipate the
11 allover interlace of Pollock's drip paintings. Ironically, though, Masson's own
skill as an academic draftsman subverted his transgressive ambitions: behind the
web of meandering lines, the viewer almost always senses the presence of a con
ventionally modeled figure (fig. 2).
The interlace style proved attractive to printmakers like Stanley William
Hayter, who played an important role in its diffusion. After working with Picasso
and the Surrealists in Paris from 1927 to 1940, Hayter moved to New York, where
his Atelier 17 print shop acted as an informal classroom for young American
12 artists interested in Surrealism. For Hayter and his circle, the loops and swirls
of the interlace style seemed the natural language of Surrealist automatism. But
the style could serve equally well as a vehicle for classical imagery, and Picasso,
as usual, led the way, with a series of 1927 drawings devoted to the distinctly
unmodern motif of the Crucifixion (fig. 3).13Braque adopted a version of this
style in his illustrations for Hesiod's Theogony,commissioned in 1930.
The interlace style was an important thread in Picasso's development dur
ing the years 1926-32, but his other inventions of these years were equally influ
ential. In one series of pictures, including The Swimmer (1929; fig. 4), Picasso
extracted his curvilinear figures from the web, reducing them to freely distorted
outlines, and positioned them like heraldic emblems on blank backgrounds of
an infinite depth or flatness. Several of these emblematic figures were included
in Picasso's 1939 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art. Picasso identified

74
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

merited, "The curve returned after the war, and with it the possibility of a paint
5 ing of feeling." The interlacing curves of Picasso's new style of 1926 seemed to
liberate his pictures from the constraints of the rectilinear grid without relapsing
into naturalism, and what Alfred H. Barr, Jr., called the "curvilinear Cubism" of
6 these pictures gave rise in his work to a style known as "free form."
In Painter and Model, lines flow without a break from figure to figure and
from figure to ground, imbuing the composition with a sense of perpetual mo
7 tion. The contours of the figures are recognizable as such but wildly distorted.
Denser groupings of line reveal themselves as heads, fingers, or feet; examined
individually, they separate from the curvilinear field, but merge back into it as
soon as the viewer looks elsewhere. Overall, the character of the field is graphic
and conceptual. The alternation of light and dark tones in the background, how
ever, suggests actual optical experience, and the picture seems to open onto a
stagelike space behind the scrim of interlacing lines.
By 1927, Picasso's web had begun to loosen, so that individual figures were
easier to distinguish. In works like Seated Woman of that year, the interlace pat
tern tends to function only within the contours of the figures, while the back
8 grounds are indicated with a kind of rectilinear shorthand. The culmination of
this style arrived in Girl before a Mirror, where, however, the unity of the inter
laced composition is deliberately dis
rupted by abrupt changes of color and
pattern that set off one figure from the
9 other and both from the background.
Acquired by The Museum of Modern
Art in 1938, this picture had a major
impact on artists in New York.
Although Picasso's allover inter
lace paintings remained in his studio,
unexhibited and unreproduced, the
idea of drawing with interlacing loops
and curves was disseminated in works
by other artists as diverse as Max Ernst,
Paul Klee, Andre Masson, and Georges
Braque. The figure in Ernst's 1927 can
vas The Kiss, for instance, is remarkably
similar to that in Picasso's Seated
Woman. And in 1942, when Peggy
Guggenheim opened her New York
gallery, Art of This Century, Ernst's pic
-*and
";°
l9
'*
;a"dil ture was displayed
" 3
as the centerpiece of tempera
«<»•
2 And Masson i .
on canvas, 51/4x 3l/« in. (128 x 84 cm). Mus6e
10 the collection. Other versions of the cantini, Marseilles

73
 PEPE KARMEL

3/« Fig. 5. Amed^eOzenfant.La BelleVie(detail).1929.Oil and mixedmediumson canvas, 5IM«x 38 in. (130x 97 cm).
CollectionLarockCronoff,Paris
Fig.6. "LionHunt.SouthAfricanBushmanrock painting."FromEckartvon Sydow,Die Kunst der Naturvolkerund der
Vorzeit(Berlin:PropylSen-Verlag,1932),p. 203

its four sides." The theme of divers, he said, enabled him "to realize a new deep
space without the aid of traditional perspective," which would have required the
18 inclusion of a vanishing point and a horizon line.
The indefinite space of
these pictures, and their sim
ple but evocative figuration,
suggests a connection to cave
painting (fig. 6), a subject of
great critical interest in these
19 years. Reviewing Ozenfant's Wi&Mm
1939 exhibition for Art News,
Doris Brian described his clay-
red figuresas "consciouslyrem
iniscent of African cave draw
20 ings." Similarly, in his 1937
article "Primitive Art and

76
 Fig.4. Pablo Picasso. The Swimmer.1929. Oil on canvas, 51/« x 63% in. (130x 162cm). Mus6ePicasso, Paris

them as swimmers and acrobats —athletes who had freed themselves momentar
ily from the constraints of gravity, and who therefore had no fixed "up" or
"down." Accordingly, Barr noted in the catalogue that The Swimmer was com
14 posed so that it could be hung "with any edge up." Earlier artists and critics,
from Joshua Reynolds through Vasily Kandinsky, had suggested the evaluation
of a painting by turning it upside-down, rendering the subject matter unrecog
nizable and thereby forcing the viewer to concentrate on the work's formal struc
15 ture. Picasso literalized this idea by making pictures that could be rotated from
one orientation to another as the owner wished.
The linked ideas of weightlessness and rotation also made appearances in
New York exhibitions by other Paris painters. In the spring of 1939, the Passedoit
Gallery showed several of Amedee Ozenfant's pictures of flattened, weightless
bathers from 1929-30—evidently painted in response to Picasso (fig. 5).16Fer-
nand Leger, exiled in New York by the war, executed a series of similar composi
tions representing divers, and showed one of them, Circular Divers (1942), in
Sidney Janis's exhibition Abstract and Surrealist Art in America, of 1944.17In his
statement for the catalogue, Leger expressed his interest in rotating forms "like
birds and clouds," and explained that his picture might be "hung on any one of

75
 Fig. 7. Poblo Picasso. Dot and line drawing. 1924. Wood Fig. 8. Joan Mir6. The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown
engraving after drawing for Le Chef-d'oeuvreinconnu, to a Pair of Lovers. 1941.Couache and oil wash on paper, 18x
by Honors de Balzac. Paris: Ambroise Vollard, 1931. 15in. (45.7 x 38.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New
Page: 13x 10 in. (33 x 25.5 cm). The Museum of Modern York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest
Art, New York. The Louis E. Stern Collection

lines and forms of Miro's Constellations have often been cited as a precedent for
Pollock's allover compositions of 1947-50. Miro's heavy black circles and trian
gular marks—his version of Picasso's dots—were also important for Pollock, and
their role will be examined subsequently.
As Pollock overcame his infatuation with Guernica and began looking for a
more abstract style, he turned to earlier examples —not Painter and Model itself
(which he may never have seen, even in reproduction) but the 1927-28 Picassos
in which the studio motif of that painting was translated into rectilinear terms.
Here the curving organic figures of 1926 often became geometric outlines, posi
tioned like stage flats in front of a backdrop of squares and rectangles. These rec
tilinear studio pictures of 1928 were well-known in New York: there was one in
Peggy Guggenheim's collection, the Modern owned another, and a third, Two
Women in front of a Window (fig. 9), was in the collection of the influential crit
28 ic and curator James Thrall Soby. The last, with its densely layered rectangles
and triangles, offered a textbook illustration of Hans Hofmann's theory that a
29 picture should be constructed around a series of overlapping planes, and close
paraphrases of it were painted by artists such as Judith Rothschild (a Hofmann
30 student) and William Baziotes.
Pollock himself was clearly interested in the Soby picture, but not in its ex
ample of construction by overlapping. In Male and Female in Search of a Symbol—
a painting included in his first solo exhibition, at Art of This Century in

78
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

Picasso," artist-critic John Graham insisted on a link between primitive art in gener
21 al and Picasso's"arbitrary contortions of features in two-dimensional arrangements."
For Graham, Girl before a Mirror represented the essential Picasso. Its influ
ence on Pollock in the years 1938-41 is evident in paintings like Masqued Image
22 (c. 1938-41) and Birth (c. 1941), the latter the canvas Graham selected for the
1942 exhibition that first put Pollock on the map (.Americanand French Paintings,
at McMillen Inc., New York). But Pollock was equally fascinated by the mural-
sized Guernica, which seemed to confirm Picasso's status as the preeminent
mythological painter of the century, simultaneously modern and primitive.
Exhibited at the Valentine Gallery in the spring of 1939 and then again that fall
at The Museum of Modern Art, Guernica deployed Picasso's pictorial discoveries
of the previous decade in the service of an insistent narrative. If the results had
something in common with the metamorphic anatomies of Hollywood car
23 toons, that only meant the picture would reach a broader audience.
The veteran critic Henry McBride, writing in the New YorkSun, marveled at
the "revolutionary forms" of Picasso's canvas, and predicted that "all the lesser
24 artists" would soon be using this "new language." Indeed numerous American
artists would respond to Guernica, not least among them Pollock, whose "psy
choanalytic" drawings of 1939-40 contain numerous quotations from the paint
ing. But Pollock's slavish initial response was replaced, within a few years, by a
profound rethinking of Picasso's style. This depended, in large part, on the
American artist's attention to more abstract—and hence less "primitive"—
aspects of Picasso's work from the 1920s.
Two groups of works were particularly important. One was a series of draw
ings executed in a vocabulary of lines punctuated with dots (fig. 7). Suggested,
Picasso said, by "astronomical charts" showing the constellations as outlines
connecting stars, this dot-and-line style was explored in notebook sketches he did
25 in the summer of 1924. He showed these sketches to a few of his Surrealist
friends, but they remained relatively unknown until 1931, when they were pub
lished as wood-engraved illustrations in Ambroise Vollard's edition of Balzac's
story Le Chef d'oeuvre inconnu. Numerous artists then began to adopt elements of
the style, whose apparent abstraction made it seem particularly advanced. Chief
among them was Joan Miro, who responded with a 1931 series of paintings
adapting Picasso's linear vocabulary to the more open style of his own composi
26 tions. Miro returned to the dot-and-line style in his Constellations series of
1941, which were exhibited in New York four years later, to considerable
acclaim. One of them, The Beautifid Bird Revealingthe Unknown to a Pair of Lovers
(fig. 8), was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, and was also reproduced in
Art News, where the anonymous reviewer commented that Miro's "all-over pat
terns" looked like chemists' diagrams of "atomic structure ... all woven togeth
27 er in taut relationship and tied by thin electric lines." The evenly distributed

77
 PEPE KARMEL

Fig. II. Jackson Pollock. StenographicFigure,c. 1942. Oil on linen, 40 x 56 in. (101.6x 142.2 cm). The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bareiss Fund

theatrical, with an opening in the middle flanked by stage-flat-like figures at

either side. This was a favorite format for Pollock from 1942 through 1946, used
in pictures such as Guardians of the Secret (1943), Pasiphae (c. 1943), The Tea Cup
(1946), and The Key (1946). It is equally evident in StenographicFigure (c. 1942;
fig. 11), in which a figure with a triangular head appears at the left of the com
32 position, stretching out an arm toward its counterpart on the right. Here the
table between the two figures is more tangible, divided into areas of gray, red,
and white that set it off from the blue, yellow, and black of the background. The
two figures appear to be playing some kind of game.
Calligraphic scribbles had appeared in one area of Male and Female in Search
of a Symbol; in StenographicFigure they cover the surface of the picture, forming
a kind of scrim that veils the space behind them. Formally these scribbles func
tion much like the interlacing lines, floating in front of broader areas of light
and dark, in Picasso's Painter and Model, or the linear scaffolding, set against a
field of colors, that is often found in Klee. In Picasso and Klee, line carries the
chief burden of representation. In Stenographic Figure, however, the forms are
defined primarily by color, while the lines seem more like the cryptic inscrip
33 tions found in Miro. Other lines revise or elaborate the original painted forms,
adding a pair of circular breasts to the left-hand figure, for instance.

80
 — A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

Fig. 9. Pablo Picasso.

Two Women in front of
a Window. 1927.Oil on
canvas, 38/j x 5114in.
(97.8 x 130.8 cm). The
Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston. Gift of Mr.
and Mrs. Theodore N.
Law

Fig. 10. Jackson

Pollock. Male and
Female in Searchof a
Symbol. 1943. Oil on
canvas, 43 x 67 in.
(109.2 x 170.1cm).
Private collection

31 November 1943 —he disassembled Picasso's composition into a series of sepa

rate shapes, lying side by side in the picture plane instead of overlapping (fig.
10). Vertical figures appear at either side of the composition, and the space
between them is framed by straight lines forming a roughly trapezoidal shape
that suggests the end of a table seen in perspective. Partly canceling out the
implied sense of recession, the trapezoidal form is open at the top, so that it
merges here into the pink background. Nonetheless, the space remains strikingly

79
 PEPE KARMEL

Fig. 12.Jackson Pollock.

Untitled [Black Pouring
over Color]. 1946. Oil on
specially prepared can
vas on panel, 20 x 24 in.
(50.8 x 61 cm). Private
collection, courtesy
Jason McCoy Gallery,
New York

-*<y . - rtTtaMT"

Fig. 13. Hans Moller. Chessplayers.1946. Medium and dimensions unknown. Location unknown

82
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

Pollock carried this process of revision much farther in Untitled (Composition

with Pouring I), of 1943, one of his earliest experiments with dripped paint. Here,
even before applying the drips, Pollock heavily overpainted the original compo
sition with broad brushstrokes of red and yellow paint mixed with sand, but in
the interstices of these strokes there can still be seen several triangular forms sug
gesting heads, as well as an outstretched gray arm resembling the red arm on the
34 left of Stenographic Figure. The strokes of red and yellow seem mostly to have
been applied along the contours of the original composition, so that the
rhythms of these contours remained even as their representational meaning was
obscured. Then, in a third and fourth campaign, Pollock dripped skeins of white
and black across the composition, setting up a kind of responsive counterpoint
to the rhythms of the earlier forms. Although the reworked canvas seems to
approach pure abstraction, the relationship between the dark lines in the fore
ground and the field of lighter colors in the background recalls the stagelike
space of StenographicFigure, and of Picasso's studio pictures. This vestige of rep
resentational space is even more evident in Untitled [Black Pouring over Color], of
1946 (fig. 12), where the relationship between poured line and colored back
35 ground is similar but the overall composition is simpler and more legible. We
seem to see a pair of loosely drawn figures running or dancing in an open set
ting of ocean and sky.
The dripped technique of the 1946 picture is distinctively Pollockian, but
the contrast between the linear figures in the foreground and the flat colors of
the background is a splendid example of period style—the sort of thing that
might have been come up with by any competent artist attuned to European
modernism. Indeed an almost exact counterpart to Pollock's picture appears in
the 1946 canvas Chessplayers (fig. 13) by Hans Moller, a German emigre artist
36 active in New York in the 1940s. Though Moller's figures are far more conven
tional than Pollock's, the two artists use remarkably similar loose interlacing
lines, and Moller breaks up the unity of his figures by filling in adjacent loops
with different colors, just as Pollock does. In both cases the figures float against an
open field of color, though the field in Moller's picture is more monochromatic.
For Emily Genauer, critic at the New York World Telegram,Chessplayerswas
37 one of the best pictures of the 1946-47 season. But the decorative color and
stagelike space of both this picture and Pollock's Untitled [Black Pouring over
Color] make it evident, by contrast, how much Pollock achieved in more sub
stantive paintings like The Key. The loose, looping outlines of this picture seem
as spontaneous as those in Untitled [Black Pouring over Color], though painted
with a brush instead of dripped. What is completely different is the use of color,
which is inserted between the drawn lines, instead of forming a continuous field
behind them. Working in the upstairs bedroom of his and Krasner's house in The
Springs, Pollock laid the canvas on the floor and spread the paint with a knife,

81
 PEPE KARMEL

Fig. 14. Jackson Pollock. Untitled.

1944-45 (printed posthumously
1967). Engraving and drypoint,
14'/. x 17/. in. (37.3 x 45.8 cm).
The Museum of Modern Art, New
York. Gift of Lee Krasner Pollock

Interlace patterns were also common in the work of younger artists associ
ated with the Art Students League and Kenneth Beaudoin's Galerie Neuf. In addi
tion to Picasso and Miro, another source for this imagery was the Native
American art of the Pacific Northwest —hence the application of the term
"Indian Space" to some of this work. Beaudoin's short-lived magazine Iconograph
published reproductions of paintings by not only Pollock and Rothko but also
Peter Busa, Gertrude Barrer, Seong Moy, and other artists associated with his
43 gallery. Busa, a close friend of Pollock's since their student days under Thomas
Hart Benton, shared his interests in Surrealism and in Native American art, and
exhibited, as he did, at Art of This Century. There is an obvious affinity between
Busa's pictures from this era and works by Pollock, even when, as in Busa's Thing
in the Present (1945; fig. 17) and Pollock's TotemLesson 1 (1944) and Totem Lesson
2 (1945), both artists set interlacing aside in order to create flat figures with
heavy outlines and an accumulation of decorative marks. The flat outlines of the
figures in all three of these paintings recall Picasso's emblematic swimmers and
acrobats of the late 1920s (fig. 4), while the intense colors and patterns seem to
come both from Native American sources, especially the art of the Northwest
44 Indians, and from other Picassos, such as Girl before a Mirror. Picasso is a par
ticularly strong presence in Totem Lesson 2, where the original accumulation of
marks was followed by a second stage in which Pollock pared down the com
plexity of the picture by painting over large areas of it with gray paint. Pollock's
paint handling in general seems cruder and more direct than Busa's.
It is impossible to understand Pollock without understanding the impact
that the two Totem Lesson works had on their original audience. In April 1945,
when Greenberg first proclaimed that Pollock was "the strongest painter of his

84
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

pushing down against the floorboards so that it was simultaneously pressed on

and scraped off, like butter on a piece of toast. The result is that the colors seem
to occupy the same plane as the lines, or perhaps even to move in front of them.
In many areas the weave of the white canvas gleams through the paint, while
horizontal lines of thicker pigment mark places where the canvas sank into the
crevices between floorboards, eluding the scraping action of the knife. The draw
ing of the composition —with one figure at the right and another, holding what
seems to be a palette, at the left—repeats the "studio" format of Picasso's that
Pollock had already explored in Male and Female in Search of a Symbol and
StenographicFigure. But the rapid alternation of color from one area to the next
breaks up the coherence of the drawn figures, so that the picture reads as an
"abstraction" despite its figurative origins.
The linear pattern of The Key, extending to the edges of the composition,
recalls the allover patterning of some of the engravings that Pollock executed in
Hayter's workshop in 1944-45 (fig. 14). Here too we find dark and light shapes
interwoven, flanked by figures at right and left. Pollock's use of a curvilinear
interlace may reflect the influence of Hayter, and of the printmaking process
more generally. Working with a burin, Pollock would have had to rotate the
38 copper plate repeatedly in order to draw the curves of his composition. The
swimmers and acrobats of Picasso, Ozenfant, and Leger had demonstrated that a
successful "abstract" composition could be seen from any of its four sides; the
experience of printmaking now demonstrated the value of working on a picture
from all four sides—as Pollock probably did in scraping on the colors of The Key.
Even before Pollock participated in Atelier 17, a contemporary observer
39 noted the resemblance between his work and Hayter's. But comparison with
one of Hayter's prints immediately reveals radical differences in their approach
to composition (fig. 15). Although Hayter uses an interlace pattern to bind
together his figures, they occupy a more boxlike stage than Pollock would use;
as another reviewer noted, Hayter's "two-dimensional linear abstractions exist
40 within deep space." Pollock's more allover use of the interlace brings him closer
to the example of Picasso's Painter and Model, a kind of composition very much
41 in the air in the New York of the mid- 1940s. His engraving finds a close coun
terpart, for instance, in Walter Quirt's 1943 painting The Crucified (fig. 16),
which seems in turn to be a more densely woven version of Picasso's earlier
Crucifixion studies (fig. 3). Quirt may be virtually forgotten today, but in 1944
he and Pollock seemed like promising young artists of comparable importance,
and The Crucified faces Pollock's She-Wolf (1943) across a page spread of Janis's
42 1944 volume Abstract and Surrealist Art in America. As in Pollock's print, Quirt's
figures merge into an interlacing web. But when an individual figure is recog
nized, it separates from the field and seems to take up a stance in a more con
ventional stagelike space.

83
 PEPE KARMEL

Fig. 17.Peter Busa. The

Thing in the Present. 1945.
3/. Oil on canvas, I9 x 30/.
in. (50.2 x 76.8 cm). Cour
tesy MichaelRosenfeld
Gallery,NewYork

based on rhythmic interlace. He would have to sacrifice this style—a successful

one—when he returned to the interlace in 1947.
It was paintings of 1944-46 —the two Totem Lessons and the Accabonac
Creek Series (Eyes in the Heat, The Key, The Tea Cup, and YellowTriangle)—that
were published in Possibilitiesin the winter of 1947-48, even though Pollock had
by then been working in the drip style for the better part of a year, and would
47 exhibit a group of drip paintings at Betty Parsons that January. Pollock's state
ment accompanying these pictures is in fact more a description of his earlier
methods than of his new drip technique: "My painting does not come from the
easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the un-
stretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard sur
face. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting,
since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in
48 the painting." These lines inevitably recall Hans Namuth's later photographs of
Pollock dripping paint onto horizontal canvases. But the reference to "the resis
tance of a hard surface," for instance, clearly applies to canvases like The Key,
where the scraped-on colors bear the traces of the floor on which it was made.
In the drip paintings, on the other hand, "resistance" was a moot point, since
there was no physical contact between the tool releasing the paint and the can
vas receiving it.
The earlier pictures also bear witness to another impulse documented in
Possibilities, Pollock's desire "to get further away from the usual painter's tools
such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping
fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass and other foreign matter
49 added." "Dripping paint," here, seems to allude to Pollock's new work, but he
had in fact employed this technique since 1943, sometimes for figuration but
usually for decorative texture. The use of trowels, knives, and heavy impasto is

86
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

Fig. 15.Stanley William Hayter.

Combat. 1936. Engraving and soft
ground etching, on copper printed
in black. Plate: 15% x 19% in. (40 x
49.3 cm). The Museumof Modern
Art, New York. Given anonymously

Fig. 16.Walter Quirt. The Crucified.

1943. Oil on linen, 30% x 50 in.
(76.8 x 127cm). Collection the
Quirt Family

generation and perhaps the greatest one to appear since Miro," he singled out
45 these works as pictures "for which I cannot find strong enough words of praise."
Similarly, an Art News reviewer wrote in May 1946 that Pollock had to some
extent left behind his "swirling webs of pigment" in favor of a newer, "simpli
fied" manner: "Larger, more representational shapes are placed against flat, mono
46 chrome backgrounds; clarity increases at the expense of motion." Evidently,
Pollock seemed at this moment to be moving away from, not toward, a style

85
 imaginationbecameunloosedwith the unfolding coilsof his line, it occurredto him
56 that his seated people might easilybe playing chess.

Moller's initial technique was quite as "automatic" as Pollock's, but they differed
in their use of its results. Moller looked to his abstract doodles for the suggestion
of a figurative motif; Pollock did the opposite. As Seiberling wrote in Life, "Once
in a while a lifelike image appears in the painting by mistake. But Pollock cheer
57 fully rubs it out because the picture must retain 'a life of its own.'" Similarly,
the text accompanying Namuth's photographs of Pollock on their first publica
tion, in 1951, stated, "The conscious part of his mind, he says, plays no part in the
creation of his work. It is relegated to the duties of a watchdog; when the uncon
scious sinfully produces a representational image, the conscience cries alarm and
58 Pollock wrenches himself back to reality and obliterates the offending form."
Automatism, here, is seen as a means of arriving at "abstract" form; recognizable
imagery is merely an incidental by-product, to be discarded or suppressed.
Discussing this process of obliteration in a 1967 interview, Robert Mother
well commented that when Pollock found his own paintings too similar to the
Picassos that had inspired them, "he would violently cross out his Picasso
images. . . . [Then,] at a certain moment ... he realized he didn't have to make
the Picasso thing at all, but could directlydo the crossing out or dipping, or what
59 have you." Ironically, in doing so, Pollock embraced an idea of painting as a
"sum of destructions" that was itself derived from Picasso.
Pollock now returned to the interlace as one means (among others) of
reworking and obscuring an image. This process can be followed in a number of
drawings from 1945-46, and from these drawings to what we now think of as
60 the "classic" drip style it is only a short step. According to Greenberg, Pollock's
first picture in the drip style was a small canvas from 1946 (probably late in the
year). Ironically, the work's title —Free Form, a name suggested by the dealer and
collector who acquired it, Sidney Janis—stressed the picture's resemblance to
61 Picasso's work of the 1920s and '30s. The most notable new feature here is the
fact that the painting is executed exclusively with dripped paint. The drip tech
nique is not the source of the interlace per se; similar compositions are visible in
Pollock's drawings, paintings, and prints of 1945. Nor is the technique responsi
ble for his adoption of an "automatic" approach to composition —he had already
proven himself capable of painting "automatically" with a brush. The new prac
tice may have encouraged a form of automatism, however, by eliminating the
resistance of the canvas (the resistance Pollock would nevertheless claim to need
in the Possibilitiesstatement a year later) and allowing him to paint more rapidly.
The chief advantage of the drip technique, in fact, was a gain in pictorial energy.
Gradually or abruptly swelling, shrinking, or changing course, Pollock's line
seems infused with a new sense of motion. Compared with a drawn or brushed

88
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

evident in 1946 pictures like The Key and Eyes in the Heat, and also in pictures
from 1947 like Full Fathom Five, which was not illustrated in Possibilities.
The most often-quoted part of Pollock's statement, however, is his remark,
"When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a
sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about." In August
1949, when Dorothy Seiberling profiled Pollock for Life magazine, she cited this
50 statement to explain his drip technique. Robert Goodnough's 1951 article "Pol
lock Paints a Picture," illustrated with Namuth's dramatic photographs, rein
forced the impression that Pollock worked in a kind of shamanistic trance, weav
51 ing lines of paint across the surface without conscious intention. Taking this
conclusion as a given, later critics linked Pollock's working method to Surrealist
automatism and the existential acte gratuit.
What is obscured by this easy identification between automatism and the
drip technique is that Pollock's approach to painting was already seen as "auto
matic" before he began the drip paintings. In May 1946, for instance, a reviewer
for Art News, describing him as "one of the most influential young abstraction
ists," noted that he used "an automatic technique, pushing totemic and
52 metaphorical shapes into swirling webs of pigment." Automatism had been in
the air for years, even before the Surrealists arrived in New York to provide a per
sonal demonstration. By the mid- 1930s, accounts of Picasso's working process
often stressed his claim to be an unconscious observer of his own creativity.
Herbert Read's 1934 book Art Now quoted Picasso saying, "I don't know in
advance what I am going to put on the canvas . . . whilst I work, I take no stock
of what I am painting on the canvas. ... It is only later that I begin to evaluate
53 more exactly the result of my work." And Barr's catalogue for the Picasso ret
rospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 1939 gave prominent place to the
artist's 1935 statement that "a picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case,
a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture —then I destroy it. ... A picture
is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as
54 one's thoughts change." Articles and essays about Miro also stressed the role of
55 unconscious discovery and revision in his working process.
By 1946, this approach to composition was common among New York's
avant-garde painters. Moller, for instance, gave a similar account of his working
method to Emily Genauer, who wrote,

When Hans Moller starts a picture he has not the slightest idea of what its subject,
not to mention its shape, will turn out to be. He begins with a mood. . . . The mood
soon determines the character of the line. The character of the line determines the
subject. . . . "Chessplayers". . . started with a drawing—little more than a doodle,
really—of what Moller calls "soft" (for curved) and "hard" (for angular) lines.
Presentlythey suggestedto him two persons seatedat a table, and as he drew and his

87
 PEPE KARMEL

Pollock experimented with stick figures in the early 1940s, sometimes

drawing them on the same sheet with sketches inspired by Picasso's flattened,
emblematic figures of the late 1920s (fig. 19). He was hardly alone in this inter
est; indeed more literal quotations from cave painting appear in work by other
67 New York painters of the period. The stick figures of cave art demonstrated that
the body could be evoked with a crude, incantatory sign instead of a naturalis
tic representation, opening a possibility that a number of artists began to
explore. But cave art also demonstrated a distinctive pictorial space, different
from the deep space of academic painting or even the shallow space of Cubist-
68 influenced art. The spatial relationships in a typical hunting scene are purely
local (fig. 6). One area may show the relationship between a lion and the hunters
he chases, another might have a second lion pouncing on a falling man, but
there is no attempt to coordinate these two scenes within a unified, three-
dimensional space. The composition is an arrangement of independent signs on
a plane surface, a disjunctive, graphic space instead of a unified, scenic one.
Ozenfant and other painters had taken cave art as a model for a kind of
weightless space in which depth was indicated by height: figures were arranged
one above the other, instead of one in front of the other (fig. 5). Pollock does not
seem to have been attracted to this arrangement: his stick figures are usually dis
posed in a single horizontal row, as in the friezelike composition of his 1943
Mural (plate 1), or in several drawings of 1946 (e.g., Untitled, c. 1946; fig. 20).69
We find in these drawings the exact prototype for figures in the later drip paint
ings: the human body is evoked by a long, sticklike axis surmounted by open
curves representing head and arms. The axis forks at the bottom to indicate
70 legs, or an upward-pointing angle may suggest a raised knee.
It should be noted that the space in these drawings is not flat. The streaks
or patches of color that crisscross the image seem to recede into a shallow depth,
as does a fine spray of black dots. The black lines defining the figures lie clearly
in front of these elements; and in front of the black lines, and therefore seeming
to advance in front of the figures, a number of broad black splotches are scat
tered here and there across the composition. The white paper is treated as an
indefinite graphic space capable of contraction or expansion. Within this space
there seem to be definable relationships between adjacent figures; but the figures
do not occupy an enclosed stage-space that would allow us to gauge the relative
depths of figures that are not adjacent.
A computer analysis of One, isolating the lines in a single layer of the paint
ing, reveals figures similar to those in the drawing of c. 1946 (fig. 21). The canvas
seems to be covered with a series of vertical lines that are traversed by horizon
tal curves at the level of head or shoulders, and that divide into legs at their
bases. There is also a kind of family resemblance between the drawing of c. 1946
and Number 32, 1950 (plate 3), in which the dancing black lines seem to form

90
 line, which tends to maintain an even width throughout its course, the dripped
line imparts a sense of constantly changing velocity, as though the variations in
62 width corresponded to variations in the speed of the hand that formed it.
The dripped line could be employed in many different ways—even to draw
a relatively conventional figurative image, as in the head on the right of the
1953 canvas Portrait and a Dream. It is for the most part associated with the
abstract phase of Pollock's career, from 1947 through 1950, but it is not clear
that abstraction and figuration are mutually exclusive in these paintings.
Computer-assisted reconstructions of the early states of several canvases from
1950—Number 27, 1950, Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950, and One: Number 31,
1950—suggest that each of these compositions began with some kind of figura
tive imagery, and that this imagery may even have been reiterated at later stages
63 of the work. Yet the effect of the finished paintings is unquestionably abstract,
64 as Pollock himself insisted.
Evidently there are several factors at work here. One is the extreme sim
plicity of the figuration Pollock employed during these years. This may reflect
his interest in ancient cave art, which, as we have seen, was a frequent topic of
65 discussion in both the Paris and the New York avant-gardes. As writers on the
subject often noted, the cave artists made highly realistic drawings of animals,
but almost invariably treated human bodies as mere stick figures. These figures
might in turn be reduced to seemingly abstract symbols, of the sort found
engraved on Paleolithic pebbles (fig. 18). Twenty years earlier, Miro had turned
66 for inspiration to the same prehistoric drawings. But even without this shared
source, it would have seemed obvious that there was a parallel between the
"abstraction" of the figure in cave art and in modern art.

AZI I.IAN ART

l*>a> M.d. A

A
im
Fig. 18. "Painted Pebbles from Mas D'Azil" and
"Degradation of natural forms to the marks on
Azilian Pebbles." Figs. 20 and 21from C.
Baldwin Brown, The Art of the Cave Dweller
(New York: R. V. Coleman, 1931)

Fig. 19. Jackson Pollock. Untitled, c. 1939-42. India Ink on

paper, 18x 13/, in. (45.7 x 35.2 cm). Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York. Purchase, with funds from the
Julia B. Engel Purchase Fund and the Drawing Committee

89
 PEPE KARMEL

he employed first at the small scale of his 1946 drawings, then at the traditional
scale of his 1947-48 paintings, and finally, in 1950, at the mural scale of Number
32, 1950, Autumn Rhythm (plate 5), and One (plate 4). Pollock did not need to
preplan the compositions of these enormous works because he knew their ele
ments by heart. Like a practiced tennis player moving automatically into the
posture for a serve, a forehand, or a backhand shot, he had only to decide on his
general intentions and his hand and arm would do the rest. Or it might be more
accurate to compare him to a jazz musician, constructing a "new" solo from a
repertory of familiar riffs. As these activities demonstrate, there is no sharp line
here between conscious and unconscious action, between the planned and the
73 automatic. Most of our lives, indeed, are lived half-consciously and half-auto-
matically; and part of the power of Pollock's painting is that it exemplifies this
familiar but elusive quality of everyday experience.
What is important is not the presence or absence of figuration in the paint
ings of these years. If any stick figures played a preliminary role in the composi
tion of Number 32, they have dissolved completely into the weave of the end
lessly interlacing lines that surround them, and this process of "veiling" has
completely restructured the pictorial space. The interlacing web of Number 32
may recall Picasso's Painter and Model of 1926, but it does not evoke the three-
dimensional, stagelike space of Picasso's picture. Instead, space is suggested by
variations in density, as it is in Pollock's drawing of c. 1946.
These variations can best be understood in light of the more precise under
standing of Pollock's working process that has emerged from the study of
Namuth's photographs and films. If the making of Number 32 followed the pat
tern visible in Namuth's documentation of Number 27, 1950 and Autumn Rhythm,
Pollock began work on it by defining several independent configurations drawn
with a line of uniform medium width. He then unified the different elements of
the picture by the addition of interlacing lines extending from one configuration
to the next. Some of these lines would have been thinner than the original lines;
others would have been the same width. Meanwhile, Pollock also selectively
overscored and thickened various elements of the composition, defining a new
74 pictorial rhythm of heavier accents unrelated to the original figuration.
One model for this deliberate interruption of a linear outline would have
been Miro's Constellation drawings (exhibited in New York in 1945), in which
narrow contours outlining surreal heads and mythical beasts are interrupted by
black circles and triangular marks recalling ax heads (fig. 8).75As we have seen,
Miro had first experimented with this type of composition after seeing repro
ductions of the Picasso drawings of 1924 based on "astronomical charts" (fig. 7).
The dot-and-line style was thus consistently linked with the idea of stars in the
night sky, an example Pollock may have had in mind when he chose (or at least
acceded to) the titles of 1947 paintings like Galaxy and Reflectionof the Big Dipper.

92
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

Fig. 20. Jackson Pollock.

Untitled, c. 1946. Ink,
pastel, and gouache on
paper, 19x 26 in. (48.3 x
66 cm). Collection Denise
and Andrew Saul

Fig. 21. Pollock'sOne:

Number 31, 1950, high
lighting features added to
the painting betweenthe
last stage documented in
Hans Namuth's photog
raphs and the finished
canvas

three or four distinct configurations that may have figural undertones. The ver
tical line at the center, for instance, is topped by an oval, emphasized with hor
izontal strokes; and the base of this vertical is joined to an upward-pointing
71 angle, recalling the raised knee of the central figure in the 1946 drawing.
The reappearance of these stick figures—or simply of a consistent vocabu
lary of linear marks—casts new light on Pollock's assertion that he did not plan
his compositions ahead of time, and specifically that he did not work from
72 sketches. This may be true, but it does not necessarily mean that he had no idea
what he intended to do, or that his compositions emerged at random. Instead
he seems to have developed a consistent repertory of figures and marks, which
 PEPE KARMEL

Fig. 22. Robert Rauschenberg.

Rebus. 1955. Oil, pencil, paper,
and fabric on canvas, 8 ft. x 10
ft. 10/* in. (243.8 x 331.5 cm).
Private collection

79 a painter of the past." Recalling how Pollock had once thrown down a book of
Picasso's work because, "God damn it, that guy missed nothing," one can imag
ine how deeply gratifying Alfieri's remark must have been to him.
Artists are the most important critics, and it is worth taking a moment to
see what later artists made of Pollock's discovery. A few aped his style; others, in
the 1960s, found ways to translate the process of "action painting" into three
80 dimensions, imitating his process without making work that looked imitative.
But perhaps the most important response occurred in the work of Robert Rau
schenberg, a leader in the generation that followed Pollock. Combining Pollock's
drip with the grid of Analytic Cubism, Rauschenberg retroactively created the
81 connection proposed in Greenberg's writings of the same years.
The abstract painters of the 1930s had conventionalized Cubism by setting
its floating planes in a traditional stage space. Rauschenberg liberated Cubism
from this convention, rendering it usable again as a source for new art. But he
could not have done so without Pollock, who demonstrated the pictorial impact
of a shallow, densely layered space. Pollock's example is crucial to works like
Rebus (1955; fig. 22), where dripped and smeared paint serves as a kind of visual
glue to bind together a varied assemblage. As in Pollock, the space is honey
combed with unsuspected apertures, expanding and contracting at every point,
containing not just different images but also different types of images: pho
tographs, reproductions, text, bric-a-brac, and even other artworks. (Rebus con
)82 tains a drawing by Cy Twombly. Combine paintings like Monogram (1959)
83 returned the canvas to the floor, where Pollock had placed it, and later, in his
Hoarfrost series of 1974-75, Rauschenberg literalized the idea of laminar space
by making pictures from overlapping layers of fabric. With a thousand varia
tions, these devices have become the lingua franca of contemporary art.

94
 A SUH OF DESTRUCTIONS

But where the lines of an astronomical chart make it easier to see the mythical
creatures projected onto the night sky, the "stars" or accents of both Miro's and
Pollock's pictures make it harder to see any linear figures. Instead of following the
original outlines, the viewer's eye jumps from one accent to another. (In effect,
it mimics the saccadic movements of ordinary vision.)
The imposition of heavier (and lighter) marks also transforms the spatial
organization of the image. The original, mid-weight lines in Number 32, 1950
had defined a series of configurations arranged in graphic space. That is, there
were lateral relationships among adjacent configurations, but no spatial rela
tionships, since they all remained on a single visual plane. The additional marks
create a definite sense of movement in space—the broader, denser accents seem
to come forward while the narrower, interlacing lines recede—but because these
marks are interspersed more or less evenly across the canvas, they still do not
create spatial relationships among larger entities. No one configuration seems to
lie in front of another. Rather, different elements within each configuration
move forward and backward, implying that the configuration is neither a plane
nor a solid but an array of points in three-dimensional space.
To put it another way, the distribution of differently weighted lines and
accents suggests that the painting consists of a series of superimposed layers,
76 each one covering the entire area of the canvas. Opaque in some areas, trans
parent in others, these layers create the impression of a kind of pocketed space,
containing many volumes instead of a single large one. This, I think, is the specific
quality that distinguishes the alloverness of Pollock's work from the different
kinds of alloverness found in Monet, say, or Mondrian. The laminar arrange
ment of superimposed layers is radically different from the flat, decorative pan
els of the Indian Space painters, and also from the unified stage space that per
sists, behind the scrim of the interlace, in Picasso's Painter and Model, and in the
77 countless works deriving from it.
Pollock's laminar space, in tandem with his use of the drip technique, cre
ated the impression that his paintings were random and uncomposed. In 1950,
Time quoted the Italian critic Bruno Alfieri's remark that Pollock's paintings were
78 distinguished by "chaos" and by a "complete lack of structural organization,"
but it was not alloverness per se that was shocking; no one was shocked by Mark
Tobey. It was, rather, Pollock's refusal to locate his calligraphic forms either on a
single plane (as Tobey did) or in a coherent unified space (as Hayter did). Since
Cubism, viewers had become accustomed to the breakup of the object. But
Pollock proposed an unprecedented fragmentation of space.
This innovation marked a decisive advance beyond Picasso and the School
of Paris. In another passage (not quoted by Time), Alfieri called Pollock "the mod
ern painter who sits at the extreme apex of the most advanced and unprejudiced
avant-garde. . . . Compared to Pollock, Picasso . . . becomes a quiet conformist,

93
PEPE KARMEL

book; see ot, 4:188. Vasily Kandinsky The Life and Death of the American ings and teachings, Searchfor the Real
famously explained that the experi AnimatedCartoon (London: Verso, (Andover: Addison Gallery of Ameri
ence of seeing one of his landscapes 1993), pp. 64-67. can Art, 1948, reprint ed. Cambridge,
upside-down, and not recognizing it, 24. Henry McBride, "Picasso's Guern Mass.: The MIT Press, 1967). His
had been a turning point on his road ica," New YorkSun, May 6, 1939. Re essential ideas on pictorial construc
to abstraction. See Kandinsky, printed in McBride, The Flow of Art: tion, however, were published in
"Reminiscences," trans, in Robert L. Essaysand Criticismsof HenryMcBride, Sheldon Cheney, Expressionismin
Herbert, ed., ModemArtists on Art ed. Daniel Catton Rich (New York: Art (New York:Tudor, 1934, rev. ed.
(Englewood, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Atheneum Publishers, 1975), p. 368. 1948), pp. 175-81.
1964), p. 32. 25. The genesis of this style seems to 30. Compare Judith Rothschild's
16. Informed New Yorkerscould lie in Picasso's set designs for the bal MechanicalPersonagesIII (c. 1947)
have seen these works reproduced let Mercure,of 1924. Picasso refers to and William Baziotes's The Boudoir
in Cahiers d'Art 5 (1930): no 1, p. 23, the role of "astronomical charts" in (c. 1944).
and no. 10, p. 540. Amedee Ozen- "A Letter on Art," CreativeArt 6 no. 6 31. According to the entry for ot 89,
fant himself lived in New Yorkfrom (June 1930): 383. The authenticity of Male and Female in Searchof a Symbol
1939 through 1955, but his new this text (originally published in (also known as Searchfor a Symbol)
work was quite different from his 1926 in the Russian review Ogoniok) was added to the exhibition after the
bathers of 1929-30. See Fran?oise has been questioned—see the note in catalogue was printed. O'Connor
Ducros, AmedeeOzenfant,exh. cat. the bibliography of Barr's Picasso: and Thaw suggest that the painting
(Saint-Quentin: Musee Antoine Forty Yearsof His Art, item 2, p. 200 was done in 1942 or early 1943,
Lecuyer, 1985), pp. 70-72. (item la, p. 286, in the 1946 edition, before StenographicFigure(c. 1942)
17.Sidney Janis, Abstract and Picasso:Fifty Yearsof His Art)—but and Guardians of the Secret(1943).
SurrealistArt in America,exh. cat. the statement generally accords with But Krasner later recalled that
(New York:Reynal & Hitchcock, Picasso's others of the period. Pollock, furious that Sweeney had
1944), no. 89. Other works from this 26. See "Joan Miro," Cahiers d'Art 6 called him "undisciplined" in the
series were exhibited in October (1931): n.p. [424-26], One of these catalogue for the exhibition, painted
1942 at Buchholz, where Leger pictures is also reproduced in James Searchfor a Symbolafter the show
showed regularly. See also the draw Johnson Sweeney,Joan Miro, exh. opened, "just to show how disci
ing reproduced on an invitation to cat. (New York:The Museum of plined he was. ... He brought the
the opening of the exhibition Modern Art, 1941), p. 52. wet painting to the gallery where he
Picasso-Leger:The Collectionof Mrs. 27. Art News43 (January 15, 1945): was meeting Jim Sweeney and said,
MericCallery(Philadelphia Museum 27. Miro had shown regularly in 'I want you to see a really disciplined
of Art, January 9, 1945). New Yorkin the 1930s (at the Pierre picture.'" Krasner, quoted in
18. Leger, statement in ibid. Matisse Gallery, the same gallery that Francine du Plessix and Cleve Gray,
19. As previously noted, Pollock showed the Constellations in 1945). "Who Was Jackson Pollock?," Art in
owned a copy of Baldwin Brown's Like Klee, he was also the subject of America55 no. 3 (May-June 1967):
book The Art of the CaveDweller.In a 1941 retrospective at The Museum 51. This account would seem to
addition, Cahiers d'Art had published of Modern Art. be supported by a contemporary
consistently on the subject; in 1930 28. The Picasso studio painting reviewer's reference to an untitled
alone (vol. 5), the journal ran Hans acquired by Peggy Guggenheim is pink picture "he brought in, still wet
Muhlestein's "Des Origines de Part et catalogued in Zervos VII, 136, and with new birth." See Maude Riley,
de la culture" (pp. 57-68), Henri in Rudenstine, PeggyGuggenheim "Explosive First Show," The Art Digest
Breuil's "L'Art oriental de l'Espagne" Collection,no. 139 (reproduced in 18 no. 4 (November 15, 1943): 18.
(pp. 136-38) and "L'Afriqueprehis- color on p. 397). A telling compari 32. The title StenographicFiguremay
torique" (pp. 449-52), and Leo son between this work and Pollock's have been suggested by a passage in
Frobenius's "L'Art africain" (pp. Male and Female(c. 1942) appears in Wilhelm Worringer's Form in Gothic
395-407). The exhibition Prehistoric Landau, JacksonPollock,pp. 108-9, (1912, Eng. trans. 1927, rev. ed. New
RockPicturesin Europeand America,at 112. The Museum of Modern Art was York:Schocken, 1957), p. 18, that
The Museum of Modern Art in 1937, given its 1927-28 Studio (Zervos VII, speaks of primitive man trying to
was based on Frobenius's research. 142) by Walter P. Chrysler in 1935; extract fixed images from the flux of
20. Doris Brian, "Introduction to it is reproduced in color in Rubin, perception, and thus arriving at artis
America of a Noted French Theorist, Picassoin the Collection,p. 129, and tic types that are "stenographic" and
Ozenfant," Art News37 no. 23 in Rubin,Picasso:A Retrospective, p. 268. "abstract" (p. 18).
(March 4, 1939): 12. 29. Despite Hans Hofmann's vast 33. This kind of inscription-as-scrim
21.John Graham, "Primitive Art and influence, his teachings have re was not uncommon in Surrealist
Picasso," Magazineof Art 30 no. 4 mained somewhat obscure, because work of the early 1940s. See, for
(April 1937): 238. On Pollock and he never published his most impor instance, the frontispiece to Masson's
Graham see Stephen Naifeh and tant theoretical treatise, Creation in book Anatomy of My Universe,pub
Gregory White Smith, JacksonPol Form and Color.Fortunately, Cynthia lished in New Yorkin 1943.
lock:An AmericanSaga (New York: Jennifer Goodman's dissertation 34. Compare the triangular forms at
Clarkson N. Potter, 1989), pp. 346-57, ("The Hans Hofmann School and the upper left and lower right of
and ElizabethLonghorne, "The Magus Hofmann's Transmission of Euro Untitled(Compositionwith PouringI)
and the Alchemist:John Graham and pean Modernist Aesthetics to Am to the triangular heads in an untitled
Jackson Pollock,"AmericanArt 12 no. erica," 1982) provides a detailed 1946 drawing from the Thyssen-
3 (Fall 1998):47-67. summary of his ideas; on the topic Bornemisza Collection (plate 92,
22. MasquedImageis reproduced in, of overlapping planes, see pp. 72-79, p. 201, in Kirk Varnedoe with Pepe
for example, Landau, JacksonPollock, plate 27. This element of Hofmann's Karmel, JacksonPollock,exh. cat.
p. 61. instruction is not well documented [New York:The Museum of Modern
23. See Norman M. Klein, 7 Minutes: in the standard collection of his writ Art, 1998]). A long blue tadpole or

96
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

Notes

1.For a contemporary survey of 7. This style of interlacing lines was (New York:Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
Picasso's influence, see James Thrall anticipated by Picasso's works from 1985), no. 52, plate 247. A photo
Soby, AfterPicasso (Hartford: Edwin the period just beforeAnalytic Cub graph of The Kiss installed at Art of
Valentine Mitchell, and New York: ism, key among them Three Women This Century is the frontispiece in
Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1935). A more (1908), in which the figures are bro Siobhan M. Conaty, Art of This
recent study appears in Adam D. ken up into a series of elliptical Century:The Women(East Hampton,
Weinberg and Michael C. Fitzgerald, lozenges, their contours forming N.Y.:Pollock-KrasnerHouse and
Picassoid,exh. cat. (New York: interlaced curves. In formal terms, Study Center, 1997). It should be
Whitney Museum of American Art, Les Demoisellesd'Avignon(1907) is a noted that Max Ernst's experiments
1995). Pollock's relation to Picasso kind of first draft for Three Women. with dripping paint from a can
and to European modernism more It is therefore interesting to note hanging on a string, sometimes cited
generally is explored in depth in Greenberg's remark that Pollock as a precedent for Pollock's dripping,
William Rubin, "Jackson Pollock and painted Gothic (1944) "under the resembled the kind of interlace
the Modern Tradition," parts I-IV, inspiration" of the Demoiselles,and composition that Ernst was already
Artforum5 nos. 6 (February 1967): that this was the first instance, as far creating freehand.
14-22, 7 (March 1967): 28-37, 8 as he knew, of an American artist 11.See Rubin, "Notes on Masson and
(April 1967): 18-31, and 9 (May 1967): "discovering" this painting. See Pollock," Arts 34 no. 2 (November
28-33, respectively; and throughout Judith Cousins, memo of June 26, 1959): 36-43. On the period when
Ellen G. Landau, JacksonPollock(New 1981, in the M.C. files of The both Andre Masson and Pollock were
York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989). Department of Painting and Sculp working at Stanley William Hayter's
Jonathan Weinberg's "Pollock and ture, The Museum of Modern Art. print workshop, Atelier 17, see
Picasso:The Rivalry and the 'Escape,'" The interlaced style of Three Bernice Rose, JacksonPollock:Works
Arts 61 no. 10 (Summer 1987): 42- Women,however, would also have on Paper, exh. cat. (New York:The
48, also cites Harold Bloom in explor reached Pollock via Thomas Hart Museum of Modern Art, 1969), p. 18.
ing Pollock's relationship to Picasso, Benton, who had visited Paris as a 12.SeeJeffrey Wechsler, Surrealism
but proposes a different resolution student. (See Benton, An Artist in and AmericanArt, 1931-1947, exh.
than is offered here. America[New York:Robert M. cat. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
2. Lee Krasner, quoted in B. H. Fried McBridge & Co., 1937], pp. 34-37, University Art Gallery, 1976), pp.
man, "An Interview with Lee Krasner and the exhibition catalogue Thomas 51-52, and Lois Fichner-Rathus,
Pollock," in Hans Namuth, Barbara Hart Benton:SynchromistPaintings, "Pollock at Atelier 17," Print
Rose, Rosalind Krauss, et al., Pollock 1915-1920, from a Private Collection Collector'sNewsletter13 no. 5
Painting, ed. Rose (New York:Agrinde [New York:Salander-O'ReillyGaller (November-December 1982):
Publications Ltd., 1980), n.p. Origin ies, 1982], These "synchromist" Ben- 162-65. Andrew Kagan identifies
ally published as L'Atelierde Jackson tons had in fact been in the collec Paul Klee as the principal influence
Pollock(Paris: Macula, 1978). tion of Charles Pollock, Jackson's in the adoption of the interlace style
3. Clement Greenberg, "'American- older brother.) Though Benton later not only by Hayter but by Pollock;
Type' Painting," in Art and Culture disavowed any interest in Cubism, Klee showed regularly at the
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), p. 218. the explanatory diagrams in his 1926 Nierendorf Gallery and had a retro
It should be noted that this influen article "Mechanics of Form Organi spective at The Museum of Modern
tial passage was inserted in "'Ameri zation in Painting" (The Arts X no. 5 Art in 1941. See Kagan, "Paul Klee's
can-Type' Painting" (first published [November 1926]) reveal the influ Influence on American Painting:
in 1955) only when it was repub ence of Three Women(especially his New YorkSchool," Arts 49 no. 10
lished, in 1961. figs. 22 and 23), and Benton himself (June 1975): 54-59.
4. The closest Pollock gets to Anal later pointed out the influence of 13. Picasso's Crucifixion drawings
ytic Cubism, it seems to me, is the these diagrams on Pollock. Three were reprised in 1928 and 1929, cul
small oval Untitled(Interiorwith Fig Womenalso affected other Americans minating in a small painting of
ures) of c. 1938-41—no. 76 in Francis in Paris, such as Max Weber; see Leo 1930, exhibited in New Yorkin 1939
Valentine O'Connor and Eugene Steinberg, "Resisting Cezanne: (and reproduced in Barr, Picasso:
Victor Thaw, JacksonPollock:A Picasso's 'Three Women,"' Art in Fifty Yearsof His Art, p. 167). As Barr
CatalogueRaisonneof Paintings, America66 no. 6 (November/ notes, Picasso returned to the subject
Drawings,and Other Works(New December 1978): 115. in 1932, starting a new series of
Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1978; 8. Seated Womanis reproduced in drawings inspired by Grunewald's
hereafter referred to as ot). This work black and white in Christian Zervos, Isenheim altarpiece. The link
recalls Picasso works of 1911-12 like Pablo Picasso,33 vols. (Paris: Cahiers between the 1927 drawings and
Violinand Grapes (Daix 482, The d'art, 1932-78), VII: 77, and in color Painter and Model(1926) is under
Museum of Modern Art) or The in William Rubin, Picasso in the scored in Zervos VII, 29 and 30.
Architect'sTable (Daix 456, The Collectionof The Museumof Modem 14. Barr, Picasso:Forty Yearsof His Art,
Museum of Modern Art), but without Art (New York:The Museum of exh. cat. (New York:The Museum of
the passage of open-ended planes Modern Art, 1972), p. 125. Modern Art, 1939), p. 150. Indeed
that contributes to the "allover" 9. Girl beforea Mirroris reproduced Barr here reproduced the picture
quality of the Analytic style. See the in black and white in Zervos VII, with the head at the bottom; when
thoughtful discussion of this issue in 379, and in color in Rubin, Picasso in he revised the book seven years later,
Landau, JacksonPollock,p. 71. the Collection,p. 139, and Rubin, he showed the picture with the head
5. Carl Einstein, "Tableaux recents de Pablo Picasso:A Retrospective,exh. at the right (Picasso:Fifty Yearsof His
Georges Braque," Documents1 no. 6 cat. (New York:The Museum of Art, p. 164).
(November 1929): 296. Modern Art, 1980), p. 291. 15.On Joshua Reynolds see G. Bald
6. See Alfred H. Barr,Jr., Picasso:Fifty 10. See Angelica Zander Rudenstine, win Brown, TheArt of the CaveDweller
Yearsof His Art (New York:The Mus PeggyGuggenheimCollection,Venice, (New York: R. V. Coleman, 1931),
eum of Modern Art,1946), pp. 132-33. the SolomonR. GuggenheimFoundation p. 26. Pollock owned a copy of this

95
no danger then, anyway, because the than Fineberg, ed., DiscoveringChild The New Yorker26 no. 24 (August 5,
idea of the object will have left an Art: Essays and Childhood,Primitivism, 1950): 16. In the summer of the
indelible mark." and Modernism(Princeton: at the same year, an interviewer remarked
What Picasso meant could be University Press, 1998), pp. 210-34. to Pollock that "deliberately looking
garnered by poring over old issues 56. Genauer, Bestof Art, p. 119. for any known meaning or object [in
of Cahiers d'Art, as Pollock and his Despite the widespread denial of the Pollock's abstract art] would distract
friends did: the transformations of importance of subject matter in you immediately from ever appreci
Interior with Girl Drawingwere docu Pollock's work, it seems worth not ating it as you should," and Pollock
mented in a suite of drawings and ing that Moller's chessplayers find a responded, "I think it should be
photographs in Cahiers dArt 10 counterpart in Pollock's Tea Cup enjoyed just as music is enjoyed."
(1935): 247-59, and two years later (1946), which also depicts two fig William Wright, "An Interview with
the evolution of Guernicawas traced ures at either side of a game board. Jackson Pollock," 1950, an interview
in the article "Histoire d'un tableau 57. [Seiberling],"Jackson Pollock: Is broadcast on radio station WERI,
de Picasso," Cahiers dArt 12 (1937): He the Greatest Living Painter in the Westerly, R.I., 1951. Published in
105-6. It seems likely that Pollock United States?," p. 45. Namuth et al., PollockPainting, n.p.
studied these documents closely. In 58. "Jackson Pollock," Portfolio:The 65. See note 19 above.
December 1998 I asked Harold Annual of the GraphicArts 2 no. 1 66. See Stich, Joan Miro: The Develop
Lehman, a close friend of Pollock's (1951): n.p. ment of a SignLanguage,pp. 12-13
in the 1930s and early '40s, whether 59. Motherwell, quoted in Sidney and 27.
they had looked at Cahiers dArt: Simon, "Concerning the Beginnings 67. Compare, for instance, Peter
"It was our Bible!"he replied. Even of the New YorkSchool: 1939-1943," Miller's Incantation, exhibited by
without photographic documenta Art International 11 no. 6 (Summer Julien Levy and reproduced in Art
tion, however, it would have been 1967): 23. Motherwell suggests that News 44 no. 13 (October 15, 1945):
obvious that many of Picasso's paint Pollock was especially influenced by 30, or Jackson McLow's drawings in
ings of the 1920s and '30s had been Picasso works from the 1930s in the Iconographno. 3 (Fall 1946): cover
heavily reworked. Ridgesin their collection of Mary (Meric) Callery, in and p. 9, or Walter Quirt's VeryGreat
impasto often reveal the presence of particular Girl with a Cock(1938), Lion Hunters (1939), reproduced in
buried forms, and earlier colors show which does seem to be a source for Walter Quirt: A Retrospective,exh. cat.
through gaps in the paint surface. Pollocks like The Moon-WomanCuts (Minneapolis: University of
Picasso did not advance toward a the Circle(c. 1943). Minnesota, 1979), no. 19.
predetermined image; rather, each 60. One drawing of c. 1945 (plate 68. My argument here is anticipated
stage of his picture served as a jump- 102, p. 208, in Varnedoe with Kar- by Stich, who, comparing Miro's
ing-off point for the next. mel, JacksonPollock),for example, paintings to prehistoric art, notes
55. Sweeney described how Miro had seems to have begun as a horizontal that they "present isolated beings
"elicited suggestions from his uncon image of a ramlike creature, its nar within a common field rather than
scious mind ... by spilling a little row snout flanked by hornlike spirals cohesive units in a coordinated com
color on the paper . . . then as his enclosing long-lashed eyes. At left, a position. The individual parts are
brush moved over the surface, the narrow paw and leg supported the dispersed in space without concern
image would gradually take shape creature's rump. But this image was for a logical ordering of scale, shape
without any conscious direction." obscured first by interlacing curves or positioning." Joan Miro: The Devel
In Joan Miro, p. 53, citing Zervos, and then by long straight lines that opment of a SignLanguage,p. 32. 1 am
"Joan Miro," CahiersdArt 9 nos. 1-4 literally crossed it out. Contained indebted to O'Connor for bringing
(1934): 14. Greenberg paraphrased forms were divided while separate Stich's work to my attention.
this description in his book Joan Miro forms were joined together. Some 69. If Pollock was not attracted to
(New York:Quadrangle, 1948), writ where in the process, Pollock rotated the cave-painting model of a weight
ing that the artist "would begin pic the composition 90 degrees counter less space, his willingness to consider
tures by letting his brush wander clockwise. The cumulative effect was different orientations for his works
haphazardly over the canvas, only to retain the rhythmic energy of the recalls the indefinite space of Picas
afterwards applying himself con original mythic creature but to make so's and Leger's divers (also open to
sciously to their formal organization it virtually unrecognizable. different orientations, as discussed
and to the working-up of chance 61. Greenberg, letter to Sidney Janis, above). Krasner said, "Sometimes
resemblances he had come across" April 19, 1961. Quoted in Grace he'd ask, 'Should I cut it here? Should
(p. 26). As Sidra Stich and Christo Stevens, memo on dating of Free this be the bottom? . . . Working
pher Green have argued, Miro was Form (notes for Janis book), August around the canvas—in 'the arena'
influenced by theorists like Lucien 1967, in the files of the Department as he called it—there really was no
Levy-Bruhland Georges Luquet, who of Painting and Sculpture, The absolute top or bottom." Quoted in
equated cave art with the art of chil Museum of Modern Art. Friedman, "An Interview with Lee
dren. Luquet in particular had at 62. Actually the correlation between Krasner Pollock," n.p. Krasner was
tracted the attention of the Surreal the changing widths of Pollock's discussing the black paintings of
ists by arguing that the procedure of dripped lines and the speed of his 1951, where discernible figures are
discovering a resemblance in a form execution can be misleading: see often upside-down or sideways in
created by chance lay at the origins Karmel, "Pollock at Work: The Films relation to the bottom edge (as indi
of neolithic art. See Stich, Joan Miro: and Photographs of Hans Namuth," cated by the signature). But Pollock
The Developmentof a SignLanguage, in Varnedoe with Karmel, Jackson seems occasionally to have rotated
exh. cat. (Saint Louis: Washington Pollock,pp. 129-30. earlier works as well; see Karmel,
University Gallery of Art, 1980), es 63. See ibid., pp. 105-32. "Pollock at Work," pp. 128-31.
pecially pp. 12-13 and 27, and Green, 64. In 1950, Berton Roueche quoted Willem de Kooning too seems to
"The Infant in the Adult: Joan Miro Pollock as insisting, "Abstract paint have responded to this idea of multi
and the Infantile Image," in Jona ing is abstract." "Unframed Space," ple orientations. In his later decades,

98
 spermatozoa shape at the upper right sky, where students poured colors the journal's editor. In either case,
of Untitled(Compositionwith Pouring onto a sheet of glass that was then it may have been on Greenberg's
I) also resembles the yellow sperma rotated on a wheel to make "crazed- advice that the new work was
tozoa at the upper left of Guardians looking" patterns (Naifeh and omitted, since Greenberg seems
of the Secret(see detail in ibid., p. 176). Smith, JacksonPollock:An American to have had reservations about it.
35. Dated to c. 1952 in ot 366, this Saga, p. 123). When Galaxy, one of Pollock's first
work was redated to 1946 in O'Con 39. ReviewingAmericanand French "mature" drip paintings, was shown
nor, JacksonPollock:A Catalogue Paintings, the exhibition that in the Whitney Annual of December
Raisonneof Paintings, Drawings,and Graham organized at McMillen in 1947, Greenberg condemned it as
Other Works.SupplementNumber One 1942, James Lane wrote that "Pollack "a rather unsatisfactory painting . . .
(New York:The Pollock-Krasner [sic]resembles Hayter in general merely a fragment" ("Art," TheNation,
Foundation, Inc., 1995), p. 80. The whirling figures." Art News40 January 10, 1948, p. 52; reprinted in
new dating is based on comparison (January 15, 1942): 29. Pollock's ArrogantPurpose,1945-1949, p. 198.)
to Untitled(YellowCollage)(no. 25 in work in this show, Birth, may have In January 1948, Betty Parsons
the Supplement),which is inscribed been painted as a horizontal before exhibited a critical mass of the new
"Jackson Pollock / 46" and was first he decided to exhibit it as a vertical. drip pictures. Greenberg praised two
purchased in the summer of 1947. 40. "William Stanley Hayter," Art paintings (Cathedral and Enchanted
Untitled(YellowCollage)also exempli News 43 (January 15, 1945): 30. Forest),opined that the quality of
fies the figure/ground relationship 41. In the mid-1940s, the most two others (SeaChange and Full
found in Untitled(BlackPouringover immediately accessible example of a Fathom Five)was still "to be decided,"
Color)and Untitled(Compositionwith Picasso interlace pattern would have and warned that Pollock's use of
PouringI). been the trivial pair of decorations aluminum paint brought him "start-
36. Hans Moller seerns to have spe published in Cahiers d'Art 16-19 ingly close to prettiness" ("Art," The
cialized in adapting European styles (1940-44): 80-82. Nation, January 24, 1948, p. 108; re
for an American audience. His inter- 42. Janis, Abstract and SurrealistArt printed in ArrogantPurpose,1945-
lace-style drawing of a Roman chari in America,pp. 112-13. 1949, p. 202). He also warned that
oteer, done for a 1944 advertisement, 43. See Ann Gibson's important early the new pictures would be compared
seems to have been modeled on a article "Painting outside the Para to "wallpaper patterns" (as indeed
drawing by Braque that had recently digm: Indian Space," Arts 57 no. 9 Harold Rosenberg would in "The
been reproduced in Cahiers d'Art 15 (February 1983): 98-104; Sandra American Action Painters," Art News
(1940-44): 3. Moller had previously Kraskin and Barbara Hollister, The 51 no. 8 [December 1952]: 49, with
absorbed another version of the Indian SpacePainters: NativeAmerican its notorious reference to "apocalyp
interlace style, from Klee; indeed his Sourcesfor AmericanAbstractArt, exh. tic wallpaper"). Conversely, Robert
paintings had been criticized as vir cat. (New York:The Sidney Mishkin Coates, in The New Yorker(January
tual copies of Klee's. See "Hans Gallery, Baruch College, 1991); and 17, 1948, p. 57), admired the "poetic
Moller," Art News42 no. 13 Kraskin, Life ColorsArt: Fifty Yearsof suggestion" of Sea Change,Full
(November 15, 1943): 23. The fol Painting by Peter Busa, exh. cat. FathomFive,and EnchantedForest,
lowing year, Moller's charioteer (Provincetown: Provincetown Art but condemned Cathedraland several
advertisement was discussed favor Association and Museum, 1992). See other pictures as "mere unorganized
ably in the same journal; see also Gail Stavitsky's introduction to explosions of random energy."
Rosamund Frost, "Advertising Art SteveWheeler:The Oracle Visitingthe 48. Pollock, "My Painting," Possibil
Improved," Art News 43 no. 11 20th Century,exh. cat. (Montclair, ities no. 1 (Winter 1947-48): 79.
(September 1944): 10. N.J.: The Montclair Art Museum, 49. Ibid.
37. Emily Genauer, Best of Art (Gar 1998), especially pp. 6 and 15. 50. Ibid., and [Dorothy Seiberling],
den City, N.Y.:Doubleday, 1948), 44. The closest antecedent for "Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest
plate 38, pp. 119-20; and see "Con TotemLesson1 is Picasso's Embrace Living Painter in the United States?,"
fessions of a Critic," Art News 46 no. of 1925, but it seems unlikely that Life 27 no. 6 (August 8, 1949): 45.
12 (February 1948): 37. Pollock ever saw this work, even 51. Robert Goodnough, "Pollock
38. In The Museumof ModemArt in reproduction. Paints a Picture," Art News 50 no. 3
Bulletin 12 no. 1 (August 1944), 45. Greenberg, "Art," The Nation, (May 1951): 38-41, 60-61.
devoted to "Hayter and Studio 17," April 7, 1945. Reprinted in Arrogant 52. "Jackson Pollock," Art News 45
Hayter notes that in engraving, the Purpose,1945-1949, vol. 2 of Clement no. 3 (May 1946): 63.
direction of the line is "controlled Greenberg:The CollectedEssays and 53. Picasso, quoted in an interview
by rotating the plate rather than by Criticism,ed. John O'Brian (Chicago: with Zervos, Cahiers d'Art 7 nos. 3-5
movement of the hand" (p. 6). In at the University Press, 1986), pp. (1932). Trans, in Herbert Read, Art
his book New Waysof Gravure(New 16-17. Now:An Introductionto the Theoryof
York:Pantheon, 1949), p. 56, he 46. "Jackson Pollock," Art News 45 ModernPainting and Sculpture(New
writes more specifically that "curves no. 3 (May 1946): 63. The move York:Harcourt, Brace & Company,
are produced by rotating the plate, toward "larger . . . shapes . . . placed 1934), p. 123.
the burin hand moving very slightly." against flat, monochrome back 54. Picasso, quoted in Zervos, "Con
I am grateful to Bernice Rose for grounds" does not seem to have versation avec Picasso," Cahiers d'Art
mentioning Hayter's influence in been limited to Pollock; it is also 10 no. 10 (1935): 173-78. Trans, in
this respect at the Pollock sympo evident in works like Felix Ruvolo's Barr, Picasso:Forty Yearsof His Art,
sium, January 23, 1999. Another col Duel of the Entomologist(c. 1946), pp. 13-15, and Barr, Picasso:Fifty
league, Elizabeth Levine, points out reproduced in Genauer, Best of Art, Yearsof His Art, pp. 272-84. Later in
that Pollock was exposed to this kind plate 51. the interview, Picasso says, "There is
of multidirectionality even earlier, in 47. We don't know whether the illus no abstract art. You must always start
his high school art classes with Fred trations in Possibilitieswere selected with something. Afterward you
erick John de St. Vrain Schwankov- by Pollock or by Robert Motherwell, remove all traces of reality. There's

97
At the outset of this project,it seemedwe wereembarkingon an exercisein stating
the obvious.Wewerechargedwith investigatingthe materialsand techniquesof an
artist whoseinnovativemethodwas thoughtto be wellunderstoodthroughthe pho
tographsof Hans Namuth, Martha Holmes,and Arnold Newman, and especially
throughNamuth's films. Numerousstudies had already noted Pollock'sinventive
use of industrial materials, and his preferencefor workingwith the canvas on the
floorwas legendary.Thereseemedto be little more to say.
Wedecidedto set aside this prior knowledgeand approachthe topic in essen
tially the same way that conservatorsand scholarswouldin the case of a moretra
ditional artist. Our first effortsfocusedon our own critical assessmentof Pollock's
techniquethrougha carefulstudyof thephotographsand films. Wethen made sim
ulations of specificmethodsand typicalmarks, less to duplicatethe appearanceof
Pollock'spaintings than to elucidatethe behaviorof his materials.
The essenceof this study, of course,was to lookat the artworks themselves.
We examinedthe paintings in natural light in various locations. Then, when the
workscame to New York,we intensifiedthe examinationwith viewingby means of
ultraviolet light, infrared reflectography,x-radiography,and microscopy.Specific
worksfrom TheMuseumof ModernArt's collectionwerechosenfor material analy
ses conductedthroughpolarized light microscopy,gas chromatography,scanning
electronmicroscopy,and Fouriertransform infrared spectroscopy.Meanwhile,we
combedthe Archivesof AmericanArt, among other sources,and studied archival
photographsfor technicalinformationoften overlookedby other scholars. We also
interviewedpurveyorsof materials and services involved in the production of
Pollock'sart. Wedid not dwellon the conditionor conservationtreatmentsof spe
cificpaintings, but in the courseof our study we did cometo appreciatethe remark
ably stable state of most of the paintings we examined.
At an early stage, our investigationrather naturally separated into two prin
cipal threads—one elucidatingthe classicpour technique,the other addressingthe
early and late work.Overtime, these two threads came to resemblethe warp and
weft of a textile,interwovenand integralto the structureof the whole. We repeat
edly saw evidenceof Pollock'sconsummatecontrol of materials and his focused,
meticulousreengagementwith particular works.Althoughour papers are presented
separately,they fow from a constant dialoguebetweenus. Togetherthey support
our conclusionthat Pollockdemonstratedan uncommoncommand of materials
and techniquesthat enabledhim to createpaintings of genius.

JamesCoddington and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro

100
 A SUM OF DESTRUCTIONS

and perhaps also earlier, he routinely 4:253). Rosenberg reiterated this idea rather than as one single, indivisible
rotated his pictures as he worked on in "The American Action Painters," piece of texture."
them, deciding on their permanent where an anonymous "leader of this 78. Bruno Alfieri, "Piccolo discorso
orientation only at the very end of mode" is quoted dismissing another sui quadri di Jackson Pollock (con
this process. See Robert Storr, "At artist as "not modern. ... He works testimonianza dell'artista)," as quot
Last Light," in Gary Garrels and from sketches. That makes him ed in Time, November 20, 1950.
Storr, Willemde Kooning:The Late Renaissance" (p. 22). 79. Alfieri, "Piccolo discorso sui
Paintings, The 1980s, exh. cat. (San 73. "When we are learning to walk, quadri di Jackson Pollock," L'Arte
Francisco: San Francisco Museum of to ride, to swim, skate, fence, write, Modema,June 8, 1950. Uncredited
Modern Art, and Minneapolis: play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves translation in the Archives of The
Walker Art Center, 1995), p. 50. at every step by unnecessary move Museum of Modern Art.
70. The depiction of a long linear ments and false notes. When we are 80. See Rosalind Krauss'sessay in
torso atop short, forking legs may proficients, on the contrary, the re the present volume.
have been suggested by Navajo draw sults . . . follow from a single instan 81. As discussed above, Greenberg
ings that Pollock would have known taneous 'cue.' The marksman sees first compared Pollock's drip style to
from several sources, including The the bird, and, before he knows it, he Analytic Cubism in "'American-Type'
Museum of Modern Art's 1941 exhi has aimed and shot. ... A glance at Painting," published in 1955—the
bition Indian Art of the UnitedStates the musical hieroglyphics, and the year Robert Rauschenberg painted
(see for example fig. 45, p. 134, in pianist's fingers have rippled through Rebus.The comparison is made more
the catalogue for that exhibition). a cataract of notes." William James, specific in the rewritten version of
For an overview of this topic, see "Habit," in The Principlesof Psychol the essay that Greenberg published
W. Jackson Rushing, "Ritual and ogy, 1890 (rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: in Art and Culture in 1961, by which
Myth: Native American Culture and Harvard UniversityPress,1981),p. 119. time Greenberg would unquestion
Abstract Expressionism," in The 74. Karmel, "Pollock at Work," pp. ably have been aware of Rauschen-
Spiritual in Art: AbstractPainting 107-11 and 118-24. Close study of berg's work.
1890-1985, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Number32 reveals the strategy neces 82. For a superb analysis of the mate
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, sary to achieve the effect of spon rials and metaphors of Rebus,see
1986), pp. 273-95. Pollock may also taneity. In several places, for in Roni Feinstein, "Rauschenberg," in
have seen Maud Oakes's paintings stance, the black paint seems to Fitzgerald, ed., A Life of Collecting:
after Navajo designs, shown at the spatter into a series of narrow lines Victorand Sally Ganz (New York:
Willard Gallery in May 1943 and emerging forcefully from one side of Christie's, 1997), p. 146.
reviewed in Art News43 no. 7 (May a large dark area. In smaller pictures, 83. In his seminal lecture "Other
15, 1944): 21. Oakes's paintings were Pollock could produce this dramatic Criteria," Steinberg argued that the
also reproduced in Jeff King, Oakes, effect simply by throwing paint side defining characteristic of much ad
ar.d Joseph Campbell, Where the Two ways onto the canvas. At the scale of vanced art of the 1960s was what he
Came to TheirFather:A Navaho War Number32, however, this technique called "the flatbed picture plane"—
Ceremonial(NewYork:Pantheon, 1943). was not feasible, and Pollock instead one in which the top of the picture
Oakes's work as an anthropologist dripped a series of thin parallel lines no longer mirrored the erect position
could have been a common interest to one side of a denser splotch laid of the human head, nor the lower
for Pollock and for Namuth, who down without spatters. Instead of edge our feet. It was Rauschenberg,
provided the photographs for Oakes's being dripped from a stick or brush, Steinberg argued, who first aban
second book, The TwoCrossesof Todos these fine lines were poured from a doned this "correspondence with
Santos: Survivalsof Mayan Religious small paint can with a punctured lid. human posture," his "flatbed"
Ritual (New York:Pantheon, 1951). (Pollock can be seen using this tech pictures corresponding instead to
71.Digital analysis of the third nique in Namuth's film of him "tabletops, studio floors, charts, bul
mural-scale painting of 1950, painting on glass.) letin boards—any receptor surface on
Autumn Rhythm,reveals a different 75. On the importance of Miro's Con which information may be received,
kind of underdrawing (see Karmel, stellations as a model for Pollock's printed, impressed." "Other Criteria,"
"Pollock at Work," pp. 118-24), allover compositions, see Rubin, 1968, reprinted in Other Criteria:
closer to the loose interlace of "Jackson Pollock and the Modern Confrontationswith Twentieth-Century
Braque's and Moller's "classical" Tradition, Part III," PP- 26-27. Art (New York:Oxford University
illustrations and to the Picasso 76. Pollock's pictures thus corre Press, 1972), pp. 82-84. Steinberg
Crucifixion drawings of 1927. spond to Baudelaire's assertion that specifically excludes Pollock from
72. In 1950, Pollock said, "I approach "a harmoniously-conducted picture this category, but if Pollock's figura
painting in the same sense as one consists of a series of pictures super tive markings qualify as "informa
approaches drawing; that is, it's imposed on one another." In "The tion" impressed on the "receptor
direct. I don't work from drawings, I Salon of 1859," Art in Paris: 1845- surface" of the canvas, perhaps he
don't make sketching and drawings 1862, trans. Jonathan Mayne (Lon should be included. The concept of
and color sketches into a final paint don: Phaidon, 1965, reprint ed. the flatbed picture plane, with its
ing. Painting, I think, today—the Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, refusal of anthropomorphic erect-
more immediate, the more direct— 1981), p. 161. ness, seems to me to anticipate
the greater the possibilities of mak 77. It might even be argued that Krauss's idea of "horizontality as
ing a direct—of making a statement." Mondrian's work perpetuates a ver medium," discussed elsewhere in
Quoted in Wright, "An Interview sion of this stage space. His pictures, this volume, although Krauss purifies
with Jackson Pollock" transcribed in as Greenberg wrote in "The Crisis of her version of horizontality by
Namuth, PollockPainting, n.p. In a the Easel Picture" (ArrogantPurpose, excluding figuration.
manuscript note dated to 1950, Pol p. 223), are "the flattest of all easel
lock writes, "No Sketches/ acceptance painting," but the canvas "still pre
of/ what I do—" (reproduced in ot sents itself as the sceneof forms

99
 JAMES CODDINCTON

of brightly colored oil by poking a small hole in a paint tube, then squeezing the
tube quite forcefully, extending staccato shots of yellow, blue, and orange
paint —long shards of vivid, palpable line—across the surface. Pollock's friend
Peter Busa confirms the artist's familiarity with this technique: "During the last
days of the WPA [in the early 1940s] even Pollock was squeezing tubes of tem
5 pera color directly onto the canvas without using brushes."
Pollock then began to pour black enamel, directing it with either a brush or
6 a stick. In a general way he repeated the forms created by the dark gray brush-
work, as if he still needed to prove to himself that he could control his new tech
nique and paint with it as readily as he could with a brush. By the time he had
finished, his confidence must have been quite high, as his final act was to thrust
on the green paint. At this point the canvas was probably already stretched and
hanging on the wall, or else unstretched and simply pinned up—in any case it
was certainly either upright or was immediately placed upright, for the green
worked its way down the painting, nudging the sides of the already-squeezed-on
colors like a rush of water pushing to the edge of the riverbed as it seeks its level.
(The canvas was at this point oriented vertically; Pollock eventually hung Lucifer
as a horizontal composition.) It is worth noting that if the canvas was indeed
stretched when Pollock applied the green paint, that suggests he had thought
the work complete —yet he returned to it to make this extraordinarily bold mark.
One can only imagine the sureness of purpose that Pollock already commanded
to be able to countenance the cataclysm that might have resulted if the green
had not worked, or if its trails had been somehow miscalculated.
In 1948, Pollock created several works in which he put down a layer of
white paint, then poured black paint on top of it, as for example in Number 14,
1948 (fig. 1). The black is a long extended pour, more likely achieved by pouring
directly from a can than by dripping from one of the brushes or sticks we see in
Hans Namuth's later photographs. This was a means of applying paint to which
Pollock returned, for in Namuth's color film of 1950 we see him pouring paint
7 from a can. In that instance he is using the paint to make objects adhere to the
glass support of Number 29, 1950. In the group that includes Number 14, 1948,
on the other hand, he is using the solvent in the black to bite into the white
ground —the two paints merge, softening the line and yielding some of his most
beautiful and understated works.
This is another example of how thoroughly Pollock considered the con
struction of his works and the implications of every choice, even preparatory
ones such as whether or not to apply a ground, and, if so, how it would interact
8 with the succeeding layers of paint. He often did put down a ground, but by no
means universally; and whether he did or not, it was a calculated move. Pollock
began to use colored grounds early on, a procedure he may have learned as a
student under Thomas Hart Benton. Certainly his interest in artists like

102
 No Chaos Damn It

James Coddington

In 1950, Time magazine printed parts of an essay by Bruno Alfieri, previously

published in Italy, which used the word "chaos" to describe the paintings of
Jackson Pollock. Unable to let the criticism pass, Pollock sent Time a telegram
1 that began, "No chaos damn it." In fact Alfieri had associated Pollock's paintings
with "chaos / absolute lack of harmony / complete lack of structural organiza
2 tion / total absence of technique, however rudimentary / once again, chaos,"
and whatever the merits of the rest of his analysis, there is plentiful evidence
that he was wrong on every one of these counts. Pollock understood much about
traditional methods of painting, and incorporated this into his style. He had
technique, and it was anything but rudimentary; he had structure, and it was
often exceedingly complex. He as much as any artist willed order from and gave
voice to the dumb colored muds that we call paint. He was remarkably consis
tent in his strategies throughout his career, despite the apparent variations in his
images and methods. That he was able to stretch his methods to allow such vari
ation, and to apply them to new materials as these became available to him, is
another measure of his creativity.
Close examination of selected paintings will be the principal means for pre
senting this argument. In some instances this examination has included X-radi-
ographs and both infrared and ultraviolet light, as well as technical analysis of
3 media and pigments. Although it is difficult and sometimes impossible, of
course, to deconstruct the layers of the paintings systematically, close examina
tion gives us the chance to try to place Pollock's painting decisions within a pic
torial logic. The consistency of this logic leads in the end to a finer appreciation
of the variation in Pollock's oeuvre.
4 The pour technique is undoubtedly Pollock's signature method. Although
dripped or splattered paint had made its way into earlier works, the technique
reached maturity in 1947, when Pollock started to see that it could carry a paint
ing on its own. Lucifer (plate 7), from that year, is an excellent example of the
artist beginning to work confidently in this way. Pollock began with the brush,
laying in two grays, one light and cool, the other darker. Next he applied strands

101
 JAMES CODDINCTON

Fig. 2. Jackson Pollock. Full Fathom

Five. 1947.Oil on canvas with nails,
tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes,
matches, etc., 50/. x 30/« in. (129.2 x
76.5 cm). The Museumof Modern Art,
New York. Gift of Miss Peggy
Cuggenheim

over in green and black paint, Pollock's last additions of color were placed directly
in respect to it, leading out of the ostensible shoulder. Arguably, then, these quick
slashes of paint are marks for a head. Phosphorescence(1947; fig. 4) also reveals an
initial figural laying-in, of two or three stick figures, that remain visible through
X rays (fig. 5). Pollock hid these forms under a coat of aluminum paint, but he
apparently remained somehow concerned or obliged to reiterate some element
12 of them, principally the long verticals that articulate their torsos. He did so
with final squeezes of paint straight from the tube, covering the surface in an
otherwise seemingly random web of white lines. Such finishing touches in both
of these 1947 canvases lead us on to One: Number 31, 1950 (plate 4), of which
Karmel observes that some of the final pours delineate figures, perhaps to con
13 firm for Pollock the underlying structure.

104
 NO CHAOS DAMN IT

Fig. I. Jackson Pollock. Number 14, 1948. 1948. Enamel on gesso on paper, 22% x 31in. (57.8 x 78.8 cm). Yale University
Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. The Katharine Ordway Collection

Tintoretto and El Greco, as evidenced by his early sketchbooks, would have

shown him examples of the practice, and suggested possibilities for his own
9 work. In Number 13A, 1948: Arabesque and Number 2, 1949, the sienna red of the
fabric, which Pollock purchased that way (it was not a color he added), functions
essentially like a colored ground. A critical visual consequence of this choice of
canvas color is that it flips the values, pushing the whites forward and the blacks
10 back—the opposite of the relationships in the works on natural-colored canvas.
Pepe Karmel has argued persuasively that the figure, if in hieroglyphic
form, was a crucial element in Pollock's compositional strategies, with even a
work like Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 (plate 5) being built on a figurative
11 armature. Three years earlier, Full Fathom Five (1947; fig. 2) found Pollock pil
ing impastoed paint to create a rough figure that he later covered over, but that
remains perceptible in an X-ray photograph (fig. 3; the X rays pick up the figure
because the paint Pollock used for it is loaded with white lead). The nails, tacks,
buttons, key, etc., that he also incorporated are placed in direct response to and
elaboration of this shape. The key in particular falls unmistakably right at the
crotch, and the final paint application, of white and orange in the upper right
corner, follows a similar logic: even though the figure had by now been covered

103
 JAMES CODDINCTON

Fig. 4. Jackson Pollock.

Phosphorescence. 1947.Oil,
enamel, and aluminum paint
on canvas, 44 x 28 in. (Ilt.8 x
71.1cm). Addison Callery of
American Art, Phillips
Academy, Andover, Massa
chusetts. Gift of Mrs. Peggy
Guggenheim

succeeding layers of paint will sit, distinguished from the work's other pours,
which are softened by the more absorbent canvas. Contrast this with Number 32,
1950, in which repeated applications of paint create hard glossy patches, actual
puddles of inky-black enamel that seem to sink deeply into the compositional
space (plate 9).
These enamel paints, of course, are the most distinctive material feature of
the pour paintings. It states the obvious to say that they were an essential pre
cursor to Pollock's creative demands. It has often been assumed that he used
nitrocellulose-based enamel paints, but in fact, in the works analyzed, the enam
15 els have proven to be almost exclusively oil-modified alkyd paints.
With LavenderMist: Number 1,1950 (plate 6) Pollock brought the pour tech
nique to a high pitch of refinement, varying every facet of the work—thinning

106
 NO CHAOS DAMN IT

Fig. 3. Pollock'sFull Fathom Five,

in an X-rayphotograph

Any discussion of Pollock's technique must take account of Autumn Rhythm

and of the other great pour paintings of 1950. In certain respects Autumn Rhythm
recalls works such as Full Fathom Five, not just in the use of initial figures to
which Pollock then responded (as Karmel argues) but in the placement of sup
plementary material. Pollock used enamel paints that dried quite quickly, not
just on the canvas but in the cans, which he seems rarely to have kept covered;
and Autumn Rhythm contains a number of the skins that congealed in these open
paint cans, placed and even formed to supply both a collage element and a hard
surface that would take later applications of paint differently from the areas
around it (plate 8).14In the end these inclusions are of the same family as the
tacks, sand, pebbles, and so forth in other works. They provide texture and a low
relief pushing out from the canvas plane; they also provide a surface on which

105
JAMES CODDIMCTON

roller. Pollock continued by working in direct contact with the canvas, using not
only a brush but his hands, much as he had in Number I A, 1948 (plate 2).16He
also returned to applying paint directly by squeezing it from the tube, as he had
done regularly in 1947-48, but now he modified the lines he made this way: the
pattern that many of them follow, with one edge sharp and the other spreading
thin tendrils out into the painting (plate 10), suggests that he first applied the
paint, then flattened it somehow, perhaps with a board. The tendrils were pre
sumably created as he pulled the board from the surface, leaving the opposite
edge of the line still straight. That he was flattening these squeezes after apply
ing them is proven by the way some of them regain their rounded tube forms as
they trail off—clearly Pollock did not compress them along their full length.
That Pollock was shaping the paint by applying objects to it is further evi
denced by a passage in the center of the work, where one can make out a pat
tern —the imprint of a piece of canvas pressed into the surface (plate 11). Pollock
repeated the move in a black passage perpendicular to this area. These marks are
too specific to be the results of random or accidental impressions made, say,
when the canvas was rolled for transport, or when it was lined. About a foot
lower and to the right of the first imprint, in fact, one can see a line of brown
ish black, where it is clear that Pollock moved the piece of fabric and used the
residual paint already clinging to it to make it adhere again (plate 12). He may
have been using the fabric to apply a color to leaven the blacks; or perhaps he
was testing a color application without actually committing to it, much as
another artist might temporarily pin collage elements to a support while devel
oping a composition.
What is clear, though, is that Pollock worked this canvas with a specificity
and closeness not evident in the other great pour paintings of 1950. In applying
the squeezes from the tube, for example, he used two different whites, which,
although virtually indistinguishable to the naked eye, separate quite clearly
under ultraviolet light (plates 13 and 14).17Once we know what to look for, we
can see that these two whites absorb other paints differently, and that Pollock
took advantage of this difference—perhaps unconsciously but in the end quite
visibly. The white that he pushed and pulled with the board is generally thinner
than the other, and at the same time more absorbent of succeeding paint layers,
which again and again we see bleeding readily into it while sitting more boldly
on the surface of the other white.
LavenderMist also contains very thin —uniquely thin —washes of black and
blue paint, which pool and puddle numerously on a comparatively microscopic
scale compared to other canvases from 1950. The method of application is hard
to identify, but these coats are in any case poured very locally. They are so thin,
and tend to flow in so many directions, that it is hard to think they were applied
as line; almost glazelike in quality, they function fundamentally as inky stains

108
 NO CHAOS DAMN IT

Fig. 5. Pollock'sPhosphorescence,
in an X-ray photograph

the paint, pressing into it, pulling at it, always breaking the surface into smaller
and smaller bits to achieve an atmospheric, atomized quality. The canvas itself
is different from that of the larger paintings from the same year, in that Pollock
used its full width for the final composition: there is no original material pulled
around and behind the stretcher, and blue selvage threads appear at both sides
of the cloth. In fact the only way this painting could be exhibited without the
addition of canvas to the edges would be by tacking it directly to a stretcher or
to the wall. The presence of tack holes penetrating the design layers along all four
edges confirms that at least for a while this was the way the painting was shown.
Pollock started Lavender Mist by applying a layer of thin white paint as a
ground. The few places where this ground layer remains visible, especially along
the top edge, show raised, Hershey's Kiss-like points that suggest the use of a

107
 JAMES CODDINCTON

In Number 28, 1950 we see Pollock developing yet another, fairly overt strat
egy to achieve a unity of composition. The last major application of paint here
was evidently that of the uppermost skeins of black. Left untouched, these pas
sages would have appeared to stand even more independently from the rest of
the colors than they do now, but almost immediately he had poured them,
Pollock went back in with a brush and physically mixed them into the underly
ing whites in places, so that they seem to weave in and out of those prior layers
(plate 19). Two observations are worthwhile here: first, Pollock had very little
time to ponder this decisive act, for enamel paint dries quickly. He probably had
no more than a half hour or so to consider his options. Second, it seems to have
been the exception rather than the rule for Pollock not to be literally in touch,
at some point in the painting process, with the canvas, even in poured works like
Number 13A, 1948: Arabesque, Autumn Rhythm, and One. That Pollock was in
physical contact with the canvas in Number 28, 1950 is evidenced by the pres
ence of brushmarks within the mixed passages described above. The effect is
readily differentiable from the wet-into-wet marbling one sees in, for instance,
Autumn Rhythm.
The black pour paintings of 1951 have been identified as a departure from
Pollock's prior work, and this is certainly true in regard to his materials and
methods. Aside from the reduced palette, Pollock made some fundamental
21 changes in technique. He introduced a new tool, the turkey baster. He also
moved back toward more-consistent direct contact with the canvas, applying
some of his initial marks with a brush. Echo: Number 25, 1951 demonstrates
many of his basic techniques in these works: he did indeed brush some passages
on, but the bulk of the paint he either poured or more likely worked with the
baster, which he used almost like a big fountain pen. For a large, dramatic dis
charge, he could squeeze the bulb; or he could hold the paint in the device's tube
and draw extended lines (plate 20).
According to Lee Krasner, Pollock would start the black pours with a sizing
22 of Rivit glue. It should be clear by now that he was very sensitive to the impli
cations of preparing a canvas or board, in terms both of underlying color and of
the way the next layer of paint would be absorbed; choosing whether or not to
use a size would have given him a way to control the bleeding of the paint into
the canvas. In Number 22, 1951, for example, the paint in places bleeds quite
readily, blending with the fabric in much the same way it blends with the
ground in works on paper from 1948 (plate 21). In Echo, on the other hand,
although there is variation in the quality of the line from center to edge (hard
and glossy in the center, soft toward the edge, as the nap of the fabric reasserts
itself), there is nothing that could be called a bleeding of the paint into the can
vas. This might suggest a sizing with Rivit glue—yet there is no such coating in
23 Echo. Technical analysis suggests that in this case Pollock may have used a more

110
 NO CHAOS DAMN IT

rather than muscular thrusts of paint. In fact they are a means to temper the
painting's longer throws (plate 15), creating small points of color throughout
the work that paradoxically both unify the composition and break it into ever-
smaller units.
As LavenderMist became more complex, erasures were necessary (as in other
18 works of this period), but erasing for Pollock often meant adding. One of the
first instances of this subtraction by addition appears in Croaking Movement
(1946), where Pollock pushed lines of white straight from the tube into previous
layers of color, creating the impression that he had scraped these lines out. Re
inforcing this impression is the fine network of lines in the more thinly painted
passages of the work, which Pollock did in fact scrape out, seemingly with the
butt end of the brush, at an earlier stage of the composition (plate 16); but the
much bolder and more extended lines of white, which can be read as scrapes
into the layer beneath them, are actually new paint. This device gave Pollock yet
another way of inviting the eye to move forward and back in the picture plane —
not to mention, as it were, in the temporal process of painting itself. In Lavender
Mist he prompted this movement by adding beige tones throughout, using a dry,
matte paint, a visual counterpoint to the more heavily painted and generally
more glossy areas. This beige also presented an absorbent base for later applica
tions of paint, which would sink into it visually and in some instances physically
as well. The result is the creation of a shallow space, moving forward from the
canvas and beige paint, and then back, again and again throughout the painting.
It should be evident that Pollock sought a more delicate surface and image
in Lavender Mist than in virtually any other work. Surprisingly, for example, he
seems to have applied a spray of varnish or some similar very thin medium at
points throughout the painting. The evidence for this is considerable, yet the
effect is so subtle it is hard to believe he would pursue it. Pollock was familiar
with spray equipment; he had used it in David Siqueiros's experimental work
shop, in 1936.19Spray effects also appear in works such as the lithograph Land
scape with Steer (1935-37) and in Painting (c.1944). The sprayed passages in Lav
ender Mist appear to be pigmented, but only lightly —they are certainly more rich
in varnish or a related medium (plates 17 and 18). To what end are they here,
though? They were not the final marks Pollock made on the work; succeeding
layers went over them. It is in fact plausible that he applied the varnish to pro
vide some tooth for later applications of paint, or simply as a glaze or tone. Yet
it cannot be overlooked that the sprays were a palpable mist, a fusion of the fluid
20 and the particulate —perhaps exactly the effect he was seeking. Every move he
made on this painting, after all, every adjustment of prior technique, broke the
image into smaller and smaller segments until it was reconstituted as an organic
whole. The use of sprays, radical and counterintuitive as they are to our received
understanding of Pollock's technique, can be seen as the logical end of this process.

109
 of complex layering, whether or not such layering is present, that we saw in
Number 28, 1950: the midsection of the second pole from the right appears to
slip under a substantial pour of white, but was actually never painted in (plate
22). Yet our eye readily connects the upper and lower blue lines, making them
consonant with the other pole structures.
Around 1952, the same year he painted Blue Poles, Pollock made another
departure in materials: he seems to have begun to work in some measure with
the new synthetic paints. The evidence is currently somewhat circumstantial,
but Leonard Bocour, one of the creators of the acrylic paint Magna, says he gave
28 these new paints to Pollock, and there are still Magna colors in the artist's stu
dio in The Springs. (They could have been Krasner's, but they are untouched.)
Boxes of what appear to be Magna can also be seen in the background of some
of the photographs that Tony Vaccaro took in Pollock's studio in August of 1953.
More concretely, works like Convergence:Number 10,1952 contain a smooth, fluid
paint that behaves rather differently from the medium of Pollock's earlier works.
The mixing that occurs on the canvas is unlike that in paintings from a few years
previous, yielding an almost marbled-paper-like effect. Another evident differ
ence is the speed with which this fairly full-bodied paint has dried, leaving traces
in the form of heavy, molten-looking drips (plate 23). Since the nature of the
pours is quite familiar, there is no reason to think that these changes came
because Pollock was applying paint with a new, unidentified tool. Rather it was
the performance of the paint itself that produced different results. Because tech
nical analysis was not done on this painting, the evidence for Pollock's use of
synthetic paint remains deductive and visual. Yet it would be completely in
keeping with Pollock's willingness to experiment.
Another case of paint being applied in a familiar way yet appearing funda
mentally different occurs in White Light. The tube squeezes of white in this work
are similar in form to squeezes in works like Number 1A, 1948 and Phos
phorescence, among others, but they are also noticeably glossier, and their
smoothness suggests a more fluid medium than the stiff, brush-applied oil paint
in other passages of the work (plate 24). Analysis of this glossy paint, however,
reveals that it is in fact an oil paint —but one that appears to have damar varnish
29 added. This is unexpected, for if it is a commercial formulation it is highly
unusual. If it is something Pollock was mixing himself, or having made for him,
its presence underlines his ceaseless quest for the right material, the most expres
sive paint. Yet the mode of application, squeezed from a tube or other container,
is familiar. Pollock may have been recycling strategies and techniques here, but
this was something he did throughout his career.
Pollock's methods have often been the subject of condescension or scorn,
and even as stout a champion of his work as Clement Greenberg found time to
belittle his craft, writing, "Pollock demonstrates that something related to skill

112
 NO CHAOS DAMN IT

sophisticated technique to control the bleed, and that was the mixing of two dif
ferent paints, an oil and an alkyd enamel. Indeed, although the paint in Echo is
apparently pure black, close examination shows occasional swirls of red, presum
24 ably due to a mixing of different paints to yield a warm black or near brown.
Rivit, Krasner remembered, made a second appearance at a later stage of
Pollock's process in the black pours: it was applied as a finishing coat once the
25 actual painting was done. This was another fundamental departure in Pollock's
studio practice, and since it is hard to see why he would suddenly have been
converted to the "protective" function of such a coating, it is logical to seek an
aesthetic function. Pollock did in fact mention the practice in a letter to the
curator Dorothy Miller dated April 14, 1952. After complimenting her installa
tion of his work in the show Fifteen Americans at The Museum of Modern Art, he
went on, "I wish I could give no 7 a coat of glue sizing—it would take some of
the wrinkles out of it. Perhaps when I'm in next time I can do it after museum
26 hours. It wouldn't take more than ten minutes." Perhaps this was his only rea
son for putting on a final layer of glue—to remove wrinkles and draws. Another
possible purpose, however, or at least a likely result of this procedure, would
have been to compress variation across the surface—to give the work a consis
tent sheen, so that the eye would focus on color differences rather than on dif
ferences of both color and gloss. Number 14, 1951 shows the results of a final
27 clear coating, which analysis shows to be the expected (poly)vinyl acetate.
Viewing the work in a specular light, one can see a measure of gloss in the areas
of bare canvas, minimizing their difference from the gloss of the black paint, and
generally flattening the space.
After the departures represented by the black pours, Blue Poles: Number 11,
1952, painted the following year, seems to return to the pour technique of 1947-
50. Actually, however, it is new in essential ways. For all its busily, even hecti
cally worked surface, the structure of its layers is in fact quite spare. Pollock
began with a gray ground, then applied paint, working in direct contact with the
canvas. Interestingly, this paint was a blend of blue and yellow that he appears
to have mixed not on the canvas but on a palette or in the can. It is difficult to
tell if these initial marks bear any resemblance to the final composition, but the
mixing of color in this way heralds a tactic that Pollock would use again. (In
Untitled (Scent) [c. 1953-55], Ocean Greyness [1953], and White Light [1954], the
overt premixing of paint for heavy impastoed passages is unmistakable.) In
another departure from the earlier pour technique, Pollock applied color quite
discretely in Blue Poles; that is, all of the orange was applied in a single campaign,
all of the yellow in another, and so on. (In the classic pours, on the other hand,
the colors were applied in the course of many campaigns.) Perhaps this literal
paint application accounts for the work's less lyrical quality, which is supplanted
by a more aggressive palette. Blue Poles also contains an instance of the illusion

ill
JAMES CODDINCTON

Notes

Carol Mancusi-Ungaro and 1 would mode of application in these paint reading in the natural-canvas or
like to thank the following colleagues ings, an observation with which I light-colored-ground paintings must
and others who assisted us in our agree. Since much of the prior litera also have been his choice. It seems
research: A1Albano, Dee Ardrey, ture has called them pour paintings, more logical, then, to assume that
Mark Aronsen, Lucy Belloli, Bob however, I will stick with that nomen Pollock was interested in both kinds
Brier, Karl Buchholz, Nick Carone, A1 clature here. See Karmel, "Pollock of space in his work, rather than just
Conklin, John Dennis, Jeannette at Work: The Films and Photographs one. See Rubin, "Jackson Pollock and
Dixon, Trevor Fairbrother, Janet of Hans Namuth," in Kirk Varnedoe the Modern Tradition, Part 111,"
Farber, Susan Faxom, Ria German, with Karmel, JacksonPollock,exh. Artforum5 no. 8 (April 1967): note
Pia Gottschaller, Alison de Lima cat. (New York:The Museum of 20, p. 31.
Greene, Adele Groning, Helen Modern Art, 1998), note 87, p. 137; It is critical to note that as the
Harrison, Phil Heagy,Judith and Karmel, "Introduction," in natural-colored canvases have aged,
Hastings, Helen Harrison, Madeleine Karmel, ed., JacksonPollock:Key they have darkened to varying
Hensler, Lawrence Hoffman, Anna Interviews,Articles,and Reviews, degrees, diminishing the contrast
Indych, Allan Kaprow,Antoinette 1943-1993 (New York:The Museum between them and the darker paint
King, Irene Konefal, Stephen of Modern Art, 1999, note 1, p. 13. they bear, and simultaneously accen
Kornhauser, Jay Krueger,Susan Lake, See also Francis V. O'Connor's ex tuating the contrast between them
Ellen Landau, Tom Learner, Elizabeth tended discussion of this subject in and the lighter paint. This phenome
Lunning, Jan Marontate, Richard his review of the Pollock retrospec non is unfortunately difficult to
Newman, David Novros, Eugena tive on his Web page, at http://mem- quantify, but it clearly has significant
Ordonez, John Peters, Wynne bers.aol.com/FVOC/reviews.html. implications for our reading of space
Phelan, Leni Potoff, Vincent Ripor- 5. Peter Busa, quoted in Sidney in these paintings.
tella, E. Jenny Rose, Lou Rosenthal, Simon, "Concerning the Beginnings 11.See Karmel, "Pollock at Work,"
Jeffery Ryan, Michael Skalka, Michael of the New YorkSchool: 1939-1943," pp. 86-137.
Solomon, Marcia Steele, William Art International 11 no. 6 (Summer 12.The aluminum paint in many of
Steen, Louisa Szarofim,Judy Throm, 1967): 17. Pollock's works has probably dulled
Robin Utterback, Tony Vaccaro,Jean 6. These thoughts on Pollock's meth over the years, losing its intensity
Volkmer,Jane Weber, Christopher ods are drawn from close observation and reflectiveness. This seems to be
Whittington, Terry Winters, Charles of the paintings, to discern marks due to migration of excess medium
Wylie, and the entire Museum of such as brushstrokes; from Pollock's to the surface, where it discolors,
Modern Art conservation staff for and Lee Krasner's statements about and to the accumulation of dirt and
endless help large and small. Special his technique; from the photographs grime. In works where conservators
thanks are due Francis V. O'Connor, of Hans Namuth, Arnold Newman, have surface-cleaned such passages,
who shared with us on several occa and others; and from efforts to re they have noted a marked increase
sions his curiosity and information produce the marks themselves. Much in the gloss and overall presence of
about specific works under investiga of the secondary material appears in the aluminum paint.
tion. Finally we remain indebted to Namuth, Barbara Rose, Rosalind 13. Karmel, "Pollock at Work,"
the initiative and support of Kirk Krauss, et al., PollockPainting, ed. pp. 125-27.
Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel, who Rose (New York:Agrinde Publica 14. Elsewhere in this publication
invited us to undertake this study tions Ltd., 1980); originally pub Carol Mancusi-Ungaro cites the irre
and participated fully in its coming lished as L'Atelierde JacksonPollock sistible instance of Pollock using a
. to fruition. (Paris: Macula, 1978). In every paint skin to create an illusionistic
instance my conclusions are the dress, in The Debutante (1946).
1.See Stephen Naifeh and Gregory result of close collaboration with 15. Lake and Ordonez.
White Smith, JacksonPollock:An Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, whose own 16. Rubin and E. A. Carmean have
AmericanSaga (New York:Clarkson paper on this subject appears else noted this as well. See Rubin,
N. Potter, 1989), p. 650. where in this book. "Jackson Pollock and the Modern
2. Bruno Alfieri, "Piccolo discorso 7. Namuth, JacksonPollock,1950. Tradition [Part I]," Artforum5 no. 6
sui quadri di Jackson Pollock (con 8. Ordonez's analysis of There Were (February 1967): 19, and Carmean,
testimonianza dell'artista)," quoted Sevenin Eight (c. 1945) indicates "Jackson Pollock: Classic Paintings of
in ibid., p. 605. two applications of a ground, both 1950," AmericanArt at Mid-Century—
3. This analysis of media and pig probably applied by the artist (they The Subjectsof the Artist, exh. cat.
ments was done by Susan Lake, of are virtually indistinguishable mate (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery
the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculp rially)—additional evidence of of Art, 1978), p. 130.
ture Garden, Washington, D.C., Pollock's careful consideration of 17.Ultraviolet-light examinations of
and by Eugena Ordonez. Lake and absorbency, opacity, color, etc., at works of art take advantage of the
Ordonez are in the midst of a more this literally fundamental stage of fact that different materials absorb
comprehensive technical survey of the painting's development. this energy differently, then, depend
Jackson Pollock's paints, which when 9. See, for example, Naifeh and ing on the degree of the absorption,
it appears will be an essential refer Smith, JacksonPollock:An American reemit some of it in the visible spec
ence for future studies and especially Saga, p. 564. See also Varnedoe, trum, creating varying qualities of
for technical connoisseurship. The "Comet: Jackson Pollock's Life and fluorescence that we can observe and
data used here are drawn from reports Work," JacksonPollock,p. 24. interpret. X-ray images of paintings
prepared by Lake and Ordonez that 10. William Rubin points out that make use of the fact that the heavy
are now in the files of the Conserva the colored grounds '"close off' the metals, such as lead, that some pig
tion Department of The Museum of back of the space," preventing a ments contain are comparatively
Modern Art. deep-space reading. But if Pollock opaque to X rays, which, passing
4. Pepe Karmel views "drip" as a chose the colored canvas to create a through a painting to strike film on
more accurate description of Pollock's shallower space, the deeper-space the other side, produce white in the

114
 NO CHAOS DAMN IT

30 is likewise unessential to the creation of aesthetic quality." These pages present

evidence as to just how skilled Pollock was. As mentioned earlier, he was famil
iar with traditional painting techniques from a number of sources, including
Benton; the only book on the subject in his library, however (according to the
catalogue raisonne), was Frederic Taubes's Techniqueof Oil Painting. Books by Max
Doerner and Ralph Mayer were a good deal more popular at the time, but it was
Taubes's book that Pollock owned, a book on a particular topic: how to recon
struct the techniques of old master painting. In the introduction to the volume,
Taubes writes, "A technique is an outgrowth of an esthetic outlook and not
merely a term pertaining to mechanical manipulation. Esthetic reasons govern
the use of this or the other technique, and these reasons are dictated by the char
31 acter of the epoch in which a painter lives."
It is immediately evident how such a statement might have appealed to
Pollock. It would have been all the more attractive in a book about the old mas
ters, for it certainly created room for him, his aesthetic, and his methods to be
considered on equal terms with them and with their art. That Pollock himself
welcomed and sought such comparison is noted often in the many biographies
of him; and I would in fact argue that the boldness of his achievement is of
necessity rooted in the same mastery of materials that the old masters attained.
I have also argued that the works themselves, aesthetically and materially, are
the irreducible measure of all discussions of Pollock, as they are of any artist. The
line that followed "No chaos damn it" in Pollock's telegram to Time magazine
was "Damned busy painting." To understand what he was doing when he was busy
painting is to understand something essential to Pollock, and that is the vocab
ulary and language in which he speaks most eloquently.

113
 NO CHAOS DAMN IT

places where paint has absorbed 20. This was not the only time
them, black where there Is no such Pollock worked to near-invisible
paint, and varying grays where there effect. Number28, 1950, for example,
are varying densities of absorbent shows a gray wash applied locally
and nonabsorbent paints. Infrared with a brush; most evident on some
images similarly take advantage of of the whites, this wash is still only
different materials' varying absorp discernible on close examination.
tion and transmission of the infrared 21. See Krasner, quoted in B. H.
part of the electromagnetic spec Friedman, "An Interview with Lee
trum. Paints and drawing materials Krasner Pollock," in Namuth et al.,
containing carbon absorb infrared PollockPainting, n.p.
radiation most dramatically. What 22. Ibid. Rivit was manufactured by
is important in all these cases is that Behlen's, a company that has since
material differences invisible to the been absorbed by larger corporations.
naked eye are rendered visible, to The current company, Mohawk In
offer new information on the choices dustries, after a cursory search, found
the artist made in constructing no record of the glue's formula in
the work. the early 1950s, but the evidence
18. As Rubin notes in "Jackson points to it being a (poly)vinyl
Pollock and the Modern Tradition acetate emulsion, a white glue
[Part I]," the incorporation of "acci similar to Elmer's.
dent" is critical to Pollock's tech 23. Lake and Ordonez.
nique, certain accidents in the devel 24. Ibid.
opment of the composition being 25. Krasner, quoted in Friedman,
preserved and adopted to his inten "An Interview with Lee Krasner
tions. Extending this idea further, it Pollock," n.p.
may be useful to observe that almost 26. Pollock, letter to Dorothy C.
all of the paintings that can be made Miller, April 14, 1952. In the curator
out in the photographs of Pollock's ial files of the Department of Paint
studio taken between 1949 and 1954 ing and Sculpture, The Museum of
are known, suggesting that Pollock Modern Art.
rarely did "lose contact" with a 27. This and the analysis of a num
painting (his phrase, from his state ber of other works in the collection
ment in Possibilitiesin 1947-48), and of the Tate Gallery, London, was
that when he did it was just a stage done by Tom Learner of that institu
in a process—that ultimately he tion, for which I am most grateful.
could reestablish contact and create 28. Leonard Bocour, in an interview
an image he considered successful. on February 7, 1985, in the Morris
One is reminded of Hans Namuth's Louis and Morris Louis Estate Papers,
story of his initial photo session with Archives of American Art, Smithson
Pollock, who said that he had just ian Institution, Washington, D.C.
finished a picture (One:Number 31, 29. Lake and Ordonez.
19S0) but then started to paint on 30. Clement Greenberg, "Jackson
the canvas again, and for a rather Pollock: Inspiration, Vision, Intuitive
extended period. In this case Pollock Decision," Vogue,April 1, 1967.
did not say he had lost contact, yet Perhaps this was simply an April
he still felt moved to readdress a can fool's joke on Greenberg's part, but
vas nominally finished. At a funda I can only echo Rubin's strong and
mental level, it seems, Pollock's cre im'passioned response in his "Jackson
ative process involved a response to Pollock and the Modern Tradition,
an existing image. Part IV," pp. 32-33.
19. In his book FromFrescoto Plastics: 31. Frederic Taubes, The Techniqueof
New Materials for Easel and Mural Oil Painting (New York:Dodd, Mead
Paintings (Philadelphia, 1952, rev. & Co., 1941), p. xv.
ed. Ottawa: National Gallery of
Canada, 1959), Jos6 Gutierrez,
another student in David Alfaro
Siqueiros's workshop, discusses mate
rials and techniques such as the use
of enamels, the inclusion of other
materials in the paint, and the use of
sprays—all of which had also been
adopted by Pollock. That these mate
rials and methods gestated in
Pollock's mind for a number of years
is confirmed by his brother Charles,
quoted in Rubin, "Jackson Pollock
and the Modern Tradition, Part IV,"
Artforum5 no. 9 (May 1967): 31.

115
 CAROL C. MANCUSI-UNCARO

nesses claim that Pollock, cloistered in his studio with a blank canvas that he
had stretched the previous July, made the painting in one fifteen-hour session in
the first week of January 1944. However, as Kirk Varnedoe notes in his essay in
Jackson Pollock, the catalogue for the present retrospective, Pollock sent a post
card to his brother Frank, dated January 15, that states, "I painted quite a large
painting for Miss Guggenheim's house during the summer. 8 feet x 20 feet, it was
5 grand fun." This comment clearly contradicts the other account. Furthermore,
the topography of the surface, with its swathes of flat color applied over previ
ously hardened brushstrokes and dried drips, suggests that there were several
campaigns of painting in oil. Although isolated instances of drying crackle in the
darks affirm that fresh paint was applied before the underlayers were completely
dry, enough drying time elapsed between campaigns of painting— certainly more
6 than several hours—to prevent the multilayers from becoming smeared. Another
legend states that Mural was too big for the wall and had to be trimmed by eight
inches in order to fit, but the presence of all four unpainted tacking edges on the
7 canvas confirm that the fabric was precisely stretched and never trimmed.
Justifiably proud of his accomplishment, Pollock allowed Mural to be pho
tographed in his studio (figs. 1-3). The painting also appears in a photograph
taken three years later, this time with him standing in front of it, in the lobby of
Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery (fig. 4). In the interim Pollock had
reinforced some forms with a dark blue paint, while constructing other shapes
and filling in blank spaces with a lighter blue tone. Already visible in a photo
graph of Pollock and Guggenheim with the painting in her townhouse (Jackson
Pollock,p. 320), this final reworking, which may represent yet another campaign,
surely must have occurred before the painting left his studio.
It is interesting to compare this reworking to three paintings Pollock com-

Figs. 1-3. Jackson Pollock. Mural. 1943-44 (dated "1943"). Oil on canvas, 7 ft. 11%in. x 19ft. 9% in. (243.2 x 603.2 cm). The
University of Iowa Museumof Art, Iowa City. Cift of Peggy Cuggenheim. Seen here in Pollock's studio, after the canvas was
completed but before it was slightly reworked

118
 Jackson Pollock:
Response as Dialogue

Carol C. Mancusi-Ungaro

A blank page should not be used as a starting-point, otherwiseyou will onlyproject what
you know upon it. If you start with stains, if you read them by the automatic, halluci
1 natory method, you will see things in them arising out of hidden desire.

So reads a page from the journal of Roberto Matta, the Chilean Surrealist who
emigrated to New York in 1939. Throughout the autumn and winter months of
1942, Matta regularly invited young artists to his studio for discussions about
painting. Among them was Jackson Pollock. The conversation ranged from cri
tiques of each other's work to discussions on the power of imagination, but the
crucial insight for Pollock, and one that would shape a manner of working
throughout his career, was the notion that an artist could best achieve a personal
statement by responding to what he had already put on the canvas.
Pollock was clearly an artist who courted risk not only in his infamous life
but also in his art. He respected few boundaries in terms of technical experi
mentation, yet he understood that technique was not merely mechanical
method but was integral to aesthetic expression itself. "The method of painting
is the natural growth out of a need," he once said. "1 want to express my feelings
2 rather than illustrate them." To come to terms with Pollock's method is to
appreciate his choices —what he tried, what he rejected, and what he continued
to explore. "Pollock had the most articulate understanding of his means,"
recalled Peter Busa. "While lavish and extravagant in spirit, he utilized the most
economic means of color to get at a special kind of lyricism. He once said to me,
'Go ahead, make a mess. You might find yourself by destroying yourself and by
3 working your way out of it.'" Such a "working out" following possible "messes"
is just the sort of response to what is already on the canvas that characterizes
Pollock's work.
In 1943, Pollock painted Mural (plate 1), the large canvas, commissioned
for the entrance hall of Peggy Guggenheim's New York townhouse, that Robert
4 Motherwell would herald as "probably the catalytic moment in [Pollock's] art."
There are conflicting stories about the work's creation and installation. Eyewit-

117
 CAROL C. MANCUSI-UNCARO

might choose to suppress one color with another, as in The Moon-Woman Cuts
the Circle (c. 1943), where voids in a field of blue establish shapes on an other
wise red painting. Remnants of the red field remain visible along the left tacking
edge (plate 27), and three superimposed signatures in red, green, and black offer
an unusual testament to the process. Or, as in Totem Lesson 2 (1945), Pollock
might return to gray paint both to obliterate what is below it and to emphasize
and isolate the new imagery forming the painting (plate 28).
Experimenting with industrial aluminum paint, which certainly shared an
affinity with the neutral gray color he had previously favored, Pollock continued
to mask former figuration as he launched into his so-called drip paintings of
1947. As Pepe Karmel notes in his catalogue essay, Galaxy of that year is a rework
ing of an earlier painting, The Little King, which is known to us only through one
extant photograph (Jackson Pollock, fig. 27, p. 104).10Comparison of the two
paintings sheds light on the process of Pollock's interactive response. With The
Little King upright, he brushed aluminum paint onto the surface in order to iso
late forms as he broke up the visual whole. Then, laying the canvas flat, he
poured aluminum paint, infused with sand, and other pure colors over strategi
cally placed particulate matter to create Galaxy. He left enough of The Little King
visible to show us how he had integrated the underlying structure, and con
firmed the process by leaving exposed a part of the "k" from his original signa
ture. In other reworkings of 1947, however, such as Sea Change, he created paint
layers so dense with opaque materials that we have been unable to identify,
11 through X-radiography among other means, what paintings lie beneath.
Masking for Pollock remained more a response to what he had already
painted than a simple erasure, whether he was first making and then burying a
figure, as in Full Fathom Five (1947; see pp. 104-5, figs. 2-3), or readdressing a
finished work of an earlier type, as in Convergence:Number 10, 1952 (plate 23), a
black pour painting transformed by the addition of color—a melding of two
types, as the title suggests. The reengagement could be as simple as black pours
over an aged paint film, as in Water Birds (1943); or more complex, as in Sea
Change, where remnants of a former work are barely visible; or somewhere in
between, as in CroakingMovement(1946; plate 16), which seems on close inspec
tion to be an embellishment of colorful underpainting reminiscent of the
Accabonac Creek Series of the same year, for example The Key.
A testament to the relationships among the paint layers in these works is
provided by Alfonso Ossorio, an artist, close friend of Pollock's, and the pur
chaser of Number 5, 1948 from the Betty Parsons Gallery. Upon receipt of the
painting, Ossorio noticed that a six-by-nine-inch portion of the paint —the skin
from the top of an opened paint can—had slid, leaving a "nondescript smear
12 amidst the surrounding linear clarity." Pollock offered to restore Ossorio's
painting in his studio, where a photograph shows the painting partially hidden

120
 JACKSON POLLOCK: RESPONSE AS DIALOCUE

pleted around the same time. Drips in the bottom-right quadrant of Pasiphae
attest that the work was painted upright, and the strokes delineated by the hairs
of the brush confirm the use of viscous oil paint from a tube. Tube oil paint is
also brushmarked throughout Guardians of the Secret, and drips of thinned paint,
again in the bottom-right quadrant, confirm that this picture too was painted
with the canvas upright. Although created in the same month (August 1943),
The She-Wolfseems to differ from Guardians of the Secretin that Pollock initially
splattered thin paint onto a white-primed canvas, revealed in the body of the
animal and in the upper-left-hand corner (plate 25). Presumably the painting was
horizontal, on a table or on the floor, when he applied these "stains," as Matta
would have called them. In response to the splattered support, he then posi
tioned the canvas upright and delineated the form in oil paint that again held
8 the marks of the brush. He also incorporated a granular filler, probably sand.
In terms of process, what unites these three paintings is a deliberate mask
ing out of some of the imagery, a filling in of space with gray paint. Although in
Pasiphae Pollock appears to have used oil paint for this erasure, in both The She-
Wolf and Guardians of the Secrethe experimented with a shinier, more fluid paint
that unlike oil dried in a smooth, even plane —signature properties of industrial
paint, such as floor paint. Pollock boldly applied this nontraditional material
with a brush to fill in space around a form, as along the perimeter, and to rein
force particular shapes, as in the geometric forms at the bottom center of The
She-Wolf (plate 26). Interestingly, he paid the same sort of attention to formal
elements in his final reworking of Mural before it left his studio. Thus it seems
likely that the techniques Pollock explored in the making of these smaller works
9 of 1943 informed the later reworking of Mural.
Pollock would continue to favor such masking throughout the 1940s. He

Fig. 4. Pollock with Mural in Peggy Cuggenheim'sArt of This Century gallery, 1947

119
 3. Jackson Pollock 4. Jackson Pollock
Number 32, 1950 1950 One: Number 31, 1950 1950
Enamel on canvas Oil and enamel paint on canvas
8 ft. 10 in. x 15 ft. (269 x 457.5 cm) 8 ft. 10 in. x 17 ft. 5% in. (269.5 x 530.8 cm)
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Sidney and
Diisseldorf. OT 274 Harriet Janis Collection Fund (by exchange). OT 283

122
Plates

1. Jackson Pollock 2. Jackson Pollock

Mural. 1943-44 (dated "1943") Number IA, 1948. 1948
Oil on canvas Oil and enamel on canvas
7 ft. 11% in. x 19 ft. 9'/z in. (243.2 x 603.2 cm) 68 in. x 8 ft. 8 in. (172.7 x 264.2 cm)
The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of Peggy Guggenheim. OT 102 Purchase. OT 186

121
 7. Jackson Pollock 8. Jackson Pollock
Lucifer (detail). 1947 Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 (detail). 1950
Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas Oil on canvas
41 in. x 8 ft. 9Viin. (104.1 x 267.9 cm) 8 ft. 9 in. x 17 ft. 3 in. (266.7 x 525.8 cm)
Collection Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
OT 185 George A. Hearn Fund, 1957. OT 297

124
5. Jackson Pollock 6. Jackson Pollock
Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950. 1950 Lavender Mist: Number I, 1950. 1950
Oil on canvas Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas
8 ft. 9 in. x 17 ft. 3 in. (266.7 x 525.8 cm) 7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
George A. Hearn Fund, 1957. OT 297 Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT 264

123
 11. Jackson Pollock
Lavender Hist: Number 1,1950 (detail). 1950
Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas
7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT264

126
9. Jackson Pollock 10. Jackson Pollock
Number 32, 1950 (detail). 1950 Lavender Mist: Number I, 1950 (detail). 1950
Enamel on canvas 011, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas
8 ft. 10 in. x 15 ft. (269 x 457.5 cm) 7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm)
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Diisseldorf. OT274 Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT264

125
 13. Jackson Pollock 14. Jackson Pollock
Lavender Hist: Number 1,1950 (detail). 1950 Lavender Hist: Number I, 1950 (detail,
Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas shot under ultraviolet light). 1950
7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm) Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm)
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT264 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT264

128
12. Jackson Pollock
Lavender Hist: Number 1,1950 (detail). 1950
Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas
7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT264

127
 17. Jackson Pollock 18. Jackson Pollock
Lavender Mist: Number 1,1950 (detail). 1950 Lavender Mist: Number I, 1950 (detail,
Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas shot under ultraviolet light). 1950
7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm) Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm)
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT264 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT264

130
15. Jackson Pollock 16. Jackson Pollock
Lavender Hist: Number I, 1950 (detail). 1950 Croaking Movement (Sounds in the Grass Series) (detail). 1946
Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas Oil on canvas
7 ft. 3 in. x 9 ft. 10 in. (221 x 299.7 cm) 54 x 44% in. (137 x 112.1 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. The Solomon R.
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. OT264 Guggenheim Foundation, New York. OT161

129
20. Jackson Pollock
Echo: Number 25, 1951(detail). 1951
Enamel on canvas
7 ft. 7% in. x 7 ft. 2 in. (233.4 x 218.4 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Lillie P.
Bliss Bequest and the Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller Fund. OT345
19. Jackson Pollock
Number 28, 1950 (detail). 1950
Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas
68 in. x 8 ft. 9 in. (172.7 x 266.7 cm)
Collection Muriel Kallis Newman, Chicago.
OT260

131
V

22. Jackson Pollock

Blue Poles: Number II, 1952 (detail). 1952
Enamel and aluminum paint with glass on canvas
6 ft. 10% in. x 15 ft. 11% in. (210 x 486.8 cm)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. OT367

134
21. Jackson Pollock
Number 22, 1951(detail). 1951
Oil and enamel on canvas
58'/8 x 45'/8 in. (147.6 x 114.6 cm)
Collection Denise and Andrew Saul. OT344

133
 25. Jackson Pollock 26. Jackson Pollock
The She-Wolf (detail). 1943 The She-Wolf (detail). 1943
Oil, gouache, and plaster on canvas Oil, gouache, and plaster on canvas
41% x 67 in. (106.4 x 170.2 cm) 41% x 67 in. (106.4 x 170.2 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Museum of Modem Art, New York.
Purchase. OT98 Purchase. OT98

136
23. Jackson Pollock 24. Jackson Pollock
Convergence: Number 10, 1952 (detail). 1952 White Light (detail). 1954
Oil and enamel on canvas Oil, enamel, and aluminum paint on canvas
7 ft. 9% in. x 12 ft. 11 in. (237.4 x 393.7 cm) 48% x 38% in. (122.4 x 96.9 cm)
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The
Gift of Seymour H. Knox, 1956. OT363 Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection. OT380

135
28. Jackson Pollock
Totem Lesson 2 (detail). 1945
Oil on canvas
6 ft. x 60 in. (182.8 x 152.4 cm)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
OT122
 27. Jackson Pollock
The Moon-Woman Cuts the Circle (detail), c. 1943
Oil on canvas
/i6
15 43Vsx 40 in. (109.5 x 104 cm)
Musee national d'art moderne, Centre de Creation Industrielle, Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris. Donated by Frank K. Lloyd, Paris, 1979. OT90

137
 31. Jackson Pollock
Shimmering Substance (Sounds in the Grass Series) (detail). 1946
Oil on canvas
3014x 24% in. (76.3 x 61.6 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Albert Lewin and
Mrs. Sam A. Lewisohn Funds. OT164

140
29. Jackson Pollock 30. Jackson Pollock
The Deep (detail). 1953 Ocean Creyness (detail). 1953
Oil and enamel on canvas Oil on canvas
7 ft. 2/ in. x 59% in. (220.4 x 150.2 cm) 57% in. x 7 ft. 6'/a in. (146.7 x 229 cm)
Musee national d'art moderne, Centre de Creation The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
Industrielle, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Donated New York. OT369
by The Menil Foundation, Houston, 1975. OT372

139
 33. Helen Frankenthaler 34. Helen Frankenthaler
Mountains and Sea. 1952 Before the Caves. 1958
Oil on canvas Oil on canvas
7 ft. 2% in. x 9 ft. 9% in. (220 x 297.8 cm) 8 ft. 6% in. x 8 ft. 8% in. (260 x 265.1 cm)
Collection the artist. On extended loan to the University of California, Berkeley Art
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Museum. Anonymous gift

142
 K3

32. Jackson Pollock

Ritual (detail). 1953
Oil on canvas
7 ft. 6/2 in. x 42!4 in. (229.9 x 108 cm)
Collection Robert and Jane Meyerhoff,
Phoenix, Maryland. OT376

141
 36. Jackson Pollock 37. Jackson Pollock
Enchanted Forest (detail). 1947 Number 20, 1948 (detail). 1948
Oil on canvas Enamel on paper
7 ft. 3'/a in. x 45M)in. (221.3 x 114.6 cm) 20'/2 x 26 in. (52 x 66 cm)
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. The Solomon Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art,
R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. OT173 Utica, New York. Edward W. Root Bequest. OT 191

144
35. Helen Frankenthaler
Seven Types of Ambiguity. 1957
Oil on canvas
7 ft. ll/z in. x 70% in. (242.6 x 178 cm)
Private collection

143
 1950 (plate 5). He seemed to appre
ciate both the receptivity of the
dried upper crust to subsequent lay
ering and the attraction of the vis
cous underside to what lay beneath.
He also responded to the curious
beauty of these skins, as a whimsi
cal work on paper of c. 1946 called
The Debutante confirms (fig. 6): the
paint skin is folded in a way that
humorously suggests an elaborate
"coming out" gown, and is placed
on a magazine advertisement for
"Debutante and Misses coats in
Seal Skin Satin," which Pollock has
embellished strategically in black.
Again we see him responding to
imagery with another layer of paint,
Fig. 6. Jackson Pollock. The Debutante,c. 1946. Inkand collage
although here it is to the given ofpartiallydried enamel "skin"from paint can on magazine
*'
9.2 imagery of a found object. The pafl P-g«'Wx.Wln.(34.2X2 cm).Privatecollection
rebellious overtones of The Debut
ante are clear: in a context of high fashion, Pollock confronts the viewer with a
crass paint skin, which could be a symbol of his own iconoclastic use of materi
als, many of them making their own debut in the context of fine art.
One such material was fiberboard, which Pollock used as a support over twen
ty-five times between the early 1930s and 1950, working alternately on the
16 smooth and the rough sides of the material. (This preference is not surprising
)17 given his comment of 1947, "I need the resistance of a hard surface." Although
he may first have been attracted to fiberboard by its durability and availability, he
also appears to have appreciated its color, since he made brown grounds the
prevailing characteristic of a number of works on other supports, among them at
18 least four paintings of this period on commercial brown fabric. Traditionally,
artists have used colored grounds to tone down or otherwise affect the colors of the
design layer. Pollock, however, used paints that were not particularly translucent, so
his use of a dark ground may perhaps be better explained by a passage from Frederic
Taubes's book The Technique of Oil Painting, which was in the Pollock-Krasner
library: "The imprimatura [or a tone glazed over a white ground] performs the task
of relieving the eye from the monotony of the white ground —and it unifies the
19 tonality of the painting." In other words, Pollock may have appreciated the imme
diate presence of a color, a manufactured filling-in, of sorts, that was inherent to the
support material and spared him the confrontation with a white surface.

146
 JACKSON POLLOCK: RESPONSE AS DIALOCUE

Fig. 5. Pollock and Lee Krasner with Number 5, 1948, In his studio in The Springs, Long Island

behind Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner (fig. 5). When the owner saw it again,
three weeks later, he was struck by the work's "new qualities of richness and
depth ... a result of a thorough but subtle overpainting. The original concept
remained unmistakably present, but affirmed and fulfilled by a new complexity
and depth of linear interplay. It was, and still is," he concluded, "a masterful dis
13 play of control and disciplined vision." Ossorio once described Number 5 as "a
14 wonderful example of an artist having a second chance." Perhaps it was an
example not so much of a second chance to rethink a picture as of Pollock allow
ing a second painting to evolve out of his material process. As Motherwell aptly
concluded, "Since painting is his thought's medium, the resolution must grow
15 out of the process of his painting itself."
Pollock sometimes employed the unconventional practice of placing hard
ened paint skins in his paintings, as for example in Autumn Rhythm: Number 30,

145
 underlying paint and the drying time between
applications. Perhaps the most dramatic visu
alization of the process appears in the upper
central quadrant of the simulation. Following
the black line off the white enamel underlayer
and onto the gesso ground at the farthest
right reach, we note that it does not react
once it leaves the white enamel underlayer.
The possibilities explored by this techni
cally diverse body of work informed Pollock's
full exploration of line in the classic pours of
1950 and the black pours of 1951. Still work
ing in response to an initial figurative device,
or to underlying skeins of paint, Pollock used
whatever method he needed to achieve the
effects he desired, and expertly manipulated
the differently absorptive properties of bare
and sized canvas. In Number 1, 1952, he sta
pled a toned commercial fabric (judging from
its narrow width) to a solid support, then ap
plied an initial black pour that provided an
Fig.7.JacksonPoiiock. Number iia, 1948 underlying structure for the subsequent appli-
tion (Black WhiteandGray). 1948.Oil,enamel, and ca Of paint. Following the practice eStab-
aluminum paint on canvas. 66 x 33 in. (167.6x f of
83.8cm).Private collection lished in the 1951 black pours, he next gave
the painting a clear coat, presumably of Rivit
glue. Eventually he embellished the design layer with white and colored paint
applied both with a brush and directly from the tube; then, lying the painting
flat, he applied the final black pour. Scrutiny of the exposed areas of uncoated
fabric (those once protected by the original staples along the top and bottom, as
well as a tacking edge now overstretched along the work's left side) confirms the
evolution of a process wherein the artist responded with textured color and
poured black to an earlier state of a painting characterized by a black pour on a
toned canvas.
Similarly, YellowIslands of the same year is a synthesis of earlier techniques,
including the initial construction of poured black forms on unprimed canvas,
the application of tube oil paint with a brush on the upright support, sequential
pours and brushing with white, and the defining black pour in enamel. Through
out Pollock alternated the orientation of the canvas from flat to vertical and back
again to enable a particular technique to achieve a specific effect. At the last
moment, with the painting upright, he flung a splash of black paint on the pic
ture. This finishing touch took a great risk with the surface of an all-but-com-

148
 JACKSON POLLOCK: RESPONSE AS DIALOCUE

Pollock's deliberate experimentation with interactive grounds is evident in

Enchanted Forest (1947; plate 36). In its scale and its dark-colored support, this
painting recalls Number 5. There, however, the colors sit up on the hard fiber-
board support, whereas in Enchanted Forest they bleed into the unprimed fabric,
creating an elusive image. Close examination of the tacking edges suggests that
the initial application of paint occurred on what is now the reverse of the fabric.
Although the back of the painting was subsequently covered by an auxiliary
cloth (applied by a conservator), a shadow of the original paint layer can still be
discerned through this unattached lining. Evidently Pollock applied paint on
one side, turned the canvas over, and then created Enchanted Forest in response
to the bleed-through from the other side.
Apparently abandoning this technique for further development on can
20 vas, Pollock returned to it in 1951 when he allowed colored inks to penetrate
a stack of thin Japanese papers, then proceeded to create new works in response
to the bleed-throughs. As Bernice Rose has written, "The paper formed an
absorbent membrane through which the ink bled onto the sheets below, leaving
less substantial traces for the same marks as they were absorbed by underlying
sheets. Pollock would then remove the first sheet, sometimes modify that, then
modify the second sheet, sometimes reversing it back to front to form a mirror
image (the image could be seen on both sides of the sheet because the paper was
absorbent), and work further on that." Produced in such a series, the works on
paper offered Pollock an extended opportunity to work in response to initial
markings, creating, Rose concludes, "an ambiguity of presence and identity . . .
21 among the works themselves —a dialogue between possibility and choice."
A year after the breakthrough drip paintings of 1947, Pollock progressed to
a series of black and white pours, on paper and canvas, that include Number 11A,
1948 (Black, White and Gray) (fig. 7) and Untitled (White on Black I). These visually
complex works represent another departure for Pollock, in which he began to play
with the viscosity and variable drying rates of enamel paint. In effect he increased
the challenge of his method by pouring paint not onto the oxidized substrates
of earlier paintings, or the hardened skins of dried enamel, but into wet paint
that would respond physically to the line as it dried. On top of a standard gesso
ground, the artist coated the canvas with a base layer of either white or black
enamel paint. Then he poured lines of the opposite color of the same medium
on top, allowing the undercolor to swell up and move into the line.
The effect is as beautiful as it is difficult to accomplish. It took several
attempts to reproduce it, and in the process we learned that both the base layer
and the line must be of the same medium. In the left quadrant of our simulation
of the process (fig. 8), black enamel paint is poured onto water-based gesso; there
is no interaction. In the other quadrants, black enamel paint is poured onto
white enamel. The quality of the lines varies according to the viscosity of the

147
 CAROL C. MANCUSI-UNCARO

letter to Sidney Janis, Pollock con

fided that "the painting (red-blue-
yellow) you saw here this sum
mer, I've destroyed. If the image
was mine it will come back—at
any rate it had me stuck and I felt
25 it necessary to break it up."
Among other criteria, the size of
this painting relative to Ritual
(1953)—the work at its left in Vac-
caro's photograph —led us to sus Fig. 9. Pollock in his studio in 1953. The horizontal canvas at the
right is an original state of The Deep (1953). Photograph: Tony
pect that the unidentified work, Vaccaro
reminiscent of Clyfford Still, was an
original state of The Deep (1953).
This theory was confirmed by ex
amination with an infrared-sensi
tive camera that allowed us to see
the composition beneath the visi
ble surface (fig. 10).
Pollock began The Deep by
stretching a white preprimed can
vas, then brushed in forms with
the canvas in an upright position,
much as he had in the early-to-
mid- 1940s work. After a period of
assessment, he changed the orien
tation of the canvas from a hori
zontal to a vertical format, then
proceeded to brush selectively
over the earlier forms with gray,
as he had in Totem Lesson 2. As in
that painting, he left something
of the original conception visible.
Subsequently he brushed on black,
then, laying the canvas flat,
poured on more black. Returning
the stretcher to an upright posi
tion, he closed in the space with
Fig. 10. Jackson Pollock. The Deep (shot under infrared light).
white paint, applied with such 1953. Oil and enamel on canvas, 7 ft. 2% in. x 59/s in. (220.4 x
150.2 cm). Mus6e national d'art moderne. Centre de Creation
vigor that broken hairs from Industrielle, Centre Ceorges Pompidou, Paris. Donated by The
the brush remain caught in the Menil Foundation, Houston, 1975

150
 JACKSON POLLOCK: RESPONSE AS DIALOCUE

pleted painting, and has the air of defiance that we noticed in The Debutante.
Contradicting the more careful manipulation of the material underneath, the
spontaneous action asserted that no matter how much control Pollock had
achieved, he abandoned neither passion nor instinctive response: "I have no
fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has
22 a life of its own. I try to let it come through."
In 1952, Pollock apparently launched into yet another technical departure
with the introduction of a synthetic polymer paint that James Coddington
describes more fully in his essay for this symposium. During that summer in East
Hampton, Willem de Kooning introduced Pollock to Leonard Bocour, who had
developed a paint called Magna Color. Often credited with supplying Morris
Louis with this versatile resin, Bocour did claim on more than one occasion that
Pollock used Magna Color for "all the late paintings." "He'd buy a gallon of this
and a gallon of that. Seven or eight colors would come to three or four hundred
dollars. But he never seemed to be concerned about the cost," remembers
23 Bocour. Using the new medium, Pollock could pour and mix colors directly on
the canvas in a way he could not previously, as a comparison of the fluid color
in Convergenceand the enamel on linen in Enchanted Forest demonstrates. Yet
despite the introduction of a new material, the method of the work of 1953-55
synthesizes what had come before.
Tony Vaccaro, who took several photographs of Pollock in his studio in Aug
ust of 1953, well remembers the horizontal painting seen at the right of fig. 9.
Pollock had said it was unfinished, but even so its fields of brilliant blue, red, and
24 yellow left a lasting impression on the photographer. A few months later, in a

Fig. 8. Conservators'
simulation of Pollock's
technique in the black
and white pours of 1948

149
CAROL C. MANCUSI-UNCARO

Notes

1. Roberto Matta, Notebook No. 1, on the canvas over several days, as Pollock:A CatalogueRaisonneof
1936-44, published in Entretiens reported by Harold Lehman (see Paintings, Drawings,and Other Works.
Morphologiques,ed. G. Ferrari (Lon Naifeh and Smith, JacksonPollock:An SupplementNumber One (New York:
don: Sistan Limited, 1987), p. 232. AmericanSaga, p. 866), during which The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc,
2. "Narration Spoken by Jackson time the work was documented and 1995), p. 78, we explored the notion
Pollock in Film by Hans Namuth finished. that Sea Change is a reworking of the
and Paul Falkenberg 1951," in Hans Similarly, a contradiction remains unidentified framed painting pho
Namuth, Barbara Rose, Rosalind between Krasner's summary of events tographed in Pollock's studio by
Krauss, et al., PollockPainting, ed. and Pollock's statement in the card Wilfrid Zogbaum (see Varnedoe with
Rose (New York:Agrinde Publica to his brother Frank. Clearly Pollock Karmel, JacksonPollock,p. 322). The
tions Ltd., 1980), n.p. Originally had planned to paint Mural during size of Sea Change certainly seemed
published as L'Atelierde Jackson the summer; he wrote to his brother appropriate, and its title, presumably
Pollock(Paris: Macula, 1978). Charles that he had stretched the taken from Ariel's song in Shake
3. Peter Busa, quoted in Sidney canvas in July (see ibid., p. 864). In speare's The Tempest(act 1, scene 2),
Simon, "Concerning the Beginnings writing to Frank, however, who by suited the idea of a re-creation. An
of the New YorkSchool: 1939-1943," Jackson's own admission was worried X-radiograph made in New York
Art International 11 no. 6 (Summer about his younger brother's painting proved inconclusive, however, in
1967): 20. (see ibid., p. 462), perhaps Pollock part because of the nature of the
4. Robert Motherwell, quoted in neglected to describe the delayed paint layers and in part because the
B. H. Friedman, JacksonPollock: realization of the work, choosing painting had been subsequently
EnergyMade Visible(New York: instead to emphasize his satisfaction lined onto a solid support. Fortun
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972), in creating such a large painting, ately, the Seattle Museum of Art had
p. 63. especially now that it was done. a photograph of the reverse of the
5. See Kirk Varnedoe, "Comet: 7. See Naifeh and Smith, Jackson canvas before the original stretcher
Jackson Pollock's Life and Work," in Pollock:An AmericanSaga, pp. was removed. Comparison of that
Varnedoe with Pepe Karmel, Jackson 468-69. archival photo with the Zogbaum
Pollock,exh. cat. (New York:The 8. In some earlier works, such as photograph indicates that Sea Change
Museum of Modern Art, 1998), note Bird (c. 1938-41) and The Magic was probably the vertical painting
81, p. 81, and Elizabeth Levine and Mirror(1941; reproduced in, for seen in reverse at the right of the
Anna Indych, "Chronology," in ibid., example, Ellen G. Landau, Jackson photograph rather than the framed
note 17, p. 329. Pollock[New York:Harry N. Abrams, work. We thank Trevor Fairbrother
6. The contradictory statements Inc., 1989], p. 68), Pollock made of the Seattle Museum of Art for
regarding Pollock's painting of Mural sand a distinctive feature of the agreeing to our investigation of Sea
defy inclusion in one reasonable sce paint, but in The She-Wolfhe used Change and for providing important
nario. The prevailing view, held by it more for a controlled emphasis documentary information.
Lee Krasner and John Little among of line and expression. 12.Alfonso Ossorio, lecture given at
others, is that it was painted in one 9. In The She-Wolfand Guardians YaleUniversity, November 1978. See
fifteen-hour session the night before of the SecretPollock prominently the Ossorio papers in the Archives of
it was installed in Peggy Guggen signed and dated the works on the American Art, Smithsonian Institu
heim's townhouse, in mid-January, paint surface with both the month tion, Washington, D.C., Reel 3888.
1944. See Stephen Naifeh and Greg and the year of execution: 8.43 and 13. Ibid.
ory White Smith, JacksonPollock:An 8-43 respectively. Although Pollock 14. Ossorio, quoted in Jeffrey Potter,
AmericanSaga (New York:Clarkson commonly signed and dated his To a ViolentGrave:An Oral Biography
N. Potter, Inc., 1989), p. 468. Leaving works on the front, back, and/or on of JacksonPollock(New York:G. P.
aside conclusive evidence provided the stretcher bars, in only nine Putnam's Sons, 1985, and reprint ed.
by the topography of the painting, it paintings did he note the month as Wainscott, N.Y.:Pushcart Press,
is highly unlikely that the painting well as the year. Of those nine paint 1987), p. 106.
could have been unstretched, rolled, ings, only The She-Wolf,Guardians 15. Motherwell, quoted in Friedman,
transported, and then restretched of the Secret,and TotemLesson 1 JacksonPollock:EnergyMade Visible,
within hours of its completion. The (1944) have the full inscription p. 62.
oil paint would not have dried suffi incorporated into the design layer. 16. The catalogue raisonne reports
ciently to allow such handling with Clearly these paintings held a partic these supports as "masonite." Since
out significant smearing of the ular significance for the artist, who we have been unable to determine
paint—a consequence ruled out by apparently wanted to remember pre when a board was manufactured by
the current state of Mural. Further cisely when he had painted them. the Masonite Corporation and when
more, enough time evidently elapsed Perhaps Pollock regarded his use of it was not, we have used the term
between the completion of the industrial paint in the 1943 works "fiberboard" to describe supports of
painting and its removal from the as a breakthrough, and perhaps he this type.
studio for the arrangement of a found the filling in of spaces around 17.Pollock, "My Painting," Possibi
photo session (see figs. 1-3), and also forms to emphasize and in other lities no. 1 (Winter 1947-48): 79.
for Pollock's subsequent reworking of instances to create shapes equally 18. Those works were The Wooden
the painting, registered in a photo significant. Horse:Number 1OA,1948; Number
graph of him and Peggy Guggen 10. See Pepe Karmel, "Pollock at 13A, 1948: Arabesque;White
heim with Mural in her townhouse Work: The Films and Photographs Cockatoo:Number 24A, 1948; and
(see Varnedoe with Karmel, Jackson of Hans Namuth," in Varnedoe with Number2, 1949.
Pollock,p. 320). Perhaps the all-night Karmel, JacksonPollock,note 62, 19. Frederic Taubes, The Techniqueof
session did occur as Krasner and p. 136. Oil Painting (New York:Dodd, Mead
Little remember; but subsequently 11.Following the suggestion of & Co., 1941), p. 49.
Pollock probably continued to work Francis V. O'Connor, in Jackson 20. It would be uncharacteristic of

152
 JACKSON POLLOCK: RESPONSE AS DIALOGUE

medium. Changing pace, he again laid the canvas down flat, then lavishly poured
liquid white paint, which crosses an abyss delineated by the brushwork. In for
mer reworkings, each part of the picture plane had received practically equal
treatment; in The Deep, however, the focus of the painting is a narrow window
onto "underlying layers of paint (plate 29). Texturally the surface imparts a
haunting stillness and clarity that are unusual for Pollock.
Although perhaps reminiscent in imagery of Head (c. 1938-41) and of Eyes
in the Heat (1946; p. 240, fig. 8), Ocean Greyness, painted the same year as The
Deep, differs substantially in its construction from the earlier works. Pollock
began with a thin, fluid, vibrantly colored paint that saturated the canvas and
presumably provided formal elements to which he could respond. Recalling his
experience with the 1951 black pours, he then seems to have covered this ini
tial paint layer with Rivit glue, much as he had in Number 1, 1952. Pollock then
delineated form with traditional oil paint, producing ridges of impasto with a
brush. These he selectively covered with black enamel, applied with the canvas in
various orientations, judging from drips that run in opposite directions. Finally he
used a familiar gray paint, thickened with particulate matter in a fashion reminis
cent of The She-Wolf.These layers he further embellished with squeezes from tubes
of oil paint. The specific techniques are familiar; the conglomerate is not.
One of the vortexlike eyes in the upper left quadrant of Ocean Greynessis
actually a gap that reveals the initial paint layer (plate 30). This is not the only
painting in which Pollock reserved a bit of the initial paint or ground as a sort
of reference point; isolated from surrounding layers of paint, these eyes into his
process may be found in Troubled Queen (c. 1945), ShimmeringSubstance (1946;
plate 31), Eyes in the Heat, The Key,Easter and the Totem (1953; p. 239, fig. 6), and
Ritual (plate 32), among other paintings. While these eyes function on a com
positional level, they also make a statement about process. By including earlier
paint layers in the final design, Pollock reminds us that these underlayers do not
simply represent discarded versions of the painting. Rather, they are crucial
stages in the dialogue of creation and response from which each work evolved.
Pollock's experimentation with multiple layers signals an artist who is dri
ven by material process and who is always conscious of what came before.
Whether he responds to stains on a ground, to the imagery of a former painting
or found object, to the physical properties of a wet or crusty underlayer, or to
the topography of overlapping skeins of paint, Pollock integrates what comes
before into what he creates anew. Just as the manipulation of materials for visu
al effect engages him, so does an instinctively exploratory manner of working.
Pollock said himself, "Painting is self discovery. Every good artist paints what he
26 is." In so doing, Pollock does not conceal the history of his creations but leaves
it visible as part of the works' ongoing dialogue.

151
 Pollock to experiment with only
one painting of any type. Although
James Coddington and I have not
examined Number 26A, 1948: Black
and White (catalogue raisonne num
ber 187), the work's size and charac
ter, as seen in reproduction, make it
a possible candidate for further
investigation.
21. Bernice Rose, JacksonPollock:
Drawing into Painting, exh. cat. (New
York:The Museum of Modern Art,
1980), p. 21.
22. Pollock, "My Painting," p. 79.
23. Leonard Bocour, in an interview
of February 7, 1985, in the Morris
Louis and Morris Louis Estate Papers,
Archives of American Art, Smithson
ian Institution, Washington, D.C.
I would like to thank Jan Marontate,
Department of Sociology, Acadia
University, Nova Scotia, for her
invaluable help in documenting
Pollock's use of Bocour's Magna
Color. Likewise,Tony Vaccaro
enlarged sections of his photographs
in an effort to identify the boxes
of paint in Pollock's studio, and
Michael Skalka at the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,
provided photo-documentation of
the packaging of Magna Color. I
thank them for their interest and
cooperation.
24. Vaccaro, conversation with the
author, James Coddington, and Anna
Indych, November 17, 1998. We are
indebted to Vaccaro for providing
us with his photographs, and to
O'Connor for bringing them to
our attention.
25. Pollock, letter to Sidney Janis,
[1953], published in O'Connor and
Eugene Victor Thaw, JacksonPollock:
A CatalogueRaisonneof Paintings,
Drawings,and Other Works(New
Haven and London: YaleUniversity
Press, 1978), 4:271.
26. Pollock, quoted in Selden
Rodman, Conversationswith Artists
(New York:The Devin-Adair Co.,
1957), p. 82.
 ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

Fig. 2. Pollock'sAutumn Rhythm: Number 30,

1950 in an early state, after the completion of
the original configurations at right and center.
Composite from photographs by Hans Namuth

Fig. 3. Pollock'sAutumn Rhythm: Number 30,

1950 in an intermediatestate, after the com
pletion of the configurationat the left end.
Composite from photographs by Hans Namuth

Fig.4. Pollock'sOne: Number 31, 1950, high

lighting features added to the painting between
the last stage documented in Hans Namuth's
photographs and the finished canvas

Fig. I. Jackson Pollockcompleting the first layer of Number 27,

1950. Composite of frames from the black and whitefilmby Hans
Namuth

where they are superimposed over the developing web), Karmel freely identifies
these vertical bundles as a form of human figuration and characterizes the line
with which Pollock executed them as "a controlled and deliberate" mode of
drawing. And from this presentation of Pollock as a draftsman, with the neces
sary control and deliberation that drawing's access to the representation of the
figure requires, Karmel slips over into the domain of the Renaissance. Quoting
William Rubin's remark that "Pollock's drawing derives from a tradition in
which space is not thought of as an autonomous void but in reciprocity with
solids," and further that Pollock's lines still carry "the connotations of dissolved
sculptural conceptions," Karmel asks triumphantly, "Need it be said that the
kind of space that exists 'in reciprocity with solids' is precisely the illusionistic
3 space of Renaissance art?"
Karmel does not of course just leave this characterization —in all its coun
terintuitive strangeness— at that. The notion that Pollock's space is nothing but
another version of Renaissance illusionism would certainly play havoc with the
idea of his work as revolutionary, or as having broken through to some new level
of cultural experience. So the last three paragraphs of Karmel's essay hedge this
a bit, reshaping this space according to something akin to late Monet or early
Cubism. "Up close," he says, "each line reasserts itself as a potential contour, or
a sculptural shape in its own right," yet as our eyes move over the surface, "new
4 contours emerge as old ones merge back into the web."
Now, although Greenberg also sometimes used Analytic Cubism as a
metaphor for what was happening in Pollock's work, from 1947 on he consis
tently saw Pollock's importance as pointing "a way beyond the easel, beyond the
5 mobile, framed picture, to the mural, perhaps." This idea of escaping the tradi
tion of the easel painting not only became Greenberg's central critical model for
explaining Pollock's radicality in the years between 1947 and 1950, but would

156
 The Crisis of the Easel Picture

Rosalind E. Krauss

I remember the expression on Lee Krasner's face that afternoon in her apart
ment. It was late spring of 1982. We were meeting over our shared consternation
at E. A. Carmean's efforts to link Jackson Pollock's black paintings not just cir
cumstantially but thematically —liturgically —to an abortive church project by
Tony Smith. Carmean's essay, published in French in the catalogue of the big
Pollock exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, was now to appear in Art in America,
and the magazine's editor, Betsy Baker, aware of Lee's as well as my own vigor
1 ous objections, had asked me to write an accompanying reply.
As we settled into our chairs Lee exploded. "First it was Carl Jung and now,
and now," she said, "it's Jesus!" The opening syllable of that name was given as
a protracted moan; but the second snapped the word shut: Je-e-e-zus.It was not
Jewish rage that sounded behind her pronunciation —although there was some
of that —but high modernist exasperation. As with so many other artists and
intellectuals who had developed in the 1930s, modernism was for her a creed, a
belief, a deepest form of commitment. It was both a politics and a religion; and
Lee, in the closeness of her relationship with Clement Greenberg from those
days, would have agreed with the kind of thing he was expressing when he
wrote, "The alternative to Picasso is not Michelangelo, but kitsch," with the
result that "today we look to socialism simply for the preservation of whatever
2 living culture" —by which he meant avant-garde culture —"we have right now."
That scene returns to me as I puzzle over The Museum of Modern Art's
Pollock exhibition, in all its gorgeousness, its generosity, and its perversity. I
imagine Lee's response: "First it was Jung, then it was Jesus, but now it's . . . "
who shall we say? Leonardo? Michelangelo? Raphael?
The climax of Pepe Karmel's essay in the catalogue makes the connection,
and the claim, in its barest form. Having tracked Pollock's working process by
means of digitized composites built up out of Hans Namuth's complete inven
tory of still and cinematic photography (figs. 1-4), and having shown the occur
rence of vertical, figurelike constellations at various levels of the work (both at
the beginning, where Pollock is marking bare canvas, and at intermediary stages,

155
 ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

be the support for everything he saw as valuable in painting after Pollock. In

1948 he linked the attack on the framed, illusionistic picture to a kind of "all-
over, polyphonic" address which, in its "hallucinated uniformity," went even
6 beyond Arnold Schoenberg's notion of compositional equivalence. This is to
say, he focused his critique on what he saw as the conventions arising from the
scale of the easel picture, its portability seeming to call for a choreography
between centers of interest inside the field and the frame that bound or enclosed
it. The allover picture dispersed those centers, just as it suggested the dissolution
of the specific medium of easel painting into a larger category that would
7 include architectural friezes and oriental scrolls or carpets. It was not just the
shared flatness of these objects that he found satisfying but the openness of their
8 surfaces to inspection —what he called their "positivity."
By 1955, however, Greenberg had refined this idea of the repetitiveness or
polyphony of the allover picture to what he had begun to see as the deep source
of its transgressiveness, which was the elimination of value contrast: the abro
gation of that linear armature of dark against light that had formed the structure
of easel painting from the Renaissance onward. Saying that Cubism's parody of
shading had nonetheless sustained the importance of light and shadow,
Greenberg saw in the total suppression of value contrast "a new kind of flatness,
one that breathes and pulsates," one in which lines might divide "but do not
enclose or bound," and, further, one that creates "an environment" more than
a picture. Pollock's great works of 1950, he said, had participated in just this rad
ical condition. Looking back in 1955, Greenberg wrote, "In One and LavenderMist
Jackson Pollock had pulverized value contrasts in a vaporous dust of interfused
9 lights and darks in which every suggestion of a sculptural effect was obliterated."
If I am going over this all-too-familiar ground, it is to underscore the stakes
involved in promoting the idea of Pollock as a draftsman, of deciding to read his
line as contour rather than its dissolution, of tying Pollock back into traditional
practice through any one of the number of strategies that one finds in the con
text of this exhibition.
One of these strategies occurred in the placement of the three drawing cab
inets within the exhibition, the middle one grouping work from a three-year
period, from 1944 to 1946, and presenting it as though it were a sketchlike pre
lude to the onset of the classic drip pictures of 1947. Indeed this foregrounding
of the sketch—with all its connotations of the possibility of exploration and
variation, as an idea is moved through the successive phases of its development
(fig. 5, and p. 91, fig. 20)—is central to the picture of the traditional artist's delib
eration and control, which is to say the picture of the artist as an intentional
being. That Pollock would have produced variations on essentially the same
sketchlike armature —with changes rung on what is limited to its stylistic decor,
now more of Andre Masson, now of Wols—implies just such a picture. It is only

158
THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

157
 ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

within the matte graphics of pigment seeping into its ground, the rivulets and
spatters, the blurring, the marbleizing, the staining, the running, the bleeding
(plates 7 and 9).
It would be churlish not to be grateful for details such as these; but it would
be naive not to understand their gravitational pull. For the way they work, along
with the arguments in the catalogue texts and everything else to which I've
alluded, is to present Pollock as a draftsman, beginning —as one could claim is true
for the whole tradition of Western art—with line as the foundation of expression
and representation, indeed, of art's very claim to seriousness.
But Greenberg had lodged Pollock's claim to seriousness in negating this
tradition, or rather in transcending the oppositions on which it was founded. If
he spoke of Pollock's line as malerische—invoking Heinrich Wolfflin's word,
11 which went beyond the "painterly" to encompass the idea of "color" —it was
because he saw this line not just paradoxically turning against itself but dialec-
tically sublating itself, becoming one with its opposite in a way that moved both
line and color beyond the physicality of their material substance and into that
particular phenomenological condition —or mode of address—he would call first
12 "hallucinated," then "optical."
Two other major lines of attack on the idea of Pollock as a draftsman fol
lowed Greenberg's. One was produced by the action painting model, which con
tinued into the choreographic or "Happenings" idea of Pollock's legacy promoted
by Allan Kaprow, among others (fig. 6).13Since in this model the work is acting
between art and life, it relegates line to nothing but the residue of an activity of
marking real space, rendering the whole question of drawing simply irrelevant.
The other line of attack was the
"anti-form" or informe interpretation
first laid out by Robert Morris in the
14 1960s and further theorized by my
15 self and Yve-Alain Bois in the 1990s.
Since this position has been reduc-
tively and misleadingly presented in
the Pollock catalogue —as in the criti
cal literature generated by the exhibi
tion —and since it will form the basis
of what I have to say here, it is (alas)
necessary to summarize it. Briefly, it
is the idea that Pollock's line, in
undoing the traditional job of draw
ing (which is to create contour and
bound form, thereby allowing for the
distinction between figure and ground), Fig. 6. Allan Kaprow. Yard.1961.Photograph: Ken Heyman

160
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASELPICTURE

Fig. 5. Jackson Pollock. Untitled. 1944. Black and color ink on paper, 18%x 24% in. (48 x 63.2 cm). The Art Institute of
Chicago. Ada Turnbull Hertle Fund and gifts of Mrs. Leigh B. Block, Margaret Fisher,William H. Hartmann, and
Joseph R. Shapiro

when we ask what it means that this same armature recurs periodically over
three or more years, rather than in a single run of work, that it begins to feel
more like a rote formula to which he had recourse, even unconscious recourse;
like the repeated looping constellations that had, by 1943, become so automatic
a formal pattern for him that he could paint the twenty-foot-long Peggy Gug
10 genheim mural during a furious one-night stand of work (plate l).
The emphasis on drawing not as this kind of device but as a form of con
trolled variation, as the very vehicle of intentionality, is carried in the exhibition
to the curious display of a group of conservators' failed attempts to imitate
Pollock's line. In the catalogue it is to be found in the repeated illustration of
sumptuous life-sized details of the drip pictures, as though in the very gamut
that the building up of the web can run, we will encounter —now displaced to
the technique of depositing the paint itself—the controlled variability that draw
ing brings to a given conception. Thus through the twelve details of the drip pic
tures (there are only two for work after 1950 and only four for what precedes
1947), we are invited to explore at leisure the brushed scumbles of wet-into-wet,
the high-sitting ropes of tube-squeezed paint, the scabbing and lifting of pock
ets of coagulation, the pulled surface of aluminum deposit, the tarry pocketing

159
ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

Fig. 7. Cy Twombly. The Italians. 1961.Oil, pencil, and crayon on canvas, 6 ft. 6V>in. x 8 ft. 6'A in. (199.5 x 259.6 cm). The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Blanchette Rockefeller Fund

Fig. 8. Andy Warhol. Oxidation Painting. 1978. Mixed media on copper metallic, 6 ft. 6 in. x 17ft. 'A in. (198 x 519.5 cm).
Daros Collection, Switzerland

162
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

struck not only against drawing's object—which is form—but against form's

matrix, which is verticality. Pollock's line produced the unheard-of condition of
burrowing itself into the domain of the horizontal. That the import of the work
should be this newly vectored horizontal dimension was testified to by what we
could call a series of strong misreadings that developed in the ten years follow
ing Pollock's death. The "strong misreading"— the concept of the critic Harold
Bloom—is not a misunderstanding on the part of a younger artist in his or her
relation to a powerful older one, but rather something more like a perverse, but
very canny, deep understanding, which liberates from within the target work a
potential (often anarchic or transgressive) that had been hidden or obscured by
16 the official, even self-professed, idea of the older artist's meaning. In accor
dance with this, one could notice that artists as seemingly different as Cy
Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Morris were drawing the same interpretive conclu
sion, based on the singularity of Pollock's stroke and the way this stroke testifies
to its own conditions of production: that Pollock's importance was lodged in an
axial rotation of painting out of the vertical domain of the visual field and onto
the horizontal vector of what I began to call (with one eye riveted on the stun
ning analyses of Georges Bataille) formlessness.
Thus, though the particularities of the interpretive connection to Pollock
might differ—Twombly reading the aggressiveness of Pollock's stroke as graffiti;
Warhol recoding its liquidity as peeing; Morris understanding its performative
implications as unmaking or cutting —and though the mediums used to instan
tiate these readings might range from painting to sculpture, all three compre
hend the horizontal itself as the condition of defeating form.
As Twombly develops the graffiti mark—from a mid-1950s expression of it
as violence done to the creamy body of the pictorial surface by scoring and lac
erating this physical ground, to a late- 1950s implication of it as a scatter of gen
ital organs, to the early- 1960s production of it as the scatological result of the
corps morcele(fig. 7)—the attack that graffiti consistently performs is on the bod
ily gestalt: its visuality, its verticality, and its Pragnanz (or hanging-together
17 ness). It is the failure of this unity that allows for the axis of instinctual behav
ior—a horizontal axis—to preside over the body, now reconsidered as the
domain of the part object.
For Warhol, on the other hand, the testimony of the liquid puddles and
stains on Pollock's canvases (combined of course with the commentary of Hans
Namuth's photographs) renders these surfaces horizontal from the very begin
ning, redoubling the implications of Pollock's process as choreographic (as it is
so often described in the critical literature). Further, his assumption that the hor
izontal simply is the scatological (an assumption expressed in the 1961 "piss paint
ing" and the later Oxidation series, 1977-78; fig. 8) liberates a different form of
violence from within this vector. Freud, in "Civilization and Its Discontents,"

161
 ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

since as he lifted the feit from the floor, gravity wrenched apart the very continu
um of the vertical field within which the gestalt could cohere, thereby cutting into
the fabric of form.
The characterizations that have greeted this discussion have been, as I said,
reductive and caricatural, isolating the Warhol example as a way of inoculating
the entire analysis against its possible aesthetic relevance. Recoded as an inter
pretation literalized around "abjection," "bodily excretion," and "defilement,"
the complex structural issues of horizontality and the formless have been read
19 out simply as an argument for "anti-art."
Rather than complaining, however, what I propose to do here is to make
theoretical use of this reductiveness by tying it to another, parallel reflex that has
played an extremely important —and, I might say, increasingly destructive —role
in the development of the art of the last thirty years. This was the decision to
produce the most hypostatized possible reading of the outcome of what Green-
berg called the "crisis of the easel picture" by understanding the modernist idea
of medium specificity as the radical contraction of specificity itself into a phys
ical characteristic (flatness) that would coincide with a material object: the
painting, which could now be seen as equivalent either to a sculpture —Donald
Judd's term was "specific object" —or to a readymade (Joseph Kosuth's reading
20 of the monochrome). This literalized understanding emptied out the idea of
an aesthetic medium by simply making that medium synonymous with its
material support.
The outcome of this understanding has been double. Either the very idea of
the medium is cashiered, since, contracted to the condition of a real object in
real space, the objectified work becomes the locus for operations on that space
in the mixture of mediums that defines the nature of the real world itself—Judd's
specific object now turned into the international practice of installation art.
Or—in another way of declaring our current inhabitation of what I would call a
postmedium condition —the exploded concept of the medium is simply folded
into the fact of media, which is to say the complex vehicles of broadcast, com
21 munications, and information technology. The result of this semantic slippage
between medium and media is that the loss of specificity is presented as a natural
outcome (after all the media, in the sense of "communications media," are
already "mixed," the inevitable combination of word and image); which means
that the slide from the physical resistance of the aesthetic medium to the virtu
22 ally of the image world of media somehow goes without saying.
That this reductive reading of the idea of a medium —of painting's speci
ficity as a medium —was done in Greenberg's name is particularly ironic. Because
at the very moment when he was seeing that the modernist logic had led to the
point where "the observance of merely the two [constitutive conventions or
norms of painting —flatness and the delimitation of flatness] is enough to create

164
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

Fig. 9. Robert Morris. Untitled. 1968. Felt,

asphalt, mirrors, wood, copper tubing,
steel cable, and lead, 2l/i in. x 21ft. II in. x
16ft. 9 in. (54.6 x 668 x 510.5 cm), vari
able. The Museumof Modern Art, New
York. Gift of Philip Johnson

describes this kind of violence as homoerotic rivalry enacted by peeing on the

fire, in an unfettered instinctual drive that will subsequently be sublimated into
the cultural obligation to protect the fire—the verticality of its flames now mir
18 roring the erect posture of the civilized being.
In Morris's case the nature of Pollock's stroke connected the "phenomenol
ogy of [its] making" to the pull of gravity, a force that produced the condition of
the horizontal simultaneously with the scatter of formlessness. Morris himself
baptized this mode "anti-form."
His own way of miming its opera
tions was to follow the steps of
Pollock's process by laying great
rolls of felt on the floor of his stu
dio and veining their surfaces
with an organized pattern of cuts
(fig. 10). Greenberg had explained
that the brilliance of Pollock's line
was its avoidance of the hard edges
that cut into space, thereby sepa
rating figure from ground. Morris,
by taking the idea of line-as-
cutting right to the limit, pushed
it past the possibility of figuration,

Fig. 10. Robert Morris.Untitled (Tangle).1967.

Felt, I in. (2.5 cm) thick; dimensions variable;
Museum installation 9 ft. 8 in. x 8 ft. 10 in. x 58 in.
(296.7 x 269.3 x 147.4cm). The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Cift of Philip Johnson

163
 ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

Steinberg to speak of their sense of speed: what he called the visual efficiency of
the man in a hurry (figs. 11 and 12).30I will return to these issues later on.
At this point, however, I want to look at Pollock's own reaction to the cri
sis of the easel picture, something that is possible to gauge from the two differ
ent statements to which he was the signatory in the fall of 1947. Although both
of these located his work in relation to such a "crisis," they imagined this situa
tion in diametrically opposite terms. This opposition underscores the difficulty
of seeing one person as the author of both declarations, and leads to the locution
about Pollock's merely being their "signatory." But then, at the various junctures
where he made any pronouncement about his work—including these two—
Pollock functioned as a kind of ventriloquist's dummy for the opinions of others.
In the two cases—Pollock's application for a Guggenheim grant in 1947 and
his statement for the magazine Possibilities in 1947-48 —the ventriloquists in
question were Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. The former is clearly responsi
ble for Pollock's announcement to the Guggenheim Foundation that he intended
"to paint large movable pictures which will function between the easel and
mural," as well as for his stated belief that "the easel picture [is] a dying form and
31 the tendency of modern feeling is towards the wall picture or mural." The lat
ter, Rosenberg, acted as the goad to a quite different description of what a rejec
tion of easel painting might entail; for in Possibilities, Pollock's declaration is
stripped of the earlier statement's sense of art-historical imperative and located
more in the domain of process. In separating his work from the easel, Pollock
speaks of tacking his unstretched lengths of canvas on the floor, where he can

166
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

23 an object which can be experienced as a picture," he had dissolved that object

in the fluid of what he was sometimes calling "openness," at others "opticality,"
and ultimately, though perhaps least satisfactorily, "color field." Which is to say
that no sooner had Greenberg seemed to isolate the essence of painting in flat
ness than he swung the axis of the field 90 degrees to the actual picture surface
to place all the import of painting on the vector that connects viewer and object.
In this he seemed to shift from the first norm (flatness) to the second (the delim
itation of flatness), and to give this latter a reading which was not that of the
bounding edge of the physical object but rather the projective resonance of the
optical field itself—what in "Modernist Painting" he had called the "optical
third dimension" created by "the very first mark on a canvas [which] destroys its
24 literal and utter flatness." This was the resonance he imputed to the effulgence
of pure color, which he spoke of not only as disembodied and therefore purely
25 optical, but also "as a thing that opens and expands the picture plane."
Four things are to be observed in this axial rotation organized under the
rubric of "opticality." The first is that there is a shift from the object to the sub
ject, as the emphasis is displaced from a material surface to a mode of address,
namely viewing. The second is that the phenomenology of this mode of address
becomes the matrix out of which might be generated a new set of conventions
or norms, based not on the properties of the object but on the categories of the
subject —such as Michael Fried's notion of a "primordial convention that paint
26 ings are made to be beheld." The third is that insofar as opticality is a visual
vector, it is always subtended by a sense of verticality; that is, the transcenden
tal object it intends is something like the condition of possibility of form, or of
the gestalt, and thus a kind of abstract matrix that is always organized as "fronto-
parallel" to its viewer, the verticality of the field that receives the gaze mirroring
27 the posture of the upright subject.
The fourth and last feature of this rotation is that, historically, it was meant
to sustain a continuation of painting not only beyond the crisis of the easel pic
ture but beyond the grip of the specific object. It was meant to allow something
"powerful enough" —as Fried once put it—"to generate new conventions, a new
28 art." And this would mean that opticality was not simply a feature of art, but
had become a medium of art. It was, one could say, a supportive matrix, the
internal logic of which could be seen to generate its own expressive possibilities
or conventions. That neither Greenberg nor Fried explored the optical as a new
medium, but instead concentrated on color field painting as something like a
new possibility for abstraction, meant that a variety of these expressive condi
29 tions were never theorized. The seriality uniformly resorted to by the color field
painters is a case in point. Another is the sense of the oblique generated by fields
that seemed always to be rotating away from the plane of the wall and into
depth, such that a perspectival rush in their surfaces caused critics like Leo

165
 ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

that moment; and that this new medium, to which Pollock fully oriented him
self beginning in January of 1947, is horizontal. Nothing about what Pollock
went on to do in his four-year-long campaign of working on the floor, pushing
to engage with ever larger formats that would strain all customary forms of
address to something like an easel picture both during the time of the works'
making and, by extension, over the course of their viewing, has much to do—
needless to say—with the precision and figurative character of Indian sand
painting. It is only the phenomenology of the axis of address that links the one
practice with the other. In fact Pollock would code horizontality into his surfaces
as the sand painters would never do. In constituting this code, the puddling and
scabbing that both result from and register the fact that the canvases were prone
on the floor announce their difference from the celebrated liquid runoffs that
marked the other Abstract Expressionists' surfaces with an index of their pic
tures' assumption of verticality, in process as well as in viewing. Pollock's deci
sion to throw trash onto the surfaces of some of the works, most famously Full
Fathom Five (1947), is another declaration of horizontality, as are the palm prints
of Number 1A, 1948 (plate 2). Ironically these palm prints have encouraged many
recent Pollock scholars to reinstate his work's relation to the figurative (itself
always conducted within the vertical field of the visual and of the gestalt), some
projecting standing figures underneath the picture's web, the palm prints the
34 visible evidence of their need to escape. But the strong misreading here was
undoubtedly Jasper Johns's, as he expresses the body registered in Number 1A,
1948 via the response he himself makes in the drawing Diver (1963; fig. 13),
insisting thus on the falling body, the body submerging itself within a medium
35 that is horizontal.
But can the horizontal itself be a medium, or are there insuperable difficul
ties in referring to the horizontal axis in these terms? To speak of the horizon
tality of Diver's medium is, of course, to enter the domain of metaphor and to
re-create the material surface over which Johns's hands passed as a horizontal
plane that is obdurately figurative in nature, transmuting the ashen velvet of its
charcoal into the transparency and flow of water. Does this mean that to admit
this is to find ourselves in the position where either the horizontal is simply a
metaphor (which is to say just another form of figuration) nestled within the
vertical axis of another medium, such as painting (which would be the position
T.J. Clark takes in the discussion following his original presentation of "Pollock's
),
36 Abstraction" or—as a function of Bataille's formless or Morris's anti-form —the
horizontal is so dedicated to the annihilation of all categories and all structures
that it cannot be linked to the redemptive aspirations of a medium? Further,
does a medium not have to have a technical, material support, such as canvas in
the case of painting?
The point of thinking about two of the interpretive models of Pollock's art

168
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

Fig. II. Kenneth Noland. Installation of stripe paintings at the

Andr6 Emmerich Gallery, NewYork, showingCoarseShadow
and Stria, 1967

Fig. 12. Kenneth Noland. Thaw. 1966. Acrylic on canvas, 19/4in.

x 8 ft. 4% in. (48.9 x 255.6 cm). Location unknown

work on them from all sides. Concluding that "this is akin to the method of the
Indian sand painters of the West/' he strikes out into an entirely different —what
shall we call it?—dimension? modality? vector? from Greenberg's verticalized
32 notion of the wall picture. Instead he declares a connection to the horizontal,
which Rosenberg would famously go on five years later to elaborate as the arena
of "action painting" but which the critic was already groping his way toward in
the late 1940s in relation to Existentialism's analysis of acts themselves.
So the difference between the two statements could just be chalked up to
the effect of Greenberg and Rosenberg arguing with one another over the back,
or out of the mouth, of Jackson Pollock, were it not for two additional things.
First there is the echo in the Possibilities statement —where Pollock announces
his distance from "the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes," stat
ing instead his preference for "sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or
a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass and other foreign matter added" —of
quite a different attack on the status of easel painting, this one aligning the easel
picture with class interests and locating alternatives to it in relation to labor
practice. The source for this vein of analysis is David Siqueiros, with his famous
slogans "Death to easel painting" and "Out with the stick with the hairs on its
end." It was Siqueiros, that is, who first made the connection in Pollock's mind
between easel painting as an elitist medium and the floor as the locus of a prac
33 tice that would defeat that medium.
The second is that the example of Indian sand painting names as a medium
something as distinct from the easel picture as one can imagine producing at

167
 ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

horizontal as real space, and thus as the field within which to declare the suspen
sion of the medium altogether —practices such as installation art, but not, as we
will see in relation to the early work of Richard Serra (below), earth or process art.
When I thought about horizontality as a medium in writing about Pollock
in the context of The Optical Unconscious,I saw it as something like a newly iso
lated phenomenological vector that supported or enabled practice —not only the
practice of those 1960s artists who rang extraordinary changes on the idea of
horizontality by their own creative "misreadings" of Pollock's art, but (moving
into the tricky business of trying to determine Pollock's elusive intentions) of
Pollock as well. This, alas, was more of a negative demonstration than in the
cases of Twombly, Warhol, or Morris, since it turned on showing that when
Pollock lost touch with the import of the medium that had sustained him for
three and a half years, he utterly lost contact with his own ambitions as an artist,
entering a state of near paralysis.
My argument was that a horizontality that managed to escape the field not
only of the figurative but of the cultural —a horizontality that was in this sense
below culture —came to be associated for Pollock with the unconscious. If Pollock
saw himself over the course of the drip period working this field as no one else
could do, not even Picasso; if its elaboration meant that the figurative could
surge up within the oceanic pull of the skein only to be obliterated by the pow
erful undertow of the formlessness that would wash over it in successive waves;
if it meant that in the end, attacking Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 (plate 5),
Pollock had no recourse to lifting the work up during its execution —no need for
the famous "get acquainted" periods in which the painting would be viewed ver
tically, hanging on the studio wall (since on this occasion he was content to
leave the work attached to the heavy roll of canvas from which its length had
been unfurled) —all of this was because horizontality had become the medium
through which he could experience the unconscious as an attack on form. After
whatever happened to Pollock on November 28, 1950 (the day he finished mak
ing his second film with Namuth, and suddenly started to drink again), he not
only lost touch with his medium but explicitly declared that the medium he had
now entered, or to which he had returned, was drawing. Writing to Alfonso
Ossorio in January of 1951, he characterized his work on the Japanese paper
Tony Smith had given him as "drawings," and again in June he spoke of his
black paintings as "drawing on canvas." That such drawing now promoted his
37 "early images coming thru" meant that he now understood his field as vertical:
The result of this was that when he tried to return to the import of the drip tech
nique his access was resolutely blocked. The verticality within which he now
thought and worked is attested to both by the runoff that appears everywhere in
Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952 and by the figurative insistence of the poles them
selves (plate 22), or again by the figurative nature of the web that overlays the

170
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

Fig. 13.Jasper Johns.Diver. 1963. Charcoal, pastel, and watercolor (?) on paper mounted on
canvas (two panels), 7 ft. 2% in. x 71%in. (219.7x 182.2 cm). Private collection

in tandem —that of color field or opticality and that of formlessness or the hor
izontal —becomes clear in relation to these questions. Just as opticality dislodges
the idea of the medium from a set of physical conditions and relocates it within
a phenomenological mode of address that can itself function as the support for
the medium, horizontality becomes such a phenomenological vector once it
articulates itself as a condition of the gravitational field, which is to say, once its
address can be felt to engage a distinct dimension of bodily experience and thus
a specific form of intentionality. It is only from within this dimension that the
horizontal, as a medium, can be disengaged from other horizontalized practices
(like the flatbed picture plane, or the written field of inscription) that nonethe
less continue to base themselves within the figurative. Similarly, only from within
the phenomenological assumption that bodily vectors are horizons of meaning
will the horizontal-as-medium differentiate itself from practices that assume the

169
ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

Fig. 15. Richard Serra throwing molten lead at the Castelli Warehouse, New York, 1969. Photograph: Cianfranco
Corgoni, New York

underscored by the recurrence of the grammatical prefix "to" ("to roll, to crease,
to fold," etc.)—but through an assembly of references to conditions of perpetual
modulation or periodic flux, as when he writes, "of waves, of tides, of electro
magnetic, of ionization," and so forth.
Thus as Serra extends Pollock's gesture of throwing paint onto floor-born
canvas into one of throwing molten lead against the crease between floor and
wall (in Casting, 1969; figs. 15 and 16), he repeats the material conditions of the
medium: the horizontality of the field, with its gravitational pull; the literal fact
that matter will settle onto that field as the residue of an event; the residue itself
taking the form of an index or trace, the physical clue to its having happened.
These material conditions, however, are not in themselves enough to make
something into a medium or expressive form. The tire tracks a car leaves on a
snowy road are certainly an index of its passage, but they are not thereby orga
nized into a work of art.
The conceptual artist would say that to so organize them it is enough merely
to frame them in any one of the number of ways that have become fully avail
able within the course of modernist practice. They could be photographed, for
example, or stanchioned off in some way that would fold them into one of art's
institutional spaces. Whatever one did would be tantamount to supplying them
with the enunciative label: "This is a work of art." And this strategy of the ready-

172
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

Fig. 14. Diagram for Pollock's Convergence:Number 10, 1952. From Matthew L. Rohn, Visual Dynamics in Jackson
Pollock's Abstractions (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987), p. 48. Courtesy Matthew L. Rohn

black and white ground of Convergence:Number 10, 1952, a frieze of rudimentary

stick figures that Matthew Rohn's gestaltist analysis of Pollock had pounced on
some years ago (fig. 14), intuiting —without the need of a computer —the pic-
togrammatic sign for the human figure that Karmel is now asking us to see as the
import of the drip paintings themselves from the classic period of 1947-50. 38
Insofar as horizontality enabled Pollock, sustaining and compelling his
greatest work, it functioned —I am arguing —as a medium. And "medium" is
meant here not in some kind of reductive sense in which medium and physical
support are collapsed into one another such that the medium of painting is read
baldly as flatness, or horizontality-as-a-medium is understood simply as the real
space of the floor. Rather, if a medium is taken as meaning a support for prac
tice, then it is a sustaining matrix generative of a set of conventions, some of
which, in assuming the medium itself as their subject, will be wholly "specific"
to it, thus producing an experience of their own necessity.
It was Richard Serra, in the midst of his own creative misreading of Pollock
and his own exploration of horizontality, who first and most directly stated
those conventions. They are given in the list he drew up in 1967-68 in which he
understood the new medium in which he found himself working to be articu
lated in the form of predicates rather than substantives —which is to say of verb
forms rather than objects or their attributes. Further, his list attaches those pred
icates (or predicate events) to the idea of series, not only through repetition —

171
ROSALINDE. KRAUSS

Fig. 17.Carl Andre. Lever.1966. 137firebricks, 4/2 in. x BY.in. x 29 ft. (11.4x 22.5 x 883.9 cm). National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

174
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

made would be enough to inaugurate the one convention that turns anything
whatever into an object of another order of experience.
The option of the frame, however, is not the one Serra is taking, since that
would be to defeat the pull of gravity and to reorganize the index as an image,
the picture or metaphor of an event rather than its resistant, literal occurrence,
a picture that, needless to say, would align itself with the vertical field of the
gestalt. Rather, for the horizontal conditions to stay in place, for gravity to main
tain its hold on the index such that it continues to operate as the mark of an
event rather than its picture, the work must find the syntax internal to the event
itself, and this is the syntax that it will then formalize. Such is the syntax regis
tered both in Serra's verb list and in a piece such as Casting, where it is to be
located not only in the transformation of the object produced by the gesture
into a form of serialization but in the understanding of series itself as wavelike
or periodic. The event, of which the cast is the index, Serra seems to be saying,
belongs to the logic of the series, which is not that of stamping out identical
objects, as in industrial production. Rather it is the series (or series of series) in
which the lead is heated to its molten state, in which the propulsion of the sling
around the body of the standing artist assumes an elliptical orbit, in which
falling metal is shaped by the barrier of wall and floor as it cools, and, most
important, in which all of these different series are seen as converging toward the
specific point of the event. Thus it is in repetition itself that the event's internal
frame is discovered, and the index that marks that event is exfoliated as series.

Fig. 16. Richard Serra. Casting. 1969. Lead, 4 in. x 25 ft. x 15ft. (10 x 762 x 457 cm). Installed at the Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York, 1969. Destroyed

173
ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

Fig. 18. Richard Serra. 2-2-1: To Dickie and Tina. 1969. Lead antimony, five plates, each 48 x 48 in. (122 x 122 cm); pole, 7
ft. (213 cm) long; overall, 52 in. x 8 ft. 2 in. x II ft. (132 x 249 x 335 cm). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Carden,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Fig. 19. Richard Serra. Cutting Device: Base Plate Measure. 1969. Lead, wood, stone, and steel, overall, 12in. x 18ft. x 15ft.
7% in. (30.5 x 549 x 498 cm), variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Cift of Philip Johnson

176
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

In a piece like Casting, I am claiming, Serra is reading the horizontalized

field of Pollock's work as a network of traces, each the index of an event, the
internal logic of which is serial or repetitive: wave after wave of looping falls of
paint. Further, he is expressing that logic as gerundive, or wholly unfolding in the
present tense, a quality captured by his own title, Casting, but echoed as well in
the lexicon consistently applied by critics to Pollock's line—as in Greenberg's
"whipping," "trickling," "dribbling," "blotching," and "staining," or Rubin's
"pouring," "spattering," "criss-crossing," and "puddling." That the gerund form
is not just a present tense but a present progressive, one that actively connects
past to present and opens present to future, once again displays the resistance of
this form to enclosure, to the completion of a frame. The index framed is the
index as the picture of an event, which is distanced from itself by having entered
the condition of representation. It is only unframed that its openness to the vari
ation of the series continues to be in play. The gerund thus expresses a perspec
tive on the series from the moment of the present, since the series, parabolic in
39 nature, is part of a continuing flux.
If seriality and repetition are the syntax with which to formalize the event
within the field of the object, the gerund's perspectival nature, its character as
an axis or point of view onto the series, becomes the formal expression of the
subject's relation to variation. Theorizing the concept of the event, Gilles
Deleuze points to the fact that "a needed relation exists between variation and
point of view," which means that there is "not only variety in points of view but
every point of view is a point of view on variation." Arguing that "this is not rel
ativism as a variation of truth according to the subject," Deleuze says, "rather it
40 is the condition in which the truth of a variation appears to the subject."
This, then, is the importance of the shift that occurs generally in the after
math of the "crisis of the easel picture" as, whether in the practice of color field
painting or in that of process, the medium within which artists understand
themselves to be working becomes a phenomenological dimension, an axis onto
a field, rather than the physical limits of the field itself. In opticality, that dimen
sion involves the upright body, yet it also unleashes a relationship between per-
ceiver and canvas which seems to call for the illusion that the pictorial field is
turning, receding, speeding away, is in a relation to its viewer that reinforces the
perspectivalism of the viewer's relation to it. In process art, such as Serra's or Carl
Andre's (fig. 17) or much of Eva Hesse's, the dimension is the horizontal, which
these artists continue to reinforce and work as a medium, even when, as in
Serra's prop pieces, they activate gravity in relation to standing elements (fig.
18). But more than anything else Serra's cutting pieces demonstrate that the new
medium he was inhabiting must also be recognized as one of an utterly reorga
nized sense of drawing, drawing not as the boundary of a form but as the expres
sion of an event, a predicate, a serial variation (fig. 19).

175
ROSALIND E. KRAUSS

Notes

1. E. A. Carmean, Jr., "The Church reprinted in Modernism with a the Institute for Psycho-Analysis,
Project: Pollock's Passion Themes," Vengeance, 1957-1969, vol. 4 of 1953-73), 21: 90.
Art in America 70 no. 6 (Summer Clement Greenberg: The Collected 19. Varnedoe speaks of the analysis
1982): 110-22; Rosalind Krauss, Essays, p. 123. of formlessness in art as "associated,
"Contra Carmean: The Abstract 12. In "Contribution to a Sympos psychically, with bodily excretion,"
Pollock," in ibid., pp. 123-31. ium," 1953 (reprinted in Affirmations going on to say, "Krauss and Bois see
2. Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Refusals, 1950-1956, p. 156), the drip paintings as generating a
and Kitsch," 1939, reprinted in Per Greenberg links the new openness of scatological lineage of staining, as in
ceptions and Judgments, 1939-1944, color in some Abstract Expressionist Andy Warhol's 'oxidation' paintings,
vol. 1 of Clement Greenberg: The painting to "optical illusions difficult made by urinating onto a metallic-
Collected Essays and Criticism, ed. to specify"; in "Sculpture in Our paint ground" (Jackson Pollock, pp.
John O'Brian (Chicago and London: Time," 1958 (reprinted in Modernism 54-55); Adam Gopnik links my posi
University of Chicago Press, 1986), with a Vengeance, 1957-1969, p. 60), tion with Harold Rosenberg's as a
pp. 14, 22. opticality is given its earliest full call for "anti-art" and speaks of my
3. Pepe Karmel, "Pollock at Work: blown theorization; in "Louis and "praise of Pollock's art as 'abject'"
The Films and Photographs of Hans Noland," 1960 (reprinted in Modern ("Poured Over," The New Yorker
Namuth," in Kirk Varnedoe with ism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969, LXXIV [October 19, 1998]: 76, 80).
Karmel, Jackson Pollock, exh. cat. p. 97), the notion of optical color 20. Thierry de Duve gives an
(New York: The Museum of Modern is further developed; and finally account of this process in "The
Art, 1998), p. 131. in "Modernist Painting," 1960 Monochrome and the Blank
4. Ibid. (reprinted in Modernism with a Canvas." See de Duve, Kant after
5. Greenberg, "Review of Exhibitions Vengeance, 1957-1969, p. 90), the Duchamp (Cambridge, Mass.: The
of Jean Dubuffet and Jackson Pol idea of opticality is fully in place. MIT Press, 1996), pp. 199-279.
lock," February 1947, reprinted in 13. Allan Kaprow, "The Legacy of 21. I began to speak of a postmedium
Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949, vol. 2 Jackson Pollock," Art News 57 no. 6 condition in "And Then Turn Away?
of Clement Greenberg: The Collected (October 1958): 24-25, 55-57. An Essay on James Coleman," Oct
Essays and Criticism, p. 125. 14. Robert Morris, "Anti-Form," 1968, ober no. 81 (Summer 1997): 5-33.
6. Greenberg, "The Crisis of the Easel and "Some Notes on the Phenomen 22. See my "Welcome to the Cultural
Picture," April 1948, reprinted in ology of Making," 1970, both re Revolution," October no. 77 (Summer
ibid., p. 224. printed in Continuous Project Altered 1996): 83-96.
7. See, for example, Greenberg, Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris 23. Greenberg, "After Abstract-
"'American-Type' Painting," 1955, (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, Expressionism," p. 131.
reprinted in Affirmations and and New York: Solomon R. Guggen 24. Greenberg, "Modernist Painting,"
Refusals, 1950-1956, vol. 3 of heim Museum, 1993), pp. 41-49, p. 90.
Clement Greenberg: The Collected 71-93. 25. Greenberg, "Louis and Noland,"
Essays and Criticism, p. 235. 15. See chapter 6 of my Optical 1960, reprinted in Modernism with a
8. Greenberg, "The Role of Nature Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass.: The Vengeance, 1957-1969, p. 97.
in Modern Painting," 1949, reprinted MIT Press, 1993), pp. 243-329, and 26. See Michael Fried's discussion of
in Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949, pp. Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, this in "An Introduction to My Art
273-74. Formless: A User's Guide, exh. cat. Criticism," Art and Objecthood
9. Greenberg, "'American-Type' (New York: Zone Books, 1997). (Chicago and London: Chicago
Painting," 1955, Art and Culture 16. See Harold Bloom, The Anxiety University Press, 1998), p. 48.
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), pp. of Influence (London and New York: 27. See my Optical Unconscious, pp.
221, 226, 228. In the version of the Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 30. 246-47, 324. In discussing color field
essay edited for Affirmations and 17. Cy Twombly's exploitation of painting, Stanley Cavell expresses his
Refusals, 1950-1956 Greenberg graffiti was, from the outset, focused own assumption that the axis called
excised these sentences. on what the semiologist would call for in the transaction between the
10. In her essay in this book, Carol its expressive form —namely that it is viewer and this kind of art is verti-
Mancusi-Ungaro demonstrates the a defiling of a surface of inscription cality: "For example, a painting may
impossibility of Pollock's having (by cutting, smearing, spraying, or acknowledge its frontedness, or its
painted the Guggenheim mural with any other form of marking). His finitude, or its specific thereness —
the desperate speed claimed by the interest was therefore in its violence that is, its presentness; and your
artist and reported by his friends (p. rather than its image content. Thus accepting it will accordingly mean
118). But Pollock's own sense of although graffiti is often marked acknowledging your frontedness, or
semiautomatism as he drove himself onto vertical walls, and although its directionality, or verticality toward
to make this very large work is regis figuration is often representational, its world, or any world." Cavell, The
tered in that claim, no matter how this content of the image was not World Viewed (New York: Viking,
mythically and at variance from what Twombly initially used. Rather 1971), p. 110.
actual fact. he was drawing a parallel between 28. Fried, "Shape as Form," Art and
11.In his review of Pollock in 1949, Pollock's gesture, or mode of mark Objecthood, p. 88.
Greenberg characterizes No. 1 (1948) ing, and the violence of the graffiti 29. It is not that nothing was
(now usually called Number 1A, gesture, its "criminal" overtones, so addressed to the question of the
1948) as "baroque" (Arrogant Purpose, to speak. See my discussion in The medium; rather, the medium contin
1945-1949, p. 285). This idea of the Optical Unconscious, pp. 256-60. ued to be organized in the field of
baroque is something Greenberg 18. Sigmund Freud, "Civilization and the object. For example, in ibid.,
associates with the notion of painter- Its Discontents," 1930, The Standard p. 77, Fried raises the question of a
liness, or malerische (as used by Edition of the Complete Psychological medium, tying it to the relationship
Heinrich Wolfflin), in "After Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James between literal and depicted shape
Abstract-Expressionism," 1962, Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and in Frank Stella's irregular polygon

178
 THE CRISIS OF THE EASEL PICTURE

So the issue of drawing is indeed at stake in our present understanding of

Jackson Pollock, just as it was at stake, I am arguing, in his own felt relationship
to his work. To recode the import of Pollock's drawing as having been oriented
all along to some notion of the figure, and to disqualify other characterizations
of it as merely "abject" or "anti-art," is not only to lose touch with the inner
logic of Pollock's medium, as it first sustained and then withdrew from him, but
is seriously to denigrate the work of all those whose achievement it was to
engage with Pollock's greatness in the dimension within which they experienced
its impact for art.

177
 paintings of 1966: "By shape as such I objected that Pollock's palm prints
mean not merely the silhouette of in Number 1A, 1948 might have been
the support (which I shall call literal applied to the canvas once it was
shape), not merely that of the out vertical rather than during its mak
lines of elements in a given picture ing, so that they would register the
(which I shall call depicted shape), upright body rather than the falling
but shape as a medium within which one. This seems counterintuitive
choices about both literal and de since the prints appear under pas
picted shapes are made, and made sages of white dripped skein, and
mutually responsive." thus would most likely have been
In the context of the exchanges applied while the canvas was on the
between Fried and Cavell in the mid- floor. It was also objected that Jasper
1960s, Cavell addresses color field Johns's Diver,referring to Hart
painting by arguing for an idea of Crane's suicide (by jumping over
the medium that is closer to some board during an ocean voyage), is
thing like a phenomenological axis. about a falling body that is therefore
Claiming that what a given color oriented vertically, even though
field painter is inventing is a new inverted head-to-foot. This seems a
automatism (Morris Louis's "pours" perverse reading of Johns's space, in
being modeled here on the example which the plunging body is rendered
of Pollock's automatized dripped vertiginous precisely because it is
lines), he understands these automa precipitating itself into a watery
tisms as supplying not just new in medium that is itself horizontal and
stances of art but new mediums of toward which the body must project
art. See Cavell, The World Viewed, a downward fall. Further, it ignores
pp. 104-8. the point that since Johns's field is
30. Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria (New in any case metaphoric, its charcoal
York:Oxford University Press, 1972), surface constituting the image of,
p. 79. Fried too speaks of the speed the illusion of, water, the work ulti
of Kenneth Noland's striped pictures: mately relocates itself within the
"Approached from the side (their terms of the easel picture, or vertical
length makes this inviting) what is medium.
striking is not their rectangularity 36. T.J. Clark, "Jackson Pollock's
but the speed with which that rec Abstraction," in Serge Guilbaut, ed.,
tangle—or rather, the speed with ReconsideringModernism(Cambridge,
which the colored bands—appear to Mass.: The MIT Press, 1990), pp.
diminish in perspective recession." 241-42.
"Shape as Form," p. 83. 37. O'Connor and Thaw, Jackson
31. The Guggenheim application is Pollock:A CatalogueRaisonne,4: D94,
published in Francis Valentine p. 257, and D99, p. 261.
O'Connor and Eugene Victor Thaw, 38. Matthew L. Rohn, VisualDynam
eds., JacksonPollock:A Catalogue ics in JacksonPollock'sAbstractions
Raisonneof Paintings, Drawings, (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press,
and Other Works(New Haven and 1987), p. 48.
London: Yale University Press, 39. Gilles Deleuze formulates the
1978), 4:238. connections between the predicate
32. Jackson Pollock, "My Painting," event, series, variation, and point of
Possibilitiesno. 1 (Winter 1947-48): 79. view in his discussion of Leibniz's
33. Pollock worked in David and Whitehead's concept of the
Siqueiros's Manhattan studio/'Tabo- event, to which I am indebted here.
ratory" in 1936. His use of gray See Deleuze, The Fold:Leibnizand the
enamel in works of the early 1940s, Baroque,trans. Ton Conley
like The She-Wolf,to mask around (Minneapolis: University of
shapes, thereby producing figures as Minnesota Press, 1993).
the effect of a kind of stenciling, 40. Ibid., pp. 19-20.
may be an adaptation of a technique
of poster-making that was employed
in Siqueiros's studio, where stencils
and spray paint were applied to
lengths of paper laid on the floor.
34. See Charles F. Stuckey, "Another
Side of Jackson Pollock," Art in
America65 no. 6 (November-
December 1977): 81-91, and Bernice
Rose, JacksonPollock:Drawing into
Painting, exh. cat. (New York:The
Museum of Modern Art, 1980), p. 9.
35. In the discussion following the
presentation of this paper, it was
 ANNE M. WACNER

while Frankenthaler's response to Pollock is now customarily accepted (and dis

missed) as (mere) catalyst fueling the development of a future for painting as an
art of pure opticality, what she saw in Pollock was neither pure nor optical. And
in making her work she looked anywhere but forward: for "anywhere," read
both back and downward, and even within.
We do need some way to structure an understanding of the links between
Frankenthaler and Pollock; as we do, for that matter, in order to come to grips
with most artists of consequence in the last thirty years, so large does Pollock
3 loom in their work. 1 don't think the standard quasi-fiscal vocabulary —the bal
ance sheet of debts and borrowings and obligations with which we art historians
often content ourselves—even begins to do the job, let alone takes us to the bot
tom line. Just how much or how little did Frankenthaler learn from Pollock?
Why bother keeping the books? They won't add up anyway if, as so often, they
fail fully to inventory issues of gendered identity and performance —as they have
both for Pollock and for Frankenthaler herself. For I take it as axiomatic that gen
der has always somehow been a factor in how her work has been valued, as well
as in the shaping of the larger history in which her work has been given a place.
Sometimes, in fact, gender has visibly tinted the language of assessment, if
not quite in the ways that Lisa Saltzman, in attending to the florid feminizing
4 pejoratives that hypersaturate some criticism, would have us believe. By these
lights stain painting bleeds into the body, into the artist's bodily seepages above
all. What, we might well ask, are we then to make of imagery that goes against
the grain of gender stereotype —or at least reverses the vectors along which it is
usually applied? Think of the carefully blotted bodily Rorschachs that are
Pollock's red paintings of c. 1950 (the blottings both tidy and mess things up),
or of the explosive intensities of Frankenthaler's 1950s procedures as exempli
fied, for example, in paintings like Holocaust (figs. 1 and 2). Or, to choose an
example where interpretation may seem less subjective, less open to contesta
tion, what are we to do with the vocabulary of Parker Tyler, whose surprising
verdict on Frankenthaler was also the first to pair her with Pollock?

Fig. I. JacksonPollock. Untitled[RedPainting 1-7]. c. 1950. Oil on canvas, smallest 20 x 8 in. (50.8 x 20.3 cm), largest
21x 13in. (53.3 x 33 cm). Privatecollection, Berlin

182
 Pollock's Nature, Frankenthaler's
Culture

Anne H. Wagner

Does my title demand an immediate disclaimer? I imagine so; let me begin, there
fore, by saying what I don't aim to do in this paper. My purpose is above all not
to renovate a pair of big categories, a handy and familiar dualism within which
Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler can find their appointed slots—can
find them, that is, once the assumptions about gender that normally govern my
key binary have been given the requisite revisionist (read feminist) twist. The
adjustment would shift "culture" and "nature" a full 180 degrees, inverting their
rigid and hoary associations with male and female respectively to turn the old
1 oppressive formula on its head. This is not to deny that such a reversal presents
its temptations: after all, didn't Pollock declare that he was nature? And isn't
Frankenthaler, with her privileged background and Bennington education,
someone to whom "culture" was fed with a silver spoon? It is Frankenthaler, cer
tainly, whom critics are prepared to call "erudite," Frankenthaler who comes across
as a haunter of museums herself haunted in turn by the grand tradition as an
2 inescapable inheritance, masterpieces to internalize and explode. For Pollock,
by contrast, learning was ad hoc and arbitrary, a sometime thing. He never went
to Europe, and took painting as he found it—often, he found it in books. And
rather than aligning itself with tradition, whether aggressively or otherwise, his
work has made its own.
The problem of course is that although this quick list of instances may con
found certain assumptions and stereotypes on a case-by-case basis, it reinstates
others. Nor is there anything yet to suggest, as my title may seem to, that the Frank-
enthaler/Pollock connection can be understood as signaling some real or sub
stantive about-face in cultural priorities and authority. Even less guarantees that
terming Pollock's work "nature" and Frankenthaler's "culture" will speak help
fully to the imagery of these artists—to how we might see and use it, love and hate
it, for the complexity and unexpectedness of the experiences it intends to con
vey. If my terms end up having some utility in this highly local context of paint
ings and their resonance, it will be because they help us say what Frankenthaler's
art makes of Pollock's, and why. The answer I will give is, I hope, unexpected: for

181
ANNE M. WACNER

Fig. 3. Helen Frankenthaler in her studio. From "Women

Artists in Ascendance: Young Croup Reflects LivelyVirtues
of U.S. Painting," Life 42 no. 19(May 13,1957):74. Photo
graph: Cordon Parks, Life Magazine. © Time, Inc.

Fig. 4. Helen Frankenthaler. Blue Territory.1955. Oil on can

vas, 9 ft. 5 in. x 58 in. (287 x 147.3cm). Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York. Purchase with funds from the
Friends of the Whitney Museumof American Art

Ejaculation or menstruation? Neither formulation will do in every instance,

maybe any instance, however much credit goes to Saltzman for venturing to pro
pose that descriptive language matters for the Frankenthaler we have inherited—
the one that criticism has tried to produce. If we were to emend Saltzman's the
sis, it would be to resupply to criticism its indecisive history, its deep discomfort
with the very idea of Frankenthaler's work as occupying or claiming some stably
gendered voice and position, while still being successful as art. The critics' quan
dary, that is to say, involved squaring this painting's heterodox methods and
procedures, its big ambitions and art-world successes, with her womanhood, and
accommodating both to some paradigm or other of who and what an artist is.
The problem has proved intractable. More often than not it has been left
strictly and severely to one side (this, I think, has been the strategy of Barbara
Rose and John Elderfield, the painter's strongest and most interested support
ers ), as if merely to name Frankenthaler as a woman could somehow prejudice
any sense of the value and seriousness of her art. And of course Rose and
Elderfield had plenty of prejudices to counter. The early years of Frankenthaler's

184
 pollock's nature, frankenthaler's culture

Fig. 2. Helen Frankenthaler. Holocaust.

1955. Oil on canvas, 60 x 54 in. (172.7x
137.2cm). Museum of Art, Rhode Island
School of Design, Providence. Albert
Pilavin Collection of Twentieth-Century
American Art

The link happened, belatedly, in 1956, in the context of Tyler's reading of

what was by then Frankenthaler's fourth one-person show. The artist was still
not yet thirty, but her so-called invention of stain painting, in the great and con
sequential Mountains and Sea, was already four years past. Nor was staining the
main issue for Tyler; like the other 1950s critics, he didn't use the term. What
mattered was not a technique but its rhetoric. In it he saw likeness, not differ
ence—how much, that is, Frankenthaler was like Pollock. "Her courage is worth
a double-take," Tyler declared with characteristic vehemence. And he contin
ued, with equally characteristic innuendo, "She can make the paint-mass spurt
like a leak in a dike and yet control it till it laps the canvas like a spent wave. She
has as free a curve and spontaneous a thrust as Pollock, and a stretch of outsize
5 canvas is like a dare to her." There are few passages of writing from this period
more at ease with Frankenthaler's sheer painterly vehemence; few more confi
dent, moreover, in making those effects masculine —all spurts and spendings,
6 thrust and dare. Even the reservations Tyler registers—he worries, for example,
that "her works excite without quite satisfying because she seems concerned
more with means than ends" —recast all difficulties or dissatisfactions, painter's
or critic's, as versions of similarly onanistic frustration: orgasms that don't quite
come off.

183
 ANNE M. WACNER

his art—important, I think, because she both admires and resists it, and lets the
struggle show. And she sees things there that other viewers have permitted
themselves to ignore.
Go back to the scene of the encounter; place it, as she has, at the first of
Pollock's exhibitions she attended, at the Betty Parsons Gallery in November and
December of 1950.10Of course these coals have been endlessly raked over, not
least because they continue to glow. They give off the heat her later recollections
have lent them: this is the exhibition to which Frankenthaler was taken by
Greenberg, who "threw her into the room," as she later put it, "and seemed to
11 say swim." The metaphor is oceanic, though not without undertow: sink, or
swim. And other analogies she has used have been equally boundless in scale:
Pollock as sublimely sovereign nation, Pollock as his own native tongue. Nation,
Native, Nature: the moves are familiar, and tempting.
But here is Frankenthaler herself, again letting difficulties seep in: "It was
as if I suddenly went to a foreign country but didn't know the language, but had
read enough and had a passionate interest, and was eager to live there. I wanted
12 to live in this land; I had to live there, and master this language." Don't let's
make the mistake of taking such eagerness as merely automatic, a pledge of alle
giance dutifully recited to open the clubhouse door. Who else cared quite so
13 much— so much about Pollock as a painter, I mean? Who else would admit it?
Listen to Kenneth Noland, speaking to a journalist in 1961 about his and Morris
Louis's first stalemated response: "We were interested in Pollock but could gain
14 no lead from him. He was too personal." It seems fair to hear Noland's tone as
both quizzical and distant, distant enough to keep Pollock at a real remove. Now
turn back to Frankenthaler: "It hit me and had magic but didn't puzzle me to the
15 point of stopping my feelings." Remember, in light of this comment, that
according to Greenberg—at least he used the phrase as the title for a 1952 essay
on contemporary painting —"feeling is all."
The lead Noland and Louis took, of course, they got from Frankenthaler.
Hence Noland continued in the conversation I've just cited, "[But] Frankenthaler
showed us a way—a way to think about, and use, color." At this juncture in the
interview —the moment is legendary —Louis chimed in with his brilliant sum
16 mation, "She was the bridge between Pollock and what was possible." The for
mulation is so brilliant, of course, because it leaves so much behind: bafflement
and dependency become mere way stations en route to the would-be finality of
one's own work—finality as vast possibility, that is to say, rather than forced
compromise. And although Frankenthaler's painting is the agent of the trans
formation, this formula efficiently restricts its possible significance and interest
to its role as mere utilitarian cause.
One reason this genealogy is so often cited —to locate not only
Frankenthaler's work but Noland's and Louis's—is that it came to underpin the

186
 pollock's nature, frankenthaler's culture

career coincided with and only partly managed to resist postwar mass culture's
eager commodification of artists as specially exotic and appetizing characters;
"women artists" were even more rarefied goods. Send the photographer from Life
or Time to document this new and unfamiliar quantity, the young and photo
genic female painter. Just be sure to dispatch another sort of dauber as well—the
makeup artist—to harmonize the photographic palette and tie together art
works, blusher, and clothes. For the particular candy-colored production I am
thinking of, an illustration in Life's notorious 1957 photo essay "Women Artists
in Ascendance," paintings were deployed like stage flats, and Blue Territory
(1955), though already finished and exhibited, was demoted: sent back to the
floor of its maker's studio, it lay there passively, its once wild expanse doing
domestic service as a rug (figs. 3 and 4).8 Must a woman's art be so insisted on as
more "natural"— her lair or habitat— than "cultural," the product of her hand
and brain? Certainly this is the way the evident anomalies and discomforts that
surfaced along with the category "woman artist" reached their uneasy resolution
in these years.
Rose's 1970 study in particular followed in the wake of some specially
malign examples of "life-styles" prattle, the middlebrow gossip into which criti
cal discussion increasingly mutated in the 1960s so as to satisfy the mass market
of the day. This is what both Rose and Elderfield implicitly aim to resist. "In
Manhattan," we learn in Time magazine's response to Frankenthaler's 1969 ret
rospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, "nearly everybody knows
Helen Frankenthaler as a charmer, a hostess, and a presence. Back in the 1950's,
she was the brash, aggressive girlfriend of Clement Greenberg ... for the past
eleven years she has been the wife of Robert Motherwell, and in a sense, Helen
always seemed in the artistic shadow of her husband and other 'first-generation'
abstract expressionists. Thus it came as something of a discovery to learn that
9 Helen can really paint." This is bad enough; one might as well be reading about
"tribal customs" among the Abstract Expressionists—think of Claude Levi-
Strauss on "Woman as Sign." But read on: "Helen Frankenthaler's work deals out
spokenly with emotion. It bubbles forth with irresistible elation, and could have
been used long ago to show that abstract painting can have a heart." I'm not
making this up. Such drivel, I reckon, could make almost anyone a formalist;
think formalism, in other words, as an antidote to bilge.
But we cannot, alas, see formalism as quite able, even when willing, to
speak of Frankenthaler's work in terms that would successfully keep her paint
ings consequential for a current audience. Can they be made to matter again?
Doing so, I am convinced, would involve starting again with the question of her
relation to Pollock: it means asking how her work uses, refuses, and contradicts
the example his painting provides. For of his successors, she may well be his
most important respondent, at least among the painters who have cared about

185
 ANNE M. WACNER

Fig. 5. Clement Creenberg, Lee Krasner, and Frankenthaler outside Pollock'sstudio. The Springs, Long Island, 1952

think depth and differences are still at issue, albeit in other terms?
20 The time has come to stop on the bridge. Imagine looking from Franken-
thaler's vantage point in the 1950s, before Louis and Noland could be said to
have remapped the lay of the land. Think of Pollock as she saw him: he was the
foreground, not some safely distant shore. He loomed there in flesh and blood—
someone to be visited as well as studied, someone whose work acted as both
backdrop and centerpiece to weekends at The Springs. If there is a point to recall
ing and illustrating such immediate encounters —looking back, for example, to
Pollock's own 1952 snapshot of one such party gathered on the grass beneath
Out of the Web (fig. 5)—it is to emphasize the direct and physical presence that
Pollock's work had for Frankenthaler, the avenues of access that made it unmis
takably, practically real. Seeing Out of the Web bathed in sunlight —its role that
of an object displayed for discussion, one apparently still relevant, though three
years old—makes it clear, moreover, that in this process, issues of depth and the
figurative (if not necessarily Fried's notion of figuration) were very much in play.
Remember, to emphasize the point still further, that Frankenthaler owned one
of Pollock's Japanese paper drawings of 1951 (fig. 6), a sheet not unlike the one
he gave and inscribed to Greenberg that same year. What the two drawings share
is the sheer immediacy of their blotches and strokes, black, brick red, and yellow
interwoven and overlaid. Such effects conjure a wild calligraphy, but they are
simultaneously given depth by a choreography that summons a sense of figures
and objects in space. The drawings are both graphic and spatial, in other words,
with the simultaneity of these effects only emphasized by what is open and pro
21 visional about Pollock's use of paper and ink. Nor should we imagine that

n
 pollock's nature, frankenthaler's culture

logic of painting as Greenberg and Michael Fried discerned that art unfolding in
the late 1950s and early 1960s. (Another may be that it so efficiently subordi
nates Frankenthaler's own artistic project to that logic, a claim to which I will
return.) The new paradigm led to an emphasis on opticality, certainly —to opti-
cality as a specially open, nontactile, and disembodied value generated through
the homogenizing qualities of the stain. To quote Greenberg directly, speaking
in 1960 of staining as Louis practiced it: "The effect conveys a sense not only of
color as somehow disembodied, and therefore more purely optical, but also of
17 color as a thing which opens and expands the picture plane." This verdict takes
hostage many of Greenberg's earlier opinions and criteria—his validation of feel
ing and embodiment among them —while already mobilizing the terms and
issues that would matter to Fried in 1967, when he tried to plot the route from
Pollock to Frankenthaler to Louis one more time. He found this difficult to do,
not least, I think, because opticality and disembodiment are such troublesome
claims, at least where Pollock and Frankenthaler are concerned. And so, for
Fried, was Frankenthaler's apparently decisive role.
Fried's argument concedes to these difficulties tactically, by reintroducing
drawing as a key concern: drawing now rid of its history and tradition, to say
nothing of its descriptive urgency; drawing dematerialized so as to invoke "figu
ration," not the human figure; drawing redefined through pouring and staining
so as to achieve its effects without reliance on contour and edge. In this account,
two Pollock works act as linchpins: Out of the Web:Number 7, 1949 and Number 3,
1951. They can play this role because Fried aims to move past the merely figu
rative to a more general principle or essence of "figuration"; in so doing he side
18 steps "feeling" as well as metaphor. The move is strategic, undertaken in aid of
a notion of figuration as a phenomenon of vision and perception more than the
result of any particular technique; it is above all the agent of an increasingly
autonomous sight. In this schema Louis's painting is the perfected catalyst of
such vision, his colored stainings credited with the ability to grip and activate
the eye past the very limits of the tactile, let alone the particular constraints of
touch. And Frankenthaler? To cite Fried once again, "What is less clear is how
19 that bridging relationship ought to be described." Exactly: Fried solves the
problem by recourse to this same elusive quantity, figuration. Frankenthaler's
work, by these lights, is merely figurative—drawn, hence relentlessly tactile,
punctual, embodied, and constrained, even though her use of stained color was
the "revelation" able to open the door to Louis's art. Yet one notable quality of
revelations is that they cannot really be explained, nor is Fried long detained by
an effort to do so. What he sees more vividly than any similarity or relationship
are the "fundamental differences" between Louis and Frankenthaler, just as what
matters most is the "depth" of Louis's relation to Pollock. Does it go without say
ing that one main reason for detailing these long-ago judgments is that I myself

187
 ANNE M. WACNER

and certainly bears little resemblance to Louis's brisk thoroughfare, but I think
it makes more sense.
Start with Frankenthaler's great intuition: that her work, like Pollock's,
should take place on the floor. Of course this is only one aspect of her technique
of painting, in itself nothing to exaggerate or overdo. Pollock himself, remem
ber, was careful to limit the role of procedure in the scheme of things: "Tech
22 nique is just a means of arriving at a statement"; "Method is, it seems to me, a
23 natural growth out of a need." If Pollock downplayed his methods, it was to
emphasize that technique serves both statement and need. This is good policy-
let us use it to ask, once again, why a painter should work on the floor. My
answer makes motivation a question of space and scale, body and, yes, feeling:
the four come together to shape a geography at once psychically large yet as
compacted and local as place can be. According to Pollock, this precinct had its
own special ethos: "I enjoy working big . . . I'm just more at ease in a big area."
24 Or again, "I feel more at home in a big area." What emerges from these state
ments is a special notion of topography: a canvas laid down flat in three dimen
sions makes a place both big and small enough to inhabit, where for once he
could be (almost) "at home."
Enter Frankenthaler. I mean the phrase quite literally. When she began to
operate on a horizontal canvas, I think she had some such understanding of
Pollock's own investment in surface and horizontality— above all, she under
stood its Tightness. The question was how to utilize that conception herself; how,
even if, she herself might feel at home. The answer, I think, was yes and no. For
while Frankenthaler gives "feeling"—for which read her pursuit of space, and of
(her own) place in painting —a topography she shaped on the canvas as
moments and incidents, sometimes even fields of color, a topography plotted
with utter immediacy there and then, she at the same time seems compelled to
25 find her own bearings, declare her own presence, on and in the new terrain. In
this she is like a diver who swims deep, yet periodically takes soundings, even
comes to the surface to see how far she's come. The first great example of this
procedure (one that sheds light on why it was necessary) is Mountains and Sea
(plate 33). For although the painting is a remembered landscape (the circum
stances of its production, in the aftermath of a fall trip to Nova Scotia with
Greenberg, have been often repeated), it also remembers "landscape" as a genre
26 at the moment it leaves that category forever behind. Its traces are registered in
the one descriptive passage the image presents and departs from: I am speaking
27 of the pale green shards and polyps that sit at right in an azure bay. The rest of
the image pulls loose from this landscape mooring to coalesce, swirl free, then
regroup on and as the picture surface; the forms are vivid rivals to the depth and
flatness of empty cotton duck. For the most part drawing gives color its direc
28 tions, and not in some stage whisper: it speaks them aloud. Or writes them: the

190
 pollock's nature, frankenthaler's culture

Fig. 6. Jackson Pollock. Untitled. 1951.Mixed media on paper 24 x 38/, in. (60.9 x 97.7 cm). Location unknown

Frankenthaler's contact with Pollock's art ended at some fixed or discernible

moment, with the termination of her relationship with Greenberg, for example,
or once Mountains and Sea had been painted and the technique of staining had
consequently come to light —at a moment, in other words, that would coincide
conveniently with the genealogical narrative in which Frankenthaler is assigned
her role as secondary and disposable agent of change.
I think it worth emphasizing that Frankenthaler used a range of encoun
ters—from experiences in Pollock's exhibitions to contacts with particular draw
ings and paintings— to plot her route out of Pollock's art. Yet this claim alone
does not adequately define the question of her choices, not least because his
work accumulates and proffers such contradictory experiences and procedures:
only think of the meditation on whole and particular, depth and surface, addi
tive and subtractive, full and empty, large and small, figurative and abstract, hor
izontal and vertical, that motivates Out of the Web. Sometimes these effects are
resolved in Pollock's art—or at least held in tense opposition —but increasingly
after 1950, he sought opposition as much as or more than resolution. Surely one
thing Noland was asserting about Frankenthaler, then, is that she could grasp
something of the sheer range and volatility of these hard-to-handle qualities. Let
us further say, as Noland does not quite assert, that this same range and volatil
ity also constitute what is personal about Pollock's art—as well as what was not
possible for either Noland or Louis to emulate. What else might be seen in these
terms? The answer I want to outline aims to bring what is paradoxically personal
about Frankenthaler's own way of painting —what concerns feelings and their
problematic expression —more clearly into view. The path may seem convoluted,

189
ANNE M. WACNER

accidents are merely grist for the

painter's mill—including hand
prints, it is safe to say. Now
look back at Mountains and Sea:
how deliberately unrhetorical
this accidental presence seems.
Like a colophon, the print stays
separate; there is no integra
tion, no weaving here. Yet it
doesn't claim authorship —"I
Helen made this" —so much as
suggest that "Helen was here."
This special license issued
to mark and field and image—
this apparent willingness to de
clare the origins of these terms
in separate moments, then let
each make its own separate
way—is, I think, what is per
sonal about Frankenthaler's
work: what, to be more precise, her art both grasps and refuses from Pollock's.
Frankenthaler, I am claiming, sees the accumulation and disjunctiveness implicit
in the components of Pollock's paintings, as well as the spell he casts to make
them "one." For her, however, disenchantment is the rule. The same roster of
painterly elements accumulates in her work, only to drift—even sometimes hur
tle—apart. These effects of separation —they amount to a kind of undoing —are,
I think, somehow bound up in what Louis and Noland meant about
Frankenthaler's special grasp on Pollock's art. And certainly those same effects
are implicit in their selective reading of her art. What they shied away from,
however, is the complex whole of the lesson: the complex whole, in other words,
that she claimed painting to be. In Frankenthaler's hands painting moves farther
toward its redefinition as a practice that is both arbitrary and intended as well as
both figurative and abstract, produced of moves and gestures whose effects are
as decisive as their motives are hard to specify. This is a way of proceeding, more
over, that almost didactically disturbs the already improbable and uneasy peace
that Pollock sometimes forged between mark and image, drawing and color, fig
ure and ground, and so on; Frankenthaler disrupted that peace almost every
chance she got. This is what Noland and Louis were unable to grasp: what
Pollock would sometimes integrate and keep in balance when "at home" in his
canvas, Frankenthaler insists on prizing apart.
Look at what happens in two very different paintings, Europa and Jacob's

192
 pollock's nature, frankenthaler's culture

Fig. 7. Helen Frankenthaler.

Mountains and Sea(detail). 1951.
Oil and charcoal on unprimed
canvas, 7 ft. 27. in. x 9 ft. 9/. in.
(220 x 297.8 cm). Collection the
artist. On loan to the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Fig. 8. Helen Frankenthaler.

Mountains and Sea(detail). 1951.
Oil and charcoal on unprimed
canvas, 7 ft. 27. in. x 9 ft. 9/. in.
(220 x 297.8 cm). Collection the
artist. On extended loan to the
National Callery of Art,
Washington, D.C.

lines in this painting are moments of

inscription and self-inscription; they act
like a signature, gestures that both make
the work and ensure that it provides the
viewer (like the maker) with an experi
ence of the canvas as a "place of its own."
All this is very Pollock, certainly,
without looking like Pollock at all. But
what is particularly like-and-not-like
Pollock is one last passage or incident in
the picture: the most direct artifact of its
manufacture on the floor. It is a body
print —we could call it a sitzmark—that
blooms on the surface like a lopsided
paint flower pressed from fabric folds
(fig. 7). (It is joined, by the way, by the
imprints of two paint cans that hover
faintly along the right edge; fig. 8.)
While the whole credo of this picture —
its allegiance to spontaneity —requires
that such interruptions be tolerated, the
same necessity does not mean that this impress was made integral to the image.
It is just there, quite separate from lines and billows, or any landscape effect.
Think back at this juncture to Pollock, by way of precedent and contrast, weav
ing his handprints into Number 1A, 1948 (plate 1)—weaving them, however mar
ginally, into the whole. Or remember him saying, "I don't use the accident —
29 'cause I deny the accident." Which of course is tantamount to saying that all

191
 ANNE M. WACNER

in Europa; along with stains and splashes there are four quick circles (they are
more mundane than magical) that again seem to delimit sites or moments in the
picture's expanse. They also interrupt it. I see such incidents, in their separate-
ness, as having more to do with mark and place than with field or image. Think
of these canvases laid horizontal, and their maker pacing and tracing on them
as if they were another country, one in which she was prepared to dwell.
To see Frankenthaler "finding herself" in her pictures, then, is to register
how often bodily echoes and mimicries—specters of the painter painting and
remembering paintings, or sometimes merely marking, or simply being—are at
31 play in their structures. Without quite pursuing disjunctiveness as an all-out
goal, the works admit that it is part of their process. As a result, Frankenthaler
seems to pull process itself away from image—farther, I think, than Pollock him
self could allow—even while she examines just what an image might be. Her
questions seem fundamental: how and where does painting sit within its history?
From what resources might it now be made? What in its repertoire of effects and
subjects might still be viable? Where is the painter herself? I think that many of
the artist's impulses —including that toward self-assertion and self-registry —
answer to some such baseline inquisition. So does her interest in painterly tra
ditions and genres—in the long tradition of figuration above all. Think of the
insistently mythic and historical implications of her stock of titles in the mid-
1950s: Lorelei, Eden, Trojan Gates, Mount Sinai, Holocaust, Western Dream,
Hommage a Chardin, Other Generations, Cave Memory,Hotel Cro Magnon—and this
is just a partial list. (Though my favorite title of all is Woman's Decision—this,
ironically, is one of the few Frankenthalers now considered "lost.") In the con
text of the last two titles, Cave Memory and Hotel Cro Magnon, we should recall
that the most splendidly gestural of Frankenthaler's 1950s paintings— the great
Beforethe Caves of 1958—uses its title to frame its painterly vehemence as a spe
cially exigent version of primitivism, and stages it in an explosion of now defin
itively nonfigurative marks (plate 34). Troutlike speckles, feathery brush strokes,
a few intense pours: only once in this wildly diverse field of color and gesture
does anything surface against the grain. Up in the right-hand corner are two sets
of numbers, both reading 173.32
Yet the numbers are hardly disruptive, at least according to my earlier
efforts to describe such graphic accumulations, and thus it might be tempting to
see Beforethe Caves as signaling some new departure or advancement, in its atti
tude toward color above all. Surely now the bridge is approaching the Louis-and-
Noland shore. (Remember Noland: "Frankenthaler showed us a way—a way to
think about, and use, color.") By these lights, Beforethe Caves presumably teaches
that color and drawing—color and mark-making —could now be one and the
same. And so the way is cleared for Veils and Unfurleds—for the brilliant and
energetic quietude of Louis's later art. But what gets left behind? The "personal"?

194
 pollock's nature, frankenthaler's culture

Fig. 9 (opposite). Helen

Fronkenthaler. Europa.1957.Oil
on unprimed canvas, 70/, x 54/, in.
(179.1x 137.8cm). Private collection

Fig. 10. Helen Frankenthaler. Jacob's

Ladder.1957.Oil on unprimed can
vas, 9 ft. 5% in. x 69/. in. (287.9 x
177.5cm). The Museumof Modern
Art. Gift of Hyman N. Glickstein

Ladder (both 1957; figs. 9 and 10). Both are floor-made pictures, both aggressive
in their approach to the conventions and traditions of figuration and land
scape—what is attacked and ironized in Europa hovers somewhere between com
edy and transcendence in Jacob's Ladder—but both works have moments where
Frankenthaler makes her mark, leaves a trace. And she again does so as a kind of
signature that will not quite be integrated or made part of some whole. In
Europa, the disruptions comprise a whole repertoire of splashes and stripes, even
30 a carefully limned circle—think of Giotto's magically virtuosic perfect 0. They
are staged in the face of a lurid nude victim, Titian's heroine, here decked out
clownishly, with a splatter for a rubbery nose. Individual marks in Jacob's Ladder
are less assertive but still figurative, though elusively: when I look at the pours
that float in the pale upper third of the picture, I think inevitably of someone
making angels in the snow. And these marks are likewise more spatial than those

193
 ANNE M. WACNER

and floating figure—that hover above? What exactly is these marks' tone? "The
seventh type of ambiguity," writes Empson, "occurs when the two meanings of
the word, the two values of the ambiguity, are the two opposite meanings
defined by the context, so that the total effect is to show a fundamental division
35 in the author's mind." For Empson, moreover, the idea of opposition is Freud
ian; he ties it to the analysis of dreams. In this context a Freudian opposite
"marks dissatisfaction; the notion of what you want involves the idea that you
have not got it, and this again involves the 'opposite defined by your context,'
36 which is what you have and cannot avoid."
The definition is helpful if it points us to what is placed in tension by
Frankenthaler's art, not least by virtue of the ambiguities of the position from
and within which she paints. The tensions of class and gender provide one such
ambiguity. They force us to wonder how we might value and reinterpret the con
tradictory means and allegiances her art invokes and juxtaposes. Color versus
line, solid versus void, depth versus surface, stroke versus stain, innovation ver
sus tradition, past versus present—this list could go on and on. Will it circle back
to nature versus culture? Of course: only now we grasp that Frankenthaler's cul
ture—her nature— forces us to admit the utter ambiguity of those terms.
Frankenthaler's art nourishes itself on such fundamental divisions—opposite val
ues, opposite meanings; their taste is both bitter and sweet.
Nature and culture: one way of seeing Frankenthaler's painting in this pro
vided framework is to find it between these two poles. There as bridge, but also
as threshold. It leads, I think, to a space worth exploring —one where the
painter's meditation on her procedures and history, her identity and her inheri
tance, is spelled out as thick and conflicted description, in a visual topography
where pleasures and frustrations need not be tidied away. Instead they accumu
late as passion and triviality, error and success: such contradictions are these
paintings' honesty. Shall we call this space feminine? Why not? As long as we
grant that its ambiguities —this particular amalgam of desire, disempowerment,
and contingent responsiveness—have shaped other inhabitants. On occasion
we'll find Pollock there. Of course I am speaking of what we might call "Pollock's
femininity" —what in his art might be thought of as descriptive, layered, unsyn-
thesized, "too personal," contradictory, aiming at boundlessness, relentlessly tac
tile: sometimes all of these things. These, at any rate, are aspects of his painting
to which artists who are women have most responded. Nature, culture, mascu
line, feminine: in looking at Pollock and Frankenthaler, and from them to other
artists—Lynda Benglis, certainly, and of course Eva Hesse is on the list—it is pos
sible to hope that the jig may be up for these cherished binaries, once works and
artists and critics begin to revalue and evade their terms. At the very least, the
time is past when they can be deployed with the same blind insistence, as if they
described, rather than merely bolstered, some deep-seated and powerful truth.

196
 pollock's mature, frankenthaler's culture

Perhaps—yet now the word seems muted and much too well behaved. Read Art
News for contrast, where Lawrence Campbell reviewed the 1959 exhibition in
which Beforethe Caves was shown: "They are frightening, but they leave a strong
impression. They all look as though they were meant to be looked down on from
above rather than at customary eye level—water reflecting an image, oneself,
33 instead of a looking glass They are crazy looking paintings." They are crazy,
let me emphasize, in the eyes of a critic sensitized to questions of making and
viewing first framed by Pollock's practice, where they were registered as some
how concerning the self, and disorienting the viewer's vision in their wake.
Yet Campbell's verdict also points us once more to Frankenthaler's geogra
phy of self-encounter. Looking down, she paints a surface whose directness and
distortions inscribe and reflect a self—her own. That these effects reach such
intensity when mark and color work closest together takes my mind back to an
observation we owe to Sigmund Freud, who wrote to Wilhelm Fliess, "We can
not do justice to the characteristic of the mind by linear outlines like those in a
drawing or in a primitive painting, but rather by areas of color melting into one
another as they are represented by modern artists. After making the separation
[he means not only between line and color but between the mind's overall out
lines and nuances] we must allow what we have separated to merge once
34 more." If mind means line and color or mark and image in Frankenthaler's
painting, it can only do so when her art is allowed some of the subtlety Freud's
imagery intends. He does not think of psychic boundaries and delimitations as
either necessarily distinct or seamlessly related. A cognate sense of shift and
overlap and interrelationship is sometimes performed in Frankenthaler's work;
at other moments, effects and layers within its topography are jarringly forced
apart. All these are the registers of the painter's mind.
My citing Freud does not mean that I am claiming some diagnostic or ther
apeutic aspect in Frankenthaler's purposes as a painter. Instead I have argued
that they are the product of the Pollockian project she set herself, a project that
led as much to irony and pessimism about the modes of painting and their inte
gration as it did to therapy. Resolution is not her mode. In aid of this final pro
posal, look at one more image—the work she entitled, with thanks to the critic
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (plate 35). Think again of a canvas
lying stapled to the floor. Think of it being painted, then repainted, with one
incident after another eventually clouded in a dense miasma of gray. The artist
kept score; she eliminated types one through six. At some point she drew a cir
cle; at another, red outlines; at the top (perhaps thus making it the top), a long
stroke of green. When, I wonder, did the footprints appear? (They intrude along
the bottom left edge.) Do they remember Pollock, perhaps perform him? Is this
effect overlaid on the artist's own performance, herself? Might these marks now
stand for figuration? How do they differ from the red specters—splashed dove

195
ANNE M. WACNER

ification of the kinds of interest in human figure." For Fried, "figura R.I., in 1951, and first published in
Pollock evidenced by Allan Kaprow. tion" is an elusive quality, one that O'Connor, facksonPollock,exh. cat.
However important his influence partakes of both blindness and sight: (New York:The Museum of Modern
and articulate his statement, what when it appears in Out of the Web, Art, 1967), p. 81.
mattered to Kaprow was less Pol for example, it is "not seen as an 23. Ibid., p. 80.
lock's paintings themselves than the object in the world or shape on a 24. Ibid.
postures and behaviors they licensed. flat surface; it is not seen as the pres 25. Part of the special charge I allot
14. Kenneth Noland, quoted in James ence of anything, but rather, one to horizontality is derived from the
McC. Truitt, "Art—Arid D. C. Har might say, as the absence of portions "horizontal" idea of time advanced
bors Touted 'New' Painters," Wash of one's visual field. ... In the end by Melanie Klein. To quote Juliet
ington Post, December 21, 1961, p. the relation between the figuration Mitchell on this topic, "Infancy is a
20. Most citations of this passage and the painted field virtually perpetual present. This could be
pick it up from Gerald Nordland, defeats description: it is as though linked with the small child's extraor
The WashingtonColorPainters, exh. the figuration is situated within one's dinary memory—which is not mem
cat. (Washington, D.C.: Washington eyes,as strange as this may sound." ory, but a continuous actuality. So
Gallery of Modern Art, 1965), p. 12. Fried, "Morris Louis," 1966, revised too because of the Oedipus and cas
15. Frankenthaler, quoted in Geld- 1971, and reprinted in Art and tration complexes, only humans
zahler, "An Interview with Helen Objecthood,p. 107. Michael Leja, in have yesterdays. As far as we can tell,
Frankenthaler," p. 37. ReframingAbstractExpressionism: neither animals nor pre-Oedipal
16. Morris Louis, quoted in ibid. Subjectivityand Painting in the 1940s human infants divide time into
17.Clement Greenberg, "Louis and (New Haven and London: Yale future, past and present. Time for
Noland," 1960, in Modernismwith a University Press, 1993), pp. 304-5, them would seem to be nearer to
Vengeance,1957-1969, vol. 4 of has already called attention to some spatial relationships: here, there;
ClementGreenberg:The Collected characteristics of Fried's account of come, gone; horizontal, punctuated
Essaysand Criticism,ed. John O'Brian figuration in Pollock. duration rather than an historical,
(Chicago: at the University Press, 19. Fried, "Morris Louis," p. 108. vertical temporal perspective."
1993), p. 97. This equation of opti- 20. To date it is Elderfield who has Mitchell, "Introduction," The Selected
cality with "disembodiment" asks voiced the most articulate objection MelanieKlein (Harmondsworth:
to be contrasted with Greenberg's to treating Mountainsand Sea as a Penguin, 1986), p. 26. My argument
earlier account of Pollock's black- merely transitional work: "To treat it below involves the implicit claim
and-white paintings; speaking to as a bridge, however, is to invite it to that Frankenthaler's work on the
their visual density, he had written be passed over: if not neglected, then horizontal canvas is characterized
in 1952, "This is not an affair of viewed from the opposite side." by affective moments we might see
packing and crowding, but of em Frankenthaler,p. 65. as both "horizontal" and "vertical"
bodiment; every square inch of the 21. Frankenthaler's Pollock was in the Kleinian sense.
canvas receives a maximum of also a gift of the artist. See Francis 26. Rowley offers a revisionist
charge at the cost of a minimum Valentine O'Connor and Eugene account of those circumstances, and
of physical means." Greenberg, Victor Thaw, JacksonPollock:A Cata of their implications for Mountains
"Feeling Is All," 1952, in Affirmations logueRaisonneof Paintings, Drawings and Sea, in the unpublished essay
and Refusals,1950-1956, vol. 3 of and Other Works(New Haven and mentioned in note 4.
ClementGreenberg:The Collected London: YaleUniversity Press, 1978), 27. It seems right to think of both
Essaysand Criticism,ed. O'Brian, vol. Ill, no. 828. Greenberg's Pollock shards and polyps as involving mem
p. 105. The sentence I quote in the drawing is reproduced in the same ories of the scraped brown shapes
text has recently been cited by volume, no. 813, as well as in color that pull against the surface of Out
Michael Fried in the course of his in Kirk Varnedoe with Pepe Karmel, of the Web.
own efforts to explicate and limit the JacksonPollock,exh. cat. (New York: 28. It is striking that although this
notion of opticality at work in The Museum of Modern Art, 1998), painting is given "seminal" status, it
Greenberg's writings of the 1960s, plate 202, p. 289. The sheet Pollock is seldom well described. The persis
so as 1) to distinguish between its gave Frankenthaler is simultaneously tence of drawing in its execution, as
global and particular valences in more gestural and more calligraphic well as the visible role of drawing in
Greenberg's thought; 2) to claim than the one he presented to Green the final image, are often elided, dis
that opticality was a way station, in berg, though both exhibit an interior counted, or, worse, seen as the
Greenberg's writing, en route to a orderliness—a rhythm of repeated work's limitation. In my argument,
larger value, that of openness, which gestures and accumulated forms Frankenthaler's use of drawing is one
is simultaneously literal, two-dimen that I see as similar, and that distin aspect of her revision of Pollock's
sional, and intensely identified with guishes them from other drawings painting —a revision that aims to
the embrace of color; 3) to demon of the same year using larger, wetter keep the surface active as a
strate Greenberg's own indecision blotches and stains. In 1958, Frank palimpsest or history of marks.
about how sweeping the application enthaler posed with other objects 29. Pollock, quoted in Wright,
and implications of "opticality" in her collection—notably a David "An Interview with Jackson
should be. See Fried, "An Introduc Smith sculpture and an African Pollock," p. 80.
tion to My Art Criticism," Art and mask—for a photograph used to 30. See E. Kris and O. Kurz, Legend,
Objecthood(Chicago; at the Univer illustrate Andre Emmerich, "The Myth, and Magicin the Image of the
sity Press, 1998), pp. 20-21. Artist as Collector," Art in America Artist (New Haven and London: Yale
18. In aid of this argument, Fried dis 46 no. 2 (Summer 1958): 28. University Press, 1979), pp. 96-97.
tinguishes what he sees as "figura 22. Pollock, quoted in William 31. I derive this sentence, with
tion" in Number3, 1951 from what Wright, "An Interview with Jackson thanks, from a helpful exchange
Pollock himself might have seen Pollock," 1950, an interview broad with Brigid Doherty.
there, namely an "allusion to the cast on radio station WERI,Westerly, 32. Rose reads these numbers as

198
 pollock's nature, frankenthaler's culture

Notes

I am pleased to acknowledge the ating Pollock's work since the late at Tibor de Nagy, New York,in 1956,
assistance of Lucia Tripodes in assem 1940s, the 1967 retrospective at The and was illustrated, with the caption
bling a dossier of critical responses to Museum of Modern Art occasioned a "her sensuous empire," in Tyler,
Helen Frankenthaler'spaintings, as new encounter with it, and a reeval- "Helen Frankenthaler." The calcula
well as her helpful responses to the uation of its meaning for a new audi tions of the Life photographer are
lecture version of this paper. ence. The show functioned, more further evident not only in the
over, as an occasion to distinguish inclusion of the colorful Mountains
1.Sherry B. Ortner has explored the critical incomprehension of Pollock and Sea but also in the way a third
implications, for female oppression, (for many, Hilton Kramer's review painting was moved in to crop Blue
of the symbolic location of women "Art: Looking Back at Jackson Pol Territoryjust where its colors begin to
in relation to nature; see her "Is Fe lock," in the New YorkTimesof April change. Note also that the particular
male to Male as Nature Is to Culture," 5, 1967, served as the exemplum of photographic effects I remark on
in M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, eds., such blindness) from artistic fascina here—the staging, and the manipu
Women,Culture and Society(Stanford: tion with Pollock's work. To quote lation of the range of color—are
at the University Press, 1974), pp. Dore Ashton, "They used to say Pol equally characteristic of the portraits
67-87. Ortner's analysis aims to for lock was an artists' artist. Quite of the other women artists in the
ward a future in which "both men rightly, I think, since artists were the Life article: Grace Hartigan, Nell
and women can and must be equally ones who called attention to his Blaine, Joan Mitchell, and Jane
involved in projects of creativity and existence and who have persistently Wilson. None is shown painting.
transcendence. Only then will risen to his defense. Even now, many 9. "Heiress to a New Tradition,"
women be seen as aligned with cul young artists of totally different for Time,March 28, 1969, p. 64.
ture, in culture's ongoing dialectic mation recognize in his work a vital, 10. There is a certain confusion in
with nature" (p. 87). Dedicated to secret thrust into their lives where the Frankenthaler literature about
Simone de Beauvoir, Ortner's com critics recognize only weaknesses of when she first saw Pollock's paint
mentary derives its categories, "with a technical or formal order. . . . ings. It stems from the artist's own
all due respect," from the work of They recognize the unsullied im recollections as communicated to
Claude Levi-Strauss—a circumstance pulse to continue to make art even Henry Geldzahler, and published by
relevant to the present analysis inso when making art seems a trivial or him as "An Interview with Helen
far as it provides a useful historical hopeless ambition" ("New York," Frankenthaler," Artforum4 no. 2
reference point for the personalities StudioInternational 174 [July 1967]: (October 1965): 36-38, where she
and paintings I am describing. Note, 47-48). I want to set these terms— dates her first visit to a Pollock show
therefore, that both Jackson Pollock as Ashton herself does—against more to "September or October, 1951."
and Helen Frankenthaler were paint familiar, and more deadening, "his Rose repeats Frankenthaler's dating.
ing in New Yorkwhen Levi-Strauss torical" moves. Actually Pollock showed at Parsons
wrote The ElementaryStructuresof 4. Lisa Saltzman, "Reconsidering the in late November-early December of
Kinship,which he published in Stain: On Gender, Identity, and New that year, but in any case the modest
France in 1949, though not until YorkSchool Painting," in Friedel size of the works in Pollock's 1951
1969 in English translation. The Dzubas: CriticalPainting, exh. cat. show—these were the black-and-
book begins with a chapter entitled (Medford, Mass.: Tufts University white paintings—doesn't quite square
"Nature and Culture"—not so much Gallery, 1998), pp. 9-24. In an with Frankenthaler's characterization
to refute these categories, despite, unpublished paper, Alison Rowley, of her first response: "It was stagger
Levi-Strausssays, the "confident a doctoral candidate at the Univer ing. I really felt surrounded." The
repudiation" to which they had long sity of Leeds, has brought critical remark seems more appropriate as a
fallen heir, but to locate the princi scrutiny to bear on the key story of memory of Pollock's show at Parsons
ples that motivate and distinguish origins within the Frankenthaler lit in November-December 1950. This
them in the incest taboo. Further erature, the account that the painter interpretation is supported by Karen
feminist commentary on the nature/ gives of how Mountainsand Sea—and Wilkin, who names the works Frank
culture binary appears in C. P. Mac- with it the staining technique —came enthaler identifies as her favorites
Cormack and M. Strathern, eds., about. I am grateful to Rowley for from her first Pollock show—Laven
Nature, Culture and Society(Cam the opportunity to read her work. der Mist and Autumn Rhythm,both
bridge: at the University Press, 1980). 5. Parker Tyler, "Helen from 1950. See Wilkin, Frankenthaler,
2. It is Frank O'Hara who calls the Frankenthaler," Artnews54 no. 10 Workson Paper, 1949-84, exh. cat.
artist "erudite," in his catalogue (February 1956): 49. (New York:George Braziller,in asso
introduction for her retrospective at 6. The topic of Frankenthaler's ciation with International Exhibitions
The Jewish Museum, New York, in painterly "courage" surfaces among Foundation, 1984), p. 32. For a read
1960; in his mind erudition chastens the earliest responses to her work. ing of Pollock's installation practices
the risk-taking her painting also See for example Paul Brach, "Helen c. 1950, see T. J. Clark, "Pollock's
involves. The key sentence reads, Frankenthaler," Art Digest 26 no. 5 Smallness," in the present volume.
"One of her strengths is this very (December 1, 1951): 18-19. 11.Frankenthaler, quoted in
ability to risk everything on inspira 7. See Barbara Rose, Frankenthaler Geldzahler, "An Interview with
tion, but one feels that the work is (New York:Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Helen Frankenthaler," p. 37.
judged afterwards by a very keen and 1970), and John Elderfield, 12.Frankenthaler, quoted in Rose,
even erudite intelligence." O'Hara, Frankenthaler(New York:Harry N. Frankenthaler,p. 29. Rose also quotes
"Helen Frankenthaler," An Exhibition Abrams, Inc., 1989). Frankenthaler, apropos of this exhi
of Oil Paintings by Frankenthaler,exh. 8. "Women Artists in Ascendance: bition, using a more pugilistic meta
cat. (New York:The Jewish Museum Young Group Reflects Lively Virtues phor: "She recalls feeling as if she
of the Jewish Theological Seminary of U.S. Painting," Life 42 no. 19 (May were 'in the center ring of Madison
of America, 1960), p. 5. 13, 1957): 74. Blue Territorywas Square Garden'" (p. 29).
3. Although artists have been negoti shown in Frankenthaler's exhibition 13.This phrase is meant as a disqual-

197
figuring in Robert Motherwell's
address (Frankenthaler,p. 90). That
Frankenthaler would inscribe them,
regardless of their disconnection
with the overall look and content of
the painting, only underscores how
much she imagined her paintings as
palimpsests or accumulations of
mark and activity—including those
accidental in kind. In this regard,
note that the surface of Beforethe
Cavesbears striations, horizontal
traces of the floorboards of her stu
dio, marking the pressure of the can
vas against that surface. Karmel, in
both his contibution to the retro
spective catalogue and his essay in
the present volume, has called atten
tion to similar effects in Pollock's
paintings.
33. Lawrence Campbell, "Helen
Frankenthaler," Artnews58 no. 4
(May 1959): 14. A few other critics
register similarly extreme reactions
to Frankenthaler's work; in 1960, for
example, Anne Seelye disposed of it
as evidence of a "hysterical tempera
ment" (Artnews59 [March I960]:
57), a judgment scathing enough to
summon a collection of letters writ
ten in the artist's defense (Artnews59
no. 3 [May I960]: 6). O'Hara was
writing of the extremism of the psy
chological content of Frankenthaler's
work as early as 1954; to cite one key
phrase, "She does not hesitate to
deal with her subject with a frank
ness approaching sordidness, for
the power of their impact is that of
natural violence evoked in a lofty
immaculate tone—the compacted
sordidness of one of those 'unspeak
able' characters in Henry James."
Artnews53 no. 8 (December 1954):
53. What O'Hara seems to me to
get right, by means of this compari
son, is the fraught disjunctions in
tone and content rife in Franken
thaler's work.
34. Sigmund Freud, The Complete
PsychologicalWorks,Standard Edition,
XII: 79, as quoted in Mitchell, The
SelectedMelanieKlein, p. 30.
35. William Empson, SevenTypesof
Ambiguity(New York:New Directions,
1947), p. 192. Empson goes on to
speak to the kinds of assumptions
such a word can encounter, namely,
"You might think that such a case
could never occur, and if it occurred,
could not be poetry." Such assump
tions, I have been arguing, have had
their impact on the reception of
Frankenthaler's work.
36. Ibid., p. 193.
 JEREMY LEWISON

Louchheim identifies an attitude manifest particularly in England and France,

and to a lesser extent in Italy, in the immediate postwar period: a belief in the
cultural inferiority of the United States. To a large extent, she suggests, the blame
lay with Americans themselves, because the image they exported confirmed the
stereotype, but she identifies other reasons why Europeans might have taken a
patronizing view of American culture: "As Europeans are forced, however grudg
ingly, to recognize us as a leading world power in economic and military spheres,
their own cultural superiority is ever more jealously preserved. Holding us intel
lectual yokels seems an escape valve for natural resentment of our dominance in
other fields; it seems both a conscious and unconscious revenge for economic
and military dependence."
Louchheim's review expresses some of the key issues of the 1950s sur
rounding the influence of America in Europe, where there was genuine concern,
particularly among the older generation, about increasing "Americanization"
and the erosion of a long-standing, specifically European culture. In Britain, the
cultural magazine Horizon, founded during World War II by the journalist Cyril
Connolly, was something of a barometer of intellectual views on America, and
its attitude, at least initially, was disapproving. In January 1945, for example, the
philosopher Bertrand Russell, who had spent much of the war in the United
States, wrote on the "intolerable boredom" arising from the uniformity that he
3 found among Americans, who lacked "respect for knowledge." Toward the end
of the year, Georgina Dix wrote a Horizon article caricaturing a fictitious George
4 Brant, citizen of Washington, D.C.—a philistine modernist with no concern for
the plight of Europe and no interest in history. "We have extracted all we want
out of European culture," Brant opines, "and frankly we don't mind what happens
to it." His interlocutor, a Mrs. Rimington, sees America as a country strewn with
junk, its cities characterized by a "jumble of towering buildings, neon lights,
5 traffic blocks, drugstores and restless, standardized people." These two articles
manifest the legacy of colonialism in the attitudes of the British literati, and dis
close their fears of changing values. Apparently vulgar, bland, and disrespectful
of the culture that Europe had so lovingly constructed but that appeared under
6 threat of extinction, America had become a target for intellectual brickbats.
Within two years Horizon began to modify its position. In an issue devoted
exclusively to America, Connolly held out the hope that the nation was on the
brink of change: "As Europe becomes more helpless the Americans are compelled
to become more far-seeing and responsible. . . . Our impotenceliberates their poten
tialities. Something important is about to happen as if the wonderful jeunesse of
America were suddenly to retain their idealism and vitality and courage and
imagination into adult life, and become the wise and the good who make use of
7 them." Yet Connolly also described America as violent, alcoholic, money grab
bing, and unhealthy. There was no doubting the country's energy, but there were

202
 Jackson Pollock and the
Americanization of Europe

Jeremy Lewison

It has long been argued that the exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism circu
lating in Europe in the 1950s were part of a cultural initiative during the Cold
War to depict the United States of America as a benign superpower and a model
of democratic freedom. As early as 1950, the American cultural commentator and
translator of French literature Lewis Galantiere indicated the need for such a
strategy: "When a nation attains to world leadership, it preserves that rank only
as long as its culture . . . commands respect. . . . Without [respect], wealth and
might lead only to hatred, conspiracy and revolt against the physically domi
1 nant power." The promotion of high art was but one aspect of the pursuit of this
goal; Europe simultaneously witnessed an influx of American products, financial
aid, and life-style. This context conditioned the reception of Abstract
Expressionism and of Jackson Pollock.
The European responses to exhibitions of American art differed from nation
to nation, and it would be beyond the scope of this article to deal with them all.
The focus of this essay is on Pollock's reception in England, France, and Italy.

The Responsein England

In a perceptive review of the American Pavilion at the 1950 Venice Biennale, pub
lished in the New YorkTimes, Aline B. Louchheim identified the dominant Euro
pean attitude toward the United States:
Habit is hard to break, and for a long, long time it has been the habit of Europeans
to think of Americansas cultural barbarians.It is a way of thinking once grounded
in fact and one which we—whether out of necessityor embarrassmentor defensive-
ness—have fostered.The flight of intellectualsto Paris;the Babbittsand Dodsworths
who represented us both in embassybuildings and Ritz Hotels;our smug material
ism; and, above all, the real paucity of our past creation as compared to that of
Europeans,nourished the legend. Even if nothing else had happened, this attitude
would have persisted legitimately.The fiascoof our State Departmentart show, our
"cocacolaisms,"Congress'attitude towards culture, and our own uncertaintieshave
2 done nothing to dispel it.

201
 JEREMY LEWISON

1950s dull and boring and British art provincial and uninspiring compared to
what was coming out of America: "Europe was exhausted and wound down. Life
in London was gray and austere, its art world more than ever prone to compro
mise and introspection. I felt the whole culture was flawed and frozen into fixed
attitudes of expression and our art to have become shallow and self-indulgent.
Thus the shows of the post-war American art seen in London during the fifties
were a kind of revelation asserting a future for art and, as in other fields of cul
12 tural endeavor at the time, the new world was taking the lead."
In his discussion of American literature, Spender had suggested that writers
managed to survive success within the highly commercialized society of the
United States by seeking isolation and resorting to alcohol. Lurthermore, "Alco
holism, the occupational disease of the successful American writer, can surely be
explained at least in part as an effort to restore contact with the dionysiac, the
violent, the real, the unconscious level of experience, by those who have been
13 cut off by success from their roots." In making this argument Spender seems to
subscribe to the view, which was commonly promoted, that the American artist
is violent, isolated, in touch with the unconscious, and thus in some way pow
erfully primitive. There is a consistency between Spender's vision and that of the
New Yorker Clement Greenberg, who, in Horizon in 1947, had described the vio
lence of Pollock's art as a quality in which it was radically American: "Faulkner
and Melville can be called as witnesses to the nativeness of such violence, exas
peration and stridency." Acknowledging Pollock's roots in "Picasso's Cubism and
Miro's post-Cubism, tinctured also with Kandinsky and Surrealist inspiration,"
Greenberg also argued that Pollock was "a Gothic, morbid and extreme disciple"
of these European models, and alluded to "the ferocious struggle to be a genius"
14 in isolation. His article was the first report of Pollock to appear in the English
press, and it set the tone for much that was to follow. Anxious to assert the orig
inality of Pollock, and by implication of a nascent American art, Greenberg con
trasted Pollock's "violence" against the suave sophistication of Europe. This idea
was to be a leitmotif of British and Continental art criticism during the 1950s.
Writing in the New York journal The Nation on the 1950 American Pavilion
at the Venice Biennale, the English critic David Sylvester took up this theme as
a term of opprobrium rather than praise. Demonstrating that anti-Americanism
was not solely the preserve of the older generation, Sylvester characterized the
artists in the pavilion, Pollock among them, as representing "the seamier side of
America—sentimentalism, hysteria, and an undirected and undisciplined exu
13 berance." Soon to become an eloquent supporter of Abstract Expressionism,
Sylvester was at this point, by his own later admission, still "blinded by an old-
16 fashioned anti-Americanism," and two months later, again in The Nation,
Greenberg accused him of condescension. Anchoring an appreciation of Pollock,
Willem de Kooning, and Arshile Gorky on their extension of European art (a

204
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

doubts about how that energy might be directed.

Anti-Americanism was born from a number of factors. Although Britain
had been victorious in the war, it had depended upon American financial aid
and manpower. The result had been a growing burden of debt and resentment.
There were acrimonious reports in the British press on the differences in the
American and the English standards of living. "We think it ironic," wrote a
columnist in the trade newspaper World'sPress News, "that the mere 48,000,000
of us who saved the entire civilized world in 1940 should now be rewarded by
8— being on the rocks" a statement not only alluding to Britain's parlous eco
nomic situation but insinuating the view that the "entire civilized world" was
limited to Europe.
Although Britain had remained at liberty throughout the war, it had been
"occupied" by large numbers of American troops. During a period of isolation
from Europe, the country had been subjected to an invasion of American culture,
for example popular music (and later rock and roll), chewing gum, and nylons.
Then, in the immediate aftermath of the war, and despite efforts to impose a
quota, the British government failed to limit the import of Hollywood films,
which American distributors were eager to release in Europe. The British film
audience was Europe's largest, and it was mainly through film and music that
young people became entranced with America. While the older generation re
garded American films as vulgar, unhealthy, and, in westerns and gangster movies,
displaying an offensive elementary Darwinism, the majority of the cinema-
going public enthusiastically absorbed Hollywood's visions of excitement, afflu
9 ence, democracy, and rebellion. If for some the new world evidenced decadence
and a lowering of standards, for others it was exciting, new, and nonconformist.
One generation's barbarism was another's dream. Herbert Read, a frequent visi
tor to the United States, wrote to Howard Newby of the BBCin 1951: "This is my
fourth visit to America, so I am no longer excited by the skyscrapers, American
women or even American automobiles. The enduring satisfactions are American
plumbing, unlimited supplies of orange juice and the telephone operators. . . .
The new horror is the undergraduate in tight jeans with 'crew-cropped' head and
10 ape-like slouch. Thousands of them identical."
The infiltration of American culture was on the increase. American litera
ture was growing in popularity, and would soon be taught in English universi
ties. Discussing contemporary writers in Horizon in March of 1949, Stephen
Spender pronounced Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, e. e. cummings, and
James Thurber "a living body of protest against the vulgarity, commercialization,
advertising, exploiting, which many people think of as the most characteristic
11 American qualities." In the art world, too, young people would feel the same
kind of excitement about American art that the rest of their generation did about
American movies. The English painter Robyn Denny found the Europe of the

203
 JEREMY LEWISOM

exhibition of 1951, at the Galerie Nina Dausset, Paris, which had juxtaposed Euro
pean informel with American abstraction; the idea for the ICA show was similar.
Pollock's inclusion was a late idea, and indeed his work arrived late, joining
paintings by Sam Francis, Georges Mathieu, Henri Michaux, Alfonso Ossorio,
Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Iaroslav Serpan. The exhibition was greeted with amuse
ment. A number of reviewers criticized Tapie's enthusiastic but impenetrable
text, and ridiculed Pollock before his works had arrived. There was limited
knowledge of his techniques; the critic of the Times, for example, wrote that
Pollock "apparently produces [large pictures] by spilling and dribbling paint
while walking over a canvas laid on the floor," thus introducing a myth that was
20 to be quite potent in British art. Among those critics who waited to see the
work before writing their reviews, there was a consistent refrain that Pollock's
paintings were decorative. Eric Newton, for example, in The Listener, described
the works of all of the artists in the exhibition as "patterns, and some of them
are rather nice patterns, but nothing —certainly not the foreword to the cata
logue—will persuade me that they are more than patterns. And surely a painting
21 is by definition more than a pattern." Robert Melville, in Architectural Review,
expressed a similar idea in a more positive light, reporting that Pollock's paint
ings "are not pictures in any accepted sense of the term, but they are superb wall
treatments, quite beyond the range of the 'interior decorator.' . . . [They are] a
majestic turmoil, a breathing wall to mitigate without fussiness or whimsy the
22 interior austerities of machines for living." This insistence on the decorative
qualities of Pollock's art was to be a consistent feature of reviews of his work
23 throughout the 1950s.
Of all the reviewers of OpposingForces, the painter Patrick Heron took the
show the most seriously. Singling out Mathieu and Pollock, whom he mistakenly
characterized as a follower of Riopelle (another example of the degree to which
Europeans were ignorant of American art), Heron described Pollock's method of
24 painting as "mechanical." In an article written two years later, dwelling at
length on the notion of abstraction and demonstrating the abiding English
interest in an art abstracted from naturalistic appearances, he described the work
of such artists as Pollock as derived from "the impulse to design," and therefore
insufficiently interesting. By contrast the abstraction of Pablo Picasso and par
ticularly Georges Braque, which greatly influenced Heron's own painting of the
time, served "to intensify the illusion of reality" and referred its viewers back to
the world before them. "I believe painting exists," Heron wrote, "precisely in
order to relate our subjective experience, our feelings, to our objective setting, to
the world we are endlessly observing. In painting, merely to observe is to sub
scribe to the heresy of realism; and merely to project a rhythm is to subscribe to
the opposite heresy of non-figuration. Great painting lies between the two and
25 performs the function of both." In England in the 1920s, distortion had been

206
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

refrain from his 1947 article), Greenberg subtly implied that since the work of
these artists, although American, was a development of the European tradition,
a critic of Sylvester's sophistication should have been able to accommodate it.
Taking a passing swipe at English art in the name of Graham Sutherland, he
declared that Pollock et al. "must have looked too new" in Venice. In the same
issue of the journal, Sylvester launched an aggressive counterattack: "I disliked
[the American Pavilion] because most of it represented a brand of American ro
manticism which ... I find repellent and contemptible, because it is incoherent,
modernistic, mucoid, earnest and onanistic, because it gets hot and bothered
over nothing and reminds me of Steig's drawing called 'I can't express it.' . . .
Pollock's approach has long been familiar to me though at a more mature level,
17 through the work of Wols, Fin and [Raoul] Ubac." In this way Sylvester asserted
not only that Pollock's work was essentially European but that it lagged behind
a more sophisticated European abstraction. For him America was characterized
by the streamlined and mechanistic (a view shared by many at the time), and its
artistic exemplar was not Pollock but Alexander Calder.
This debate between a British and an American critic was published in an
American magazine, and would not have been widely read in England. Indeed,
aside from Greenberg's article of 1947 there was little mention of Pollock in the
English press before 1953. But word was beginning to spread. The Scottish artist
Alan Davie had seen paintings by Pollock when Peggy Guggenheim's collection
was shown in the Greek Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1948, and had
18 returned full of praise for the artist's "primitive" work. And in 1949, Denys
Sutton, writing in Horizon on "The Challenge of American Art" and suggesting,
in anticipation of Galantiere and Louchheim, that America was on the brink of
something new, had singled out Pollock for his "pure color and calligraphy" and
his "need to secure deliverance from certain images. The artist, whether a painter
19 or a sculptor, is in constant struggle with himself and his material." (Sutton
thus extended Greenberg's theme of Pollock's "ferocious struggle" to be an artist,
and introduced the idea of the importance of the unconscious.) A visit by the
painter William Scott to New York in 1952 yielded an equally enthusiastic
response, which he passed on to the artists soon to become associated with Saint
Ives, in Cornwall. At the time, the importance of American art was not yet rec
ognized, and American art magazines, though available, were not read with the
intensity of such French reviews as Cahiers d'Art. Writings on Pollock were there
fore overlooked in the Britain of the early 1950s, and word of mouth was an
important means of communication.
Pollock's painting was not seen firsthand in England until 1953, when the
French critic Michel Tapie and Peter Watson, the backer of Horizon, included him
in Opposing Forces, an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA),
London. Watson had presumably seen or heard of Tapie's Vehemencesconfrontees

205
 JEREMY LEWISON

32 with "paint-covered hands," encouraged a view of the artist as cowboy.

Responding to this prompt, the Daily Mail critic Pierre Jeannerat invoked the
33 movie western in describing Pollock's paintings as "warpaint let loose," while
Robert Stowe, of the communist Daily Worker, saw Pollock's work as resembling
"the floor of a cage in which some monkeys have been given several pots of
34 paint without lids to play with." Themes of bestiality, violence, and barbarism,
recently associated with fascism, were never far from the critics' minds; and in
this way Pollock was framed as an enemy of European civilization.
Reviewing the exhibition for the New York journal Art News, the English
critic Lawrence Alloway took the daily press to task for their inaccurate report
ing and their openly anti-American stance. Yet when he remarked, "One com
plex of ideas labels as American characteristics independence and violence as
35 opposed to precedent-conscious and civilized Europe," he left it unclear
36 whether or not he agreed with this view. Violence was also a theme in a num
ber of other reviews. John Berger, a socialist with a preference for a socially
engaged art, made an early English reference to Rosenberg when he wrote of the
exhibition's contemporary abstract artists, "They call themselves 'Action'
painters because they believe that their art can be born only in the violent act of
making marks on the canvas. ... For their own sake these slashed, scratched,
37 dribbled upon, violated canvases would not be worth taking seriously." For
Berger it was as though the tradition of European culture was being extinguished
in one violent gesture.
The tendency among the critics was to see Pollock's paintings as simply a
jumble of chaotic lines. Among the few who appreciated the use of accident was
the psychologist Anton Ehrenzweig, who argued in The Listener that accidents
38 expressed the artist's unconscious mind. Newton, providing an English view to
readers of the New YorkTimes, saw in the show "a kind of innocent, uninhibited
adventurousness, a willingness to experiment and a freedom from preconcep
tions. One would think that painting itself was a kind of new toy whose full pos
39 sibilities dawned on America in the second decade of this century." The sub
text of Newton's remarks was that American artists were free from the weight of
history that burdened European artists. Sylvester, who would later write that he
40 had undergone a "Damascene conversion" at this exhibition, was also at odds
with the majority, commenting that "the wonderful paradox with Pollock is that
the frenzy is curiously controlled; Dionysian it may be in the ecstasy of its free
41 dom, yet there is nothing of the outburst in it, nothing of violence." Even
before the exhibition opened, Sylvester had begun to see freedom, in itself, as a
desirable goal of contemporary art; writing in the Times in 1955, he had re
marked that "it is precisely [the artist's] desire for freedom to find his way as he
goes along, creating his own values as he goes, that impels [him] today to create
works which are complex traces of his acts." This aspiration for freedom

208
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

widely considered the defining characteristic of abstract art; apparently the con
26 cept of abstraction had barely progressed beyond this.
Herbert Read's outlook too was based on art's relationship to the visible
world. Discussing the work of Pollock and other "formless" painters in Encounter
in July 1955, Read wrote that "a blotch of color" could not be compared to an
Etruscan bronze or a Bernini sculpture because it provided "no exercise of the
shaping power of the mind." If a painting is "formless," Read argued, the spec
tator becomes the artist, because, like a Rorschach blot, the painting acts as a
springboard for the imagination without necessarily being a work of art. Read's
analysis was predicated on the appreciation of harmonious concrete forms.
Lacking such formal harmony, he contended, the works of such artists as Pollock
"are authentic symbols of chaos itself, of mind at the end of its tether, gazing
into the pit on the other side of consciousness." Read recognized the uncon
scious as a source for art—he was, after all, a keen supporter of Surrealism and
psychoanalysis— but criticized the "formless" painters for their lack of "intellec
tion." Their works, he said, were no more than a record of a moment, manifes
tations of "a vacuous nihilism that renounces the visible world, and even the
inner world of the imagination, and scribbles a graph of its uncertainty on the
27 surface of a blank consciousness."
Although these British critics may have seen the article on Pollock that
appeared in Life magazine in 1948, they clearly knew very little about him. The
fact that they made no mention of the concept of action painting suggests that
Harold Rosenberg's article on the subject, published in the United States in
28 December of 1952, had not yet reached Britain. Indeed Rosenberg's ideas do
not appear to have filtered through to the British press in any meaningful way
until 1956,29when Modern Art in the United States, an exhibition circulated by the
International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, was shown at the Tate
Gallery. Organized as a series of groupings beginning with the "Older Generation
of Moderns" and ending with "Contemporary Abstract Art," this exhibition (a
reduced version of one shown in Paris the previous year under the title Cinquante
) ans d'art aux Etats-Unis30 caused a sensation —it was the second-best-attended
exhibition held at the Tate since the war. Two talks by Meyer Schapiro accom
panied it, one of them, "The Younger Generation American Painters of Today,"
31 broadcast on the radio and published in The Listener, the other, "Recent
Abstract Painting in America," a public lecture at the ICA.
The exhibition was extensively reviewed. Its most popular artists among
the critics were Andrew Wyeth and Ben Shahn, but the greatest debate sur
rounded the contemporary abstract section. Homer Cahill's catalogue introduc
tion lent credibility to some of the stereotypical views of American art that had
been circulating since the end of the war: references to areas of Pollock's paint
ings "lassoed in [a] plunging gallop of line," and to Pollock slapping the canvas

207
 JEREMY LEWISON

between. AbstractExpressionismwas an explosion of vitality and you felt that the

real, what we now call the "cutting edge," had not stopped with the outbreak of the
48 SecondWorldWar but was still alive. We had a present as well as a past.

The year after the exhibition, Sylvester reported in the New YorkTimes that the
biggest influence of American painting "has been on young painters still at art
49 schools, so that it will be four or five years yet before the true extent can be grasped."
In November 1958, the Pollock retrospective that had opened the previous
year at the Sao Paulo Bienal, and that then traveled extensively in Europe,
50 arrived at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. With this exhibition the response sig
nificantly changed. Bryan Robertson, the gallery's director, decided that the
show would need special treatment: in order to stress the materiality of the
paint, he wanted to set the paintings against a soft white background, and to
avoid placing them against walls with textured surfaces. Gaining a grant of £250
(from the Arts Council of Great Britain) to modify the gallery, Robertson asked
an architect, Trevor Dannatt, to design and install new freestanding walls, which
were made of cinder block spray-painted with white emulsion. All of the struc
tural walls were covered with a fine, pleated white fabric stretched over wooden
frames, and the ceiling too was draped with a white fabric (figs. 1-3).S1No pre
vious show at the Whitechapel had been accorded such treatment. Finally the
52 exhibition was hung chronologically. Since The Museum of Modern Art had
omitted Pollock's early, regionalist-flavor paintings, the effect was to present a
consistent development, from the first relatively abstract works to the allover
53 drip paintings and beyond.
These strategies had an immediate impact: whereas previously many critics
had seen Pollock's art as chaotic, they now perceived a logical development and
an underlying order. The change was immediately evident in David Thompson's
review in the Times on November 7, which stated that Pollock's paintings
54 "appear ... not anarchic but exquisitely contrived." The same day, on BBC
radio, Sylvester made an admission of previous blindness and bracketed Pollock
with the great Europeans: "Pollock's handling of paint and organization of color
55 is in fact as sure, as subtle, as magisterial as Matisse's or Bonnard's." Two days
later, John Russell, who had disparaged Pollock's work in 1956, remarked in the
Sunday Times that "these paintings, so often acclaimed for the apparently hap
56 hazard method of their execution, are in fact most carefully designed." Thomp
son would reinforce this point in a second article: "Although eager to seize on
the accidental, [Pollock] was allowing such effects to do little more than titivate
the surface of basic conceptions which occupied weeks and sometimes months
57 of mental evolution." There were writers in the popular press who persisted in
58 denigrating Pollock as a "chuck-it-on" painter, but the overall response to the
show moved Alloway to charge that his colleagues had swung too far the other

210
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

Sylvester had seen as the manifestation of an act of revolt against "the anti-
humanism of the streamlined surface, an assertion of the artist's humanity and
42 of the value of the creative act, considered as an act." Given these previously
expressed views, it appeared that the 1956 exhibition now revealed Pollock to
Sylvester as standing in opposition to the essence of mechanized America.
Not everyone agreed on the specifically American qualities of the art. In
fact a number of critics situated American abstraction as a kind of extension of
European work, with Basil Taylor, for example, in the Spectator, referring to
Pollock's "Soutine-like violence," and reassuring his readership that "these pic
tures should certainly not shock or surprise anyone familiar with abstract or
43 non-figurative painting in Europe." Heron, on the other hand, who like
Sylvester had become a convert, wrote in the American journal Arts that "this
movement is specifically American [and] is notably free of European influence."
As distinguishing features Heron noted the scale of the paintings, "their creative
emptiness . . . their flatness, or rather, their spatial shallowness," their "consis
tent denial of illusionistic depth," and "an absence of relish in the matiere as an
end in itself, an absence of worked-up paint quality such as one never misses in
the French (sometimes a superbly manipulated surface texture is all one can find
44 in Paris)." Alloway too, in Art News, argued that "the European action painters
45 tend towards connoisseur-like surfaces . . . unlike the best Americans." For
these authors the seeming crudity of the American painting contrasted positively
with the sophistication of European art. While the views expressed in American
journals were not read by the British public at large, they were readily available
to British artists, who by now were regular readers of such magazines.
For an artist like Denny, European abstraction and informel painting were
46 the end of an old tradition, whereas Pollock represented a new era. Indeed the
1956 show was an eye-opener for many young artists, and it was artists, accord
ing to Denny, who led the appreciation for this new work. England had been
trapped in the grip of Neo-Romanticism, Constructivism, and the objective real
47 ism of the Euston Road School. The painter Bridget Riley, who had left the
Royal College of Art the previous year, recalls that Modern Art in the United States
represented

such a big shift. The scale and freshnessof AbstractExpressionismdid not look like
anything one knew and I found it surprisingand stimulating.It made me very curi
ous and I wanted to try to understand what they were doing and why. I remember
thinking that obviouslyart is not dead after all. Firstthere had been the huge inter
ruption of the war and during that time and for a while afterwards,the energy of
many artists was channeled into art education. So there was a wide gap for a young
artist between what happened on the Continent before the war and the arrival of
AbstractExpressionism;for us it seemedthat there was only WilliamColdstreamin

209
 JEREMY LEWISON

way: "Faced with the huge, handsome exhibition . . . critics have dropped the
myth of Action and plumped for the myth of Order. Pollock is, now, an exponent
59 of order, of control, with an 'aristocratic' ability to put paint in the right place."
At least fifty reviews and articles on the show were published, in newspa
pers and magazines all over the country. Hans Namuth's color film of Pollock at
work, shown twice at sell-out lectures by Robertson, also appeared on BBC tele
vision in a program in the Monitor series, which had an audience of 2 million.
Namuth's film played a pivotal role in shaping response to the show: Pollock's
casual but austere appearance, his intensity, his clipped, laconic utterances,
struck a chord with a public fed on a diet of American films. The sight of him in
action was also inspiring to artists.
In the catalogue, Sam Hunter likened Pollock's method of applying paint to
the way a "cowboy swings his lariat," prolonging the image of the Wild West.
Hunter also continued to link the artist to violence ("Pollock always saw the
painting field as an arena of conflict and strife") and to freedom (Pollock "burst
through the mighty boundaries and attained, momentarily and precariously, a
60 state of absolute freedom"). These excessively masculine themes pervaded the
British press. For the most part, though, the issue of the "Americanness" of
Pollock's painting was less to the fore than in 1956. Writing that "action-paint
ing demands no judgements that would not apply in more conventional cir
cumstances. . . . the language of ordinary criticism remains relevant to it," Thomp
son implied that Pollock could be accommodated within a critical vocabulary
equally applicable to French artists. Action painting had "restored to critical cur
61 rency such old-fashioned terms as 'impasto' and 'expressive brushwork.'"
The idea of freedom, in any case, had a European context as well as an
American one. Berger likened Pollock to a man in a white cell who "has never
seen anything except the growth of his own body," and who begins to express
himself by painting the walls; ignorant of art history and free of artistic con
vention, he alone is responsible for the gestures he makes, which are "nothing
more than the gestures he could discover through the act of applying his colored
62 marks to his white walls." Berger seems influenced here by Jean-Paul Sartre's
essay "Existentialism and Humanism" (1946), in which Sartre wrote, "Existence
comes before essence. We mean by that man first of all exists, encounters him
self, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. . . . Before that pro
jection of the self nothing else exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence."
For Sartre "the one thing which permits [man] to have life is the deed," and "Our
63 point of departure is . . . the subjectivity of the individual." Rosenberg's con
cept of action painting was of course strongly influenced by Existentialist
thought, and had filtered through to British critics by 1958, as the many refer
ences to the concept of "action-painting" testify. (Berger himself had already
cited it in 1956.) Existentialism had also been associated with "the new Ameri-

212
JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

JS! r.' '

Figs. 1-3. Installation

views of the exhibition
JacksonPollock 1912-1956
at the Whitechapel Art
Gallery, London,Novem
ber 5-December 14,1958

211
 JEREMY LEWISON

issue titled The American Imagination. The lead article, "Taking Stock. A Scattered
Abundance of Creative Richness," had as its only illustration one of Namuth's
photographs of Pollock in action. Another article, by Denys Sutton, was devoted
entirely to Abstract Expressionism; echoing his earlier prophecy, Sutton declared
that since America had assumed a leading political role, it had been inevitable
74 that the country would develop a leading art. Articles on American literature,
architecture, universities, film, musicals, theater, ballet, music, television, adver
tising, and art collecting indicated a wholehearted acceptance of America as a
cultural force.
With the economy on an upswing and rationing at an end, the English
were beginning to acquire American consumer products and to participate in the
dream. In the decade and a half since the war, America had been transformed
from a target for ridicule to a role model.

The Response in France

The French response to Pollock, like the English, was undoubtedly conditioned
by prevailing local attitudes toward the United States. Whereas Britain had
remained free throughout the war, France had had to be liberated, after a capit
ulation that continues to haunt the nation to this day. It had ended the war
impoverished, and deeply divided between resistants and collaborators.
Communism, the ideology of many resistants, was a resurgent political force in
postwar France, particularly among intellectuals and in the labor movement;
concerned that France would seek an alliance with the USSR,the American gov
ernment supported anti-Communist initiatives in the French trade unions from
1945 onward, and its interference was resented in left-wing circles. In 1948
Washington introduced the Marshall Plan, which allowed America open access
to European markets and the opportunity to shore up a France on the brink of
economic collapse, a France in which conditions were ripe for either a civil war
or a Communist victory at the elections. As Serge Guilbaut has commented,
"What the Americans were trying to protect in France, by at times even med
dling into French internal affairs, was a kind of centrist position not too differ
ent from the one at home, poised between two different but equally dangerous
75 evils: the Communists and the 'difficult to deal with' Gaullists."
In addition to its influence on the political front, America also infiltrated
French culture and commerce. Despite quotas (established under the Blum-Byrnes
agreement) that guaranteed French films 25 percent of the nation's cinema
76 screen time, the French market was inundated by American movies. Even after
1948, when the agreement was renegotiated to impose a stricter limit on
American films, the French industry failed to fill its quota, so that more
77 American films were shown than was permitted. The quotas were intended to
allow the reconstruction of an indigenous film industry, but behind the eco-

214
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

can painting" by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., in his catalogue introduction for the travel
ing show of that title, organized by The Museum of Modern Art and already cir
64 culating in Europe.
The Whitechapel show had an extraordinary impact on artists. Riley would
recall, "I was tremendously moved. I was moved by the power of the paintings,
their immediacy, their tremendous courage—to respond to an insight requires
65 courage and this is plainly what happened." For Denny and Anthony Caro it
was the image of the wild man, the James Dean of painting, that was appealing:
66 in the climate of the "angry young man," after the debacle of Suez had dis
credited the authority of the governing establishment, artists and writers were
trying to break down social hierarchies and aesthetic conventions, and Pollock's
67 apparent rawness was "innovating and exciting." For this generation Pollock
exemplified the spirit of revolt associated with the newly arrived rock and roll,
which, Denny remembers, was seen as an anti-Establishment icon, "forbidden
fruit. Suddenly something was happening which had nothing to do with
received values . . . [and] which was our property, that wasn't something we'd
68 been told or learned about." For some artists, including Caro, the image of
revolt in which Pollock was bound up was as important as the paintings them
69 selves. For others the importance of the exhibition lay in the opportunity to
view the paintings in the flesh and to appreciate their scale and facture, which
black and white reproductions in magazines failed to convey.
When The New American Painting opened at the Tate Gallery in February
1959, two months after the Pollock retrospective closed, Pollock was the accepted
leader. Given the coverage that the Whitechapel exhibition had received, how
ever, he was no longer news; and as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko gained
in strength, Pollock's star began to wane. Even at the time of the Whitechapel
show, the critic for the Burlington had felt that Pollock had reached a point where
70 "no development seemed possible." Riley similarly, impressed though she was
by Pollock's art, has recalled, "I also thought it was an impossible position and I
found that terribly distressing as well as moving." For her, Pollock's art repre
sented a "dead end": "What Pollock did was very important but at the same time
71 it was a death knell," since it "had nothing in it to be explored."
The exhibition as a whole was acclaimed. For Alloway, the champion of
America, it represented the triumph of New York over Paris: "The point is:
Europe cannot match Pollock, Rothko, Still, Newman, De Kooning, Kline, Gott
72 lieb, Guston (and, by the way, Hans Hofmann)." Sylvester had expressed simi
73 lar sentiments the previous year. New York had supplanted Paris as the place of
pilgrimage. Richard Smith (1957 and 1959), Peter Lanyon (1957), William Turn-
bull (1957), and Caro (1959) were among those who made the trip early, but
waves of English artists were to follow.
On November 6, 1959, the Times Literary Supplement published a special

213
 JEREMY LEWISON

79 'cinema.' Perhaps those who make films in France should think of that." The
statement implicitly suggests that American culture represented a leveling down;
as in Britain, French intellectuals felt that American culture was inferior to
theirs. In the same newspaper the following day, Georges Sadoul described
Hollywood films as an expression of American imperialism and compared them
to "Hitlerian" production. By this logic, supporters of American culture were
80 implicitly collaborators. Sadoul added that American films, in celebrating vio
81 lence and death, "revolt a public enamored with peace." The fact is, however,
that the French public lapped up American films, especially the big-budget
movies. Furthermore, criticism of French policy on American film imports
ignored the fact that the French imposed currency-export restrictions on
Hollywood's earnings in France. This did nothing to regenerate the nation's film
industry (unlike a similar policy in Italy; see below), but did prevent currency
from leaving the country for America. Using the unexportable proceeds,
Hollywood began making films on location in France, where the powerful dol
82 lar also ensured low costs.
The issue of American influence touched the life of every French person,
young and old, left and right. People from both sides of the political spectrum
joined forces in a campaign to ban Coca-Cola, which, to some, became a symbol
of American imperialism; not only was the drink attacked by beverage compa
nies and health groups, but objections were raised to the relaxed, leisure-oriented
life-style it appeared to symbolize, and its advertising techniques were denounced
as totalitarian. If the left-wing newspapers were often anti-American, the right-
wing paper Temoignage Chretien too could condemn Coca-Cola as "the avant-
garde of an offensive of economic colonization against which we feel the duty
83 to struggle here."
In some circles the curiosity about American culture had a more positive
tenor. The painter Georges Mathieu, who worked in the public relations depart
ment of the shipping line United States Lines, was among the first to take a
strong interest. Through his work he was able to travel to New York and to facil
itate the travel of others, notably the curator and critic Michel Tapie, who soon
became a supporter of American art. In his hagiographic account of postwar
Paris, Mathieu claimed to have heard about Pollock by 1946 or 1947, which was
84 early for a European. He introduced the work of the Americans to Tapie and to
the critic Edouard Jaguer, a supporter of Surrealism and of the CoBrA group. He
also claims to have been the guiding spirit behind Vehemencesconfrontees, the
show of works on paper, normally credited to Tapie, that was held at Nina
Dausset's bookshop in 1951. This was the juxtaposition of European and
American abstraction that Tapie would reprise two years later in the Opposing
Forces exhibition at the ICA, London.
Vehemencesconfronteesincluded the work of Camille Bryen, Giuseppe Capo-

216
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

nomic argument was a thinly disguised anti-Americanism. American culture was

perceived as a threat to French identity (fig. 4). At a time when the French were
trying to rebuild their culture after the German occupation, feelings on the sub
ject ran high, especially among Communist sympathizers, who were already antag
onistic toward America.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, film was the most popular form of culture in
France. Attendance reached a peak in 1947, when 400 million movie visits were
78 recorded; in the 1950s, 1,000 new cinemas opened. Of the films on view, 30 to
40 percent came from Hollywood. The French movie-going public, like the
British, apparently enjoyed escaping from the grim reality of postwar austerity
by gazing at the modern, affluent society represented in glamorous Hollywood
productions. In 1952, Les Lettres Frangaises, a newspaper of Communist sympa
thies that ran an anti-American campaign continuously through the 1950s, ar
gued that the French state was killing its indigenous film industry by encourag
ing Hollywood imports. By way of example it quoted M. Weil-Lorac, a represen
tative of the Confederation Nationale de Cinema Fran^ais, declaring, "These
[American] films are, in general, more action-packed, grander productions, and
require less thought than the majority of French films. A large proportion of the
public, made up of young and simple people, demand that cinema should be

Fig. 4. Andre Fougeron. Civilisation Atlantique (Atlantic civilization). 1953. Oil on canvas, 13ft. \'A in. x 19ft. B'Ain. (400 x
600 cm). Collection Indivision Fougeron

215
 JEREMY LEWISON

the French art scene: "I am enjoying throwing such a bomb into the Paris art
world." Highlighting a theme that was to recur in both France and Italy, he
observed that America had the advantage of lacking an artistic tradition, and
thus enjoyed the opportunity to start at "zero." Furthermore, America had "be
come the actual geographic crossroads for the confrontation of the profoundest
problems and great artistic currents of the East and West." America, then, was no
longer at a tangent to artistic practice but at the center of it. As for Pollock, he
was an "authentic painter," able to pass from figuration to abstraction "without
90 his painting suffering the slightest discontinuity in either depth or surface."
Before the Facchetti show, Jaguer recalls, few Parisians had heard of Pollock:
"There was no curiosity in Paris. Few people had an international interest; most
people were nationalistic." 91The exhibition did little to change this situation; it
was barely reviewed. Still, it was seen by many important collectors, critics, and
artists. Among the artists who signed the visitors' book were Karel Appel, Jean
Degottex, Enrico Donati, Sam Francis (twice), Alexander Goetz, Philip Martin
(twice), Joan Miro, Pierre Soulages, Pierre Tal Coat, and Tristan Tzara; among the
writers, Reyner Banham, R. V. Gindertael, Jaguer, Michel Ragon, Seuphor, and
Herta Wescher; and among the dealers, collectors, and others, Heinz Berggruen,
Rene Drouin, and Darthea Speyer of the U.S. Information Service. Jaguer re
sponded to the show by illustrating one of Pollock's paintings in the first issue
of the journal Phases. He considered Pollock to be working along the same lines
as such European artists as Toyen, and had no difficulty accommodating his
92 work. Neither did the reviewer in Combat, who likened him to Riopelle. Sou
lages admired the scale of Pollock's work (he himself was painting two-meter
paintings), and was struck by the fact that "the titles of Pollock's paintings were
numbers rather than allusive. This implied that the paintings stood for them
selves and did not require associative references and were useful support in the
93 battle against the grip of the geometric abstractionists." A practitioner of nonrep-
resentational abstraction since late 1948, Soulages saw Pollock as a fellow traveler.
If the 1952 exhibition had a limited public impact, Pollock became more
widely known in 1955, when Cinquante ans d'art aux Etats-Unis was shown at the
Musee national d'art moderne, Paris. The exhibition attracted the largest atten
94 dance of any in that museum since the war, and many critics complimented
the installation and the architecture and print sections. As in London the fol
lowing year, when the show appeared under the title Modern Art in the United
States (see above), a talking point was the degree to which the abstract painting
could be considered American; here, however, discussion was colored less by the
notion of the Americans as culturally inferior than by the threat they were per
ceived to pose to the hegemony of France. According to Pierre Restany, the crit
ics were influenced in this respect by the city's galleries:

218
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

grossi, de Kooning, Hans Hartung, Mathieu, Pollock, Riopelle, Alfred Russell, and
Wols. It would come to be seen as a defining statement of informel painting.
Parisian abstraction was dominated by geometric work, and the informel had
received little exposure there; Tapie's text for his show introduced the city's pub
lic to the notion of an unpremeditated art that ignored the concepts of balance,
beauty, intellect, feeling, and color harmony. Recalling a saying of Joan of Arc's,
Tapie proclaimed, "To go into the unknown, you have to go via the unknown,"
a declaration connoting intrepid exploration of new territory and of the uncon
85 scious. He would develop his ideas further in a publication of 1952, Un Art
autre, in which he suggested a continuity from the "shock" produced by the work
of Jean Dubuffet, through the work of Jean Fautrier, to the violence of Michaux
86 and the "suffering vehemence" of Mathieu and Pollock. All of these artists, in
his view, could be grouped under the heading "art autre"—"other art." Far from
distinguishing between American and European work, Tapie appears to have
been trying to demonstrate a radicalism it shared. In effect he was promoting a
new internationalism —an idea at odds with prevailing nationalistic attitudes.
At this point there had been few mentions of Pollock in the French art
press. In June 1951, however, in a special issue on contemporary American paint
ing, Art d'Aujourd'hui reproduced a full-page Namuth photograph of Pollock
crouching, paint pot in hand, with Number 32, 1950 on the wall behind him and
87 Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950 laid out before him on the floor. The photo
graph closed an article in which Michel Seuphor, a supporter of geometric
abstraction, reported on a recent trip to New York: "Young painting only began
to exist about five or six years ago. . . . Before that everything was imported. . . .
Today Paris is very prestigious in the eyes of most Americans, but they think that
their young American painters are as good as ours. Some people, slightly tainted
by nationalism, claim that their painters are much stronger than that of an ane
88 mic Europe, an old world at the end of its life. They are obviously wrong." For
Seuphor, still somewhat protective of the status of French painting, American
and French painting were neither better nor worse than one another, and shared
89 similar tendencies; like Tapie, he perceived a common agenda.
Although Seuphor had seen the Namuth film, he did not elaborate on
Pollock's method of painting; but the fact that Pollock was the only artist allo
cated a full-page photograph in the issue must have had its impact. Tapie was
more enthusiastic than Seuphor, and in March 1952, at Studio Facchetti in Paris,
he organized Pollock's first one-man French exhibition. This show, of about ten
paintings from 1951, overlapped with an exhibition of American painting at the
Galerie de France, organized by Sidney Janis, which included two paintings by
Pollock of 1949 and 1951. There was therefore an opportunity to compare a dripped
painting with the poured black paintings.
In the catalogue Tapie expressed his pleasure at disrupting the cosiness of

217
 JEREMY LEWISON

wrote Rosenblum, "that since the invention of Cubism in Paris, western paint
ing has not undertaken any renovations as fundamental as those which have
come from the hands of half a dozen Americans who have been working for a
99 short while in New York." But while the art press had grown keen to discuss
American painting, the institutions remained unwelcoming. Jean Cassou, chief
curator at the Musee national d'art moderne, had originally booked the Pollock
retrospective for June 1958, but postponed it in January of that year. On
February 14, he also canceled his booking for The New American Painting, stating
100 that his program was full. Cassou wanted to open his recently refurbished gal
leries by showing the museum's own collection. After political and diplomatic
pressure was brought to bear on him, he agreed to take both shows simultane
ously at the end of their respective tours, but according to Restany he and his
staff were not supportive of them. Cassou, a former resistant and Communist,
"was very respected but he was not a man of the visual arts. He was an intellec
tual but his reactions to new art were negative. [His colleague Bernard] Dorival
had a real artistic formation and culture, but he was fixated with the French tra
dition of painting. He always tried to promote and help people who had French
101 values." The Whitechapel director Bryan Robertson remembers that at the
opening of these exhibitions "the French officials gushed about the show" while
Porter McCray, director of the international program of The Museum of Modern
102 Art, was present; "As soon as [he left] they were withering about it."
The Pollock retrospective completely eclipsed The New American Painting.
Whereas in London Newman and Rothko were in the ascendant, in Paris Pollock
was the main attraction, or target. Critics of the far right and left were still chau
vinistic, but other writers had by now come to accept Pollock's importance.
Instead of lauding his painting as American, however, they now claimed that
such art was international, as Tapie had done six years earlier. Michel Ragon, for
example, wrote in Cimaise, "I believe that today's art is . . . far above any simple
question of nationality. Yesterday it was in a European context, today it seems to
become an international language. 'French' painting is no more important than
'American' painting. What interests me much more are the painters working in
103 Paris, and the painters working in New York." Arguments like this subtly
avoided the issue of supremacy; with the power of the French school on the
wane, it was important to deny competitiveness.
The shows had been preceded the summer before by an article in L'Oeil in
which Fran^oise Choay had nominated Pollock "one of the most important
104 painters of this half-century." Choay recorded the discomfort that the "bru
tality" and "radicality" of his art could cause its viewers. Accompanied by the
now ubiquitous Namuth photograph of the artist in action, this article set the
tone for the most thoughtful of the reviews.
Unlike the British critics, most of the reviewers could still see no structure

220
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

Paris was increasingly afraid of . . . New York.After the war the Parisian dealers
thought they could reestablishthe position of the 1920sand 1930sand wanted to
repeat the hegemonic situation, but they gradually realized that New York was
stronger. They organized an anti-American mafia—Galerie de France, Charles
Carpentier, Maeght, Leiris—[and] they created an official mainstream, an abstract
post-Cubism,... as a tool of war against NewYork.They tried to struggleagainstthe
U.S.by creating an official school of Paris,instead of doing what Tapiedid, which
was to try to find an analogy between work on both sides of the Atlantic.. . . Most
of the critics had no information. This was a direct effect of the strugglebetween
Paris and New York.The French-mafiadealers had a sad effect on relationships
95 between the artists of Europeand of New York.

There was widespread agreement that the most American of the arts was
architecture and that the most American painters were the realists Shahn,
Wyeth, and Edward Hopper. Since the French knew America principally through
film and photography, it is not surprising that "Americanness" was defined by
reference to the depiction of American scenes. The abstract painters, on the
other hand, were viewed as Europeans. Guy Dornand, writing in the left-sympa
thizing Liberation, declared, "An amusing thing is that after having read the
introduction which explains the fundamental difference between our abstract
art and that of America, one observes that the greater part of the artists are either
96 more or less recent immigrants or apparently sons of immigrants." Andre
Chastel, in Le Monde, lamented the abstract painters' "excessive taste for German
expressionism" and "poor understanding of Cubism." Where Tapie celebrated
Pollock's "degree zero" approach, Chastel adjudged the American artists to have
97 an unsophisticated understanding of the European tradition.
Although Pollock himself was rarely singled out for discussion, Cinquante
ans d'art aux Etats-Unis as a whole stirred up the Paris art world like no other
exhibition since the war. It seems to have precipitated a crisis of confidence in
abstraction. In an issue of Art d'Aujourd'hui titled "La Peinture est-elledans une sit
uation critique?," a number of critics suggested that even while the new painting
made geometric abstraction seem restricted and overly rational, its reliance on
gesture at the expense of reason, and its apparent lack of underlying structure,
98 put its own future in doubt. The overriding feeling was that the new abstrac
tion was gratuitous and quickly boring.
Between 1955 and the spring of 1959, when the traveling Pollock retro
spective previously at the Whitechapel and the New American Painting exhibition
were shown simultaneously at the Musee national d'art moderne, French art
magazines published several articles, some by American critics and historians —
for example Dore Ashton, Sam Hunter, and Robert Rosenblum —stressing the
originality of contemporary American painting. "One might well maintain,"

219
 JEREMY LEWISON

open to American culture. Many Italians had relatives in America, so there was
already a strong link. Not only did the United States seem to stand for modernity,
individual freedom, and prosperity, it sent financial aid to the Italian right, in
the form of the Christian Democrats. Between 1943 and 1948, Italy received over
$2 billion of U.S. assistance, and over the following four years it accepted a fur
107 ther $1.5 billion under the Marshall Plan. To the Americans, Italy, like France,
was a theater of war in the fight against Communism. Indeed, for the Italian left,
it was the USSR that seemed the model of social justice and antifascism; and
because Italy's Communists kept alive liberal and democratic hopes that had
been nurtured in the resistance movement, they were supported by the left-lean
ing sector of the liberal intelligentsia. But Moscow imposed on the Italian
Communists a cultural line that was in some ways problematic for them to toe.
(In art, for example, it favored social realism and political engagement.) In the
interests of ensuring democracy and the continuing suppression of fascism, they
went along, but it came as something of a relief to a lot of left-leaning Italian lib
erals when Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956. Many who did not break with
the party line at that point did so after the Hungarian debacle, when 200,000
people abandoned the Italian Communist Party. This discrediting of the USSR
allowed America and Italy to grow closer together.
To rebuild the Italian film industry (which, unlike the French, had been dis
credited by its association with the fascist regime), American film distributors
were restricted from exporting currency they had earned in Italy. Instead, they
used this income to make films in Italy, which in turn they exported to the
United States, where they could retain the profits. More important, the Holly
wood studios realized that if Italians made movies to satisfy specifically Italian
tastes, the public would continue to frequent the cinemas. Understanding that
they would be badly affected if the Italian audience ever tired of American
movies, the studios set about supporting the indigenous industry in order to
108 maintain high attendance.
As a result, even left-wing filmmakers were not hostile to American input.
After the British, the Italians became Europe's largest consumers of Hollywood
productions. Not only was the affluent way of life shown in these films attractive,
it came closer to Italian reality as the country underwent an economic miracle
between 1958 and 1963. Italy also adopted the American habit of mass con
sumption, giving rise to the growth of the Italian design industry, which distin
guished itself from its American counterpart by concentrating on aesthetic rather
than streamlined forms. Finally many American words, forbidden under Musso
lini, now entered the Italian language, partly as a result of American films (al
109 though many were dubbed), partly through the popularity of Reader's Digest.
In the field of art, the years between the wars came to be regarded as an
interregnum. The last movement in which postwar Italians could take pride was

222
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

in the paintings, and references to the violence, anxiety, destructiveness, and

freedom of Pollock's art were frequent. Only fourteen years after the liberation
of France, and in a cold war climate, a word like "liberation" must have had par
ticular significance to a public that had been freed from military occupation, but
these ideas also had aesthetic connotations. To Soulages, for example, Pollock
seemed enviably unfettered by the burden of history; removed from Europe's
long traditions, he could act as he chose, free of the tyranny of artistic precedent
105 and convention. The application of Existentialism was also apparent.
According to Restany, "It was difficult not to see Pollock as an Existentialist at
the time. . . . Sartre was dynamic and inserted himself into the substance of
Parisian culture. Through Sartre, Existentialism became not only the expression
of the privileged and the elite but part of broader behavior. It became common
currency. It was a very special time, because it is rare for a philosophical concept
to be part of the base behavior of youth. It was a kind of anticonformism.
106 Violence was the basic material of protest. Pollock was emblematic of that."
Thus Pollock became an icon for the younger generation.
If many of the reviewers remained lukewarm or hostile, it was either
because they had an antipathy toward artists they saw as representatives of cap
italism or because they felt that a national tradition and hegemony were under
threat. But the popularity of these shows suggests an appetite for American cul
ture. In fact France was in the grip of a relentless course of Americanization, as
English words entered the language, pop music was broadcast over the airwaves,
and American films dominated the screen. For many people Pollock symbolized
the excitement of the new world, a world without tradition or lengthy history,
where the rights of individuals to express themselves freely were paramount.

The Response in Italy

The political situation in Italy after the war was substantially different from that
in France. Italy had not been occupied by an aggressor. A substantial part of the
population had welcomed fascism, and the government had officially accepted
the German occupation; then, toward the end of the war, the nation had
changed sides, ending up a victor. The French purged their collaborators; the
Italians did not, and many governmental practices and institutions of the fascist
regime passed into the new republic. In the absence of a purge, fears of a fascist
revival endured, and were an important factor in the appeal of the left. The fas
cist regime had constructed its mythology around Italian history, emphasizing
nationalism and classical art; a specifically Italian identity was therefore dis
credited in the postwar era, leaving Italians free to look abroad. With Italian soci
ety generally polarized between a strong left and a strong right, the left was ori
ented toward Moscow; for right-leaning liberals the role model was America.
More welcoming of foreign influence than France, Italy was particularly

221
 JEREMY LEWISON —

Fig. 5. Installation view of the exhibition JacksonPollock 1912-1956 at the Calleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome,
March 1-30, 1958

which often develops into a literary phenomenon . . . [but in that of] real
Surrealism, which is nothing but uncontrolled impulse." Anticipating Tapie's
definition of art autre, Alfieri characterized Pollock's work as "chaos / absolute
lack of harmony / complete lack of structural organization / total absence of
technique, however rudimentary / once again, chaos." "Jackson Pollock," he
concludes, "is the modern painter who sits at the extreme apex of the most
advanced and unprejudiced avant-garde of modern art Compared to Pollock,
Picasso, poor Pablo Picasso . . . becomes a quiet conformist, a painter of the
114 past." While the French were busy shoring up the School of Paris and pro
moting Picasso as a Communist hero, Alfieri had cast him aside, and looked to
the new world for a new art.
Given the amount of Italian exposure to American art in the first decade
after the war, it is not surprising that Italy was not a priority to receive Modern
Art in the United States, the exhibition circulated by The Museum of Modern Art.
The Museum in any case purchased the American Pavilion in Venice in 1954,
and therefore had the opportunity to make separate presentations of American
art. In 1958, however, the Museum did send both its traveling Jackson Pollock
retrospective and The New American Painting to Italy, the former to Rome, the lat
ter to Milan. The Pollock exhibition opened first; in fact Rome was the opening
venue for the European tour (figs. 5-6).
Hitherto Italian art critics had largely followed party lines in their reviews,

224
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

Futurism, which had burgeoned before 1914; the art of the following thirty years
was considered decadent and shameful. Where the French were trying strenu
ously to reestablish a national school and to stress the continuity of a national
culture, for Italians the concept of such a school had been discredited by fascism.
They were therefore more open to outside influences.
Artists began to make contact with foreign practitioners soon after the war,
and the process was accelerated in 1948 by the revival of the Venice Biennale.
Here was an opportunity to catch up not only with European movements ex
cluded from Italy during the fascist years but with developments in the United
States. The American Pavilion presented seventy-nine artists (each exhibiting a
single work), including Stuart Davis, Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Louis Gugli-
elmi, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and Joseph
Stella. The selection from the younger generation comprised works by William
Baziotes, Gorky, Rothko, Theodoros Stamos, Mark Tobey, and Bradley Walker
110 Tomlin. Thus the public had the chance to see a wide range of American art.
Complementing these other manifestations was an exhibition, in the Greek
Pavilion, of Peggy Guggenheim's collection, which offered a varied survey of
European art of the first half of the century, as well as a selection of works by
Pollock. This show, which had a substantial impact on artists, was Pollock's
European debut. After the Biennale closed, the collection traveled to Florence
and Milan. Two years later Guggenheim organized a solo show of twenty-three
Pollock works, her entire collection of his art, at the Ala Napoleonica, Venice, at
the same time that Barr included him in the American Pavilion at that year's
Biennale. Guggenheim's Pollocks also traveled to the Galeria del Naviglio, Milan.
Italy took to Pollock more quickly than any other European country. The
American dealer Catherine Viviano noted Italian artists visiting the American
Pavilion repeatedly in 1950 and being tremendously excited by Pollock's three
111 paintings there. The Venice painter Emilio Vedova—who met Guggenheim
soon after she arrived in the city, in 1947, and avers that it was she who "opened
112 up the Pollock issue in Italy" —was not interested in gestural abstraction in
1950, having passed through such a phase in the late 1930s, but would return to
it within three years of seeing the Pollock exhibition at the Ala Napoleonica.
In a talk given at the time of the exhibition, Bruno Alfieri remarked that
"Pollock's paintings represent absolutely nothing: no facts, no ideas, no geo
metrical forms. Do not, therefore, be deceived by suggestive titles such as 'Eyes
in the Heat' or 'Circumcision': these are phony titles, invented merely to distin
113 guish the canvases and identify them rapidly." In the context of Italian
abstraction, which was largely either conceptually based, as in the case of Lucio
Fontana, or geometric, as in the case of Vedova, Pollock seemed to represent
something completely new, a tabula rasa of nonreferential abstraction. For
Alfieri his paintings were surreal, not in the sense of "Andre Breton's Surrealism,

223
 JEREMY LEWISON

real world could carry even the most gifted artists to a dead end, . . . leading only
to the alchemy of decoration and formalism." Now, however, Venturoli revised
his critical referents: "Though we still believe that in the great part we were right,
still in the face of the Pollock retrospective ... we feel it our duty to modify our
former position. ... it is impossible not to accept [Pollock's] formidable and
indubitable results. Above all we must confess to having erred in our critical
premises: that is, that nowadays one could not paint or create sculpture without
at least some reference to external reality. Pollock, after Kandinsky, has served to
convince us to the contrary. . . . What Pollock declares to us is that painting has
116 no need of external points of reference."
The review was an extraordinary volte-face. Undoubtedly such outspoken
ness was made possible by the change in the political climate after 1956, but
even so the statement was courageous. In the centrist Milan paper Corriere d'ln-
formazione, Giovanni Russo wrote with amusement,

[Venturoli's]"recantation" provoked a kind of earthquake. The Communist cultural

officialsdid not know what to do and went into a seriouscrisis.They decided to go
and see what kind of things these Pollockpaintings were. Last Sunday the galleries
117 of the Galleriad'ArteModernapresentedan amusing spectacle;[Mario]Alicata fol
lowed by a queue of "intellectuals"bustled about with black faces through the gal
leries,peering at the canvasesof the Americanpainter with their meshworkof lines
and colors,which had so successfullyconverted one of the most fervent exponents
of the Neorealisttendency.
The little group of Communistsmurmured over the titles . . . they were perplexed,
but obliged to admire. Side by side with them, radiantly triumphant, were the
118 abstract painters; they winked their eyes as if each one of them were a Pollock!

The Pollock exhibition, then, was something of a watershed for the left,
even though not all of the left-wing critics were persuaded by Venturoli's enthu
siasm. Writing three months later, the critic of L'ltalia remained negative, but his
remark that it was now impossible to criticize Pollock, because he was regarded
119 as a "genius," indicates how widespread the acclaim for the artist had become.
Mario Lepore regretted that the United States had not sent an exhibition of real
120 ist painting, which would have been more specifically American; for the crit
ic of II Giorno, on the other hand, American art was now so distinctive, "and its
images so pervaded with imagination and the motifs of American spirituality,"
121 that it had to be regarded as autonomous. Attempts were also made to define
Pollock as a barometer of American society. While some left-wing critics saw him
as decadent, Enrico Crispolti, in a substantial text published in September 1958,
found an assurance and gaiety in Pollock's drip paintings of 1947-52 that he
linked to the vigorous economic and cultural climate of the United States in that

226
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

Fig. 6. Installation view of the exhibition JacksonPollock 1912-1956 at the Calleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome,
March 1-30, 1958

so that the Communist newspapers had decried abstraction in general, arguing

115 that it failed to engage with society or present a social message. Early in 1958,
a touring exhibition of the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York, had precipitated a battle between left and right: Marcello Venturoli, a
Communist sympathizer, had accused Palma Bucarelli, the director of the Gal-
leria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, of forcing abstract art on Italians, and
the Communist Party had called for an investigation of the museum for failing
to show figurative art. (Actually the show had included a fair amount of repre
sentational work, and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna ran a balanced pro
gram.) It was to be expected, then, that the Pollock retrospective would be attacked
by critics on the left.
As it turned out, Venturoli's review of the show in Paese Sera was a remark
able turnaround. Venturoli described how, having tried to remain neutral in the
arguments between the abstractionists and the realists, he had in recent years
committed himself to the side of "national values" and "adherence to reality."
(In these terms there was little to differentiate the art once promoted by the fas
cists from the art supported by the Communists.) "The moral and human task
of the best realists," Venturoli wrote, "seemed more fruitful, to our taste ... we
did not believe that the critical phase in which the first masters of abstraction
worked could still be meaningful today, after World War II. We honestly believed
that . . . emancipation from representation of any recognizable features of the

225
JEREMY LEWISON

The political, social, and cultural contexts of Pollock's first European exhibitions
had a substantial bearing on how he was received. Britain's austere living condi
tions, its relative isolation from artistic developments elsewhere after 1939, its
"special" relationship with America (reinforced during the war), and the lan
guage the two countries shared, made it receptive to something apparently con
fident, bold, and new. Presented like a film star in moody photographs, dressed
as a rebel or at least a nonconformist, a Marlon Brando of painting, Pollock cap
tured the spirit of the age, in London as in New York.
The French reaction was more circumspect. Gaullist resentment at having
been regarded as a fringe player during the war ensured that American products
were not greeted warmly in official circles. Moreover, with national supremacy
in the visual arts at stake, attempts to discredit the emergence of a new move
ment on the other side of the Atlantic were inevitable. The dislocation between
politicians, press, and public was such, however, that American products and
culture became increasingly popular, no matter what efforts were made to stem
the flood. To this day French authorities resist the invasion of English-speaking
culture, in vain.
Conditions in Italy were in some ways similar to those in France, with a
political system polarized between left and right. But Italian identity was not at
stake. The country did not have to exorcise the shame of surrender; toward the
end of the war, American troops had been openly welcomed as liberators from
both internal and external oppression. In the 1950s, Italy's rivalry with France
in the Mediterranean, and its worries over Soviet influence in the Balkans, made
America an attractive ally for the right. Even for the left, which would certainly
not have countenanced Soviet annexation, the United States was an insurance
policy. Familial links with America through emigration, and the diffusion of
American films and television programs, reinforced the interest in the United
States. The phenomenon of a Marxist critic warmly welcoming a painter who was
a product of capitalism demonstrated two fundamental characteristics of Italian
society, flexibility and pragmatism. That outlook undoubtedly encouraged a
warm reception for Pollock.

228
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

period. Pollock's later period of crisis, Crispolti argued, reflected a more perva
sive crisis in America, as evidenced by the nonconformist, oppositional stance of
122 the country's intellectuals.
Pollock's reputation was riding high. Lionello Venturi, a respected art his
torian and supporter of Italian abstraction, saw him as the greatest of the
Americans, whom he characterized as "the more progressive artists ... of our
123 period." Like their French counterparts a few months later, many critics re
marked that Pollock and his contemporaries were free from the weight of a long
tradition of art. The critic of Libera Stampa, for example, remarked, "The most
surprising thing in the exhibition of American painting is . . . the perfect free
dom of language with which they succeed in expressing themselves: freedom
which is not possible any more to artists of old civilizations and tired tradi
124 tions." Again the idea of the tabula rasa was attractive to Europeans.
As in France and Britain, the press also capitalized on the myth of the rebel.
125 Such headlines as "The Volcanic Pollock" and "The Presley of Painting," as
well as references to "barbaric apparitions," "frenzy," "screaming," and James
Dean, all helped to build the stereotypical image of the artist that circulated
around Europe in this period, and was indebted to the assimilation of popular
culture. But like some of the English commentators, the more serious critics
observed a calmness in Pollock's work. Having seen the Namuth film, one critic
concluded that there was nothing violent about the paintings, more a "joyful
126 delirium." Marco Valsecchi, in the independent II TempoSettimana, remarked
upon the "delicate harmonies, . . . the intricate web of filaments," and the "final
127 control of matter and images, which is so astonishing."
The refrain that despite the greatness of Pollock's art, it led nowhere, and
could sustain no further development, was also heard in Italy. Crispolti, who was
an admirer, said that it was impossible to "redo" Pollock, while the critic of
L'Unita proposed that "Pollock's experience can teach one thing . . . and that is
that this experience ends with itself and cannot have followers. It is a tragic
admonition, even if given unconsciously. It is the conquest of a desert by a man
who has turned off the light of reason in himself and his work. 128In fact,
although the 1958 exhibitions clearly had an impact on the Italian press, they
had little immediate effect on Italian abstract painting. Italy's thriving and var
ied abstract movement, already widely accepted in artistic circles, was closer to
other manifestations of European abstraction than to its American counterpart.
Pollock had a greater impact on the later generation of arte povera artists. Jannis
Kounellis, for example, acknowledges the importance of Blue Poles: Number 11,
1952 in the conception of his sculpures incorporating wool, while Michelangelo
Pistoletto admits that Pollock's description of being "in" his painting led him to
explore the concept literally through works involving mirrors.

227
JEREMY LEWISON

among its adherents were Adrian 55. Sylvester, broadcast on BBCradio, Jackson Pollock," Art News 57 no. 6
Heath, Kenneth and Mary Martin, November 7, 1958. Published in (October 1958): 24-26, 55-57, in
and Victor Pasmore. The Euston Road Sylvester,About ModernArt, p. 62. which he argues that Pollock's paint
School was a prewar movement 56. John Russell, "Pollock in Panor ings represented a dead end.
founded by Graham Bell and William ama," SundayTimes,November9, 1958. 72. Alloway, "Paintings from the Big
Coldstream, committed to realism 57. Thompson, "The Hero-Figure of Country," Art Newsand Review,
and meticulous observation, and Action-Painting," Times,November March 14, 1959, p. 3. This British
including such artists as Lawrence 11, 1958. magazine was devoting a special issue
Gowing, Pasmore, Claude Rogers, 58. Robert Wraight, "Chuck-it-on to America. Alloway implies surprise
and Geoffrey Tibbie. England had paintings fail to impress the East that Hans Hofmann was not included
recently witnessed the arrival of the End," Star, November 12, 1958. in the exhibition.
"Kitchen Sink" painters, a term 59. Alloway, "London Chronicle," 73. "The majority of people here
coined by Sylvester in 1954 to Art International II nos. 9-10, 1958 who are seriously concerned with
describe the grim domestic realism of (probably September/October). contemporary art, take it for granted
John Bratby, Derek Greaves, Edward 60. Sam Hunter, "Introduction," that America is now the main cre
Middleditch, and Jack Smith. JacksonPollock1912-1956, exh. cat. ative center of painting and sculpture,
48. Bridget Riley,conversation with (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, and the nonspecialists are just about
the author, May 29, 1998. 1958), p. 12. beginning to get used to the idea,
49. Sylvester, "American Impact on 61. Thompson, "The Hero-Figure of though without being terribly keen
British Painting," New YorkTimes, Action-Painting." on it." Sylvester, "London Views Ad
February 10, 1957. 62. Berger, "The White Cell," New vanced American Painting of Today,"
50. Organized by the International Statesman, November 22, 1958, pp. New YorkTimes,November 30, 1958.
Council of The Museum of Modern 72-73. 74. Sutton, "The Abstract Image:
Art, the exhibition opened at the Sao 63. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Diversity of Aim and Technique in
Paulo Bienal in the fall of 1957 and and Humanism, 1946, trans. Philip the Non-Figurative Mode," The Amer
over the next year and a half traveled Mairet, 1948 (reprint ed. London: ican Imagination,TimesLiterarySupple
to Rome, Basel, Amsterdam, Ham Methuen, 1997), pp. 28, 44. ment, November 6, 1959, p. XXVI.
burg, Berlin, London, and Paris. 64. "Confronting a blank canvas they 75. Serge Guilbaut, "Postwar Painting
51. Bryan Robertson, conversation attempt 'to grasp authentic being by Games: The Rough and the Slick," in
with the author, September 10, 1997. action, decision, a leap of faith,' to Guilbaut, ed., ReconstructingModern
52. In a letter to Stephan Munsing, of use KarlJaspers' Existentialist phrase. ism: Art in New York,Paris and Mon
the United States Information Ser Indeed one often hears Existentialist treal 1945-1964 (Cambridge, Mass.:
vice, dated September 29, 1958, Rob echoes in their words. ..." Barr, The MIT Press, 1990), p. 31.
ertson wrote, "I know I shall be able "Introduction," The NewAmerican 76. In the first half of 1947, some
to hang the exhibition in a more Painting (London: Arts Council of 340 American films were licensed for
coherent and revealing way than it Great Britain, 1959), p. 10. The New screening, compared to 40 French
was in Berlin. The show looked ex AmericanPainting was curated by ones. See Irvin M. Wall, The United
tremely well there in the fine Hoch- Dorothy Miller assisted by Frank States and the Makingof Postwar
schule, but the actual chronology of O'Hara, and was circulated in Europe France 1945-1954 (Cambridge: at
events and facets of development did by The Museum of Modern Art. the University Press, 1991), p. 115.
not emerge very clearly, I thought." 65. Riley,conversation with the 77. Ibid., pp. 116-19.
Courtesy of the Whitechapel Art author, May 29, 1998. 78. Sorlin, EuropeanCinemas, Euro
Gallery Archive. Robertson, Munsing, 66. AngryYoungMan was the title of pean Societies1939-1990, p. 89.
and Robertson's architect, Trevor a 1951 play by Leslie Paul. The sobri 79. M. Weil-Lorac,quoted in "Pique,"
Dannatt, had visited the Pollock quet came to describe a young gener LesLettresFrangaises,January 2, 1952.
exhibition in Berlin together. ation of British authors, including 80. In 1952, Francis Cremieux com
53. The earliest work in the exhibi Kingsley Amis,John Osborne, and plained that French radio had been
tion was The Flame (1937), followed Arnold Wesker, after the London invaded by American culture, and
by Male and Female (1942). The most debut of Osborne's play LookBack suggested that the willingness of
impressive painting as far as the crit in Angerin May 1956. These writers French broadcasters to allow this in
ics were concerned was BluePoles expressed the political and cultural vasion reflected the state of mind of
(1953), which would also figure sub disillusionment of postwar Britain, a collaborator during the Occupa
stantially in Robertson's 1960 mono which still seemed to be controlled tion. See Cremieux, "La Culture fran-
graph on Pollock, commissioned at by the prewar generation. faise a la sauce americaine," LesLettres
the time of the exhibition. In conver 67. Denny, conversation with the Franfaises,January 17, 1952, p. 6.
sation with the author (see note 51), author, November 18, 1997. 81. Georges Sadoul, "Decadence
Robertson related how he invited 68. Denny, quoted in Alex Seago, d'Hollywood," Les LettresFranfaises,
Walter Neurath, the owner of the Burning the Box of Beautiful Things January 3, 1952. Articlesalso regularly
publishing house Thames & Hudson, (Oxford: at the University Press, appeared criticizing French radio for
to preview the exhibition. Impressed, 1995), p. 178. its pro-American stance.
Namuth sent a photographer to pho 69. Anthony Caro, conversation 82. See Stanley Karnow, Paris in the
tograph the paintings and asked with the author, May 12, 1998. Fifties (New York: Random House,
Robertson to write the book. The 70. "Current and Forthcoming 1997), p. 85.
plates were proofed at the Paris Exhibitions. London," Burlington 83. TemoignageChretien,quoted in
showing of the retrospective. No Magazine,December 1958, p. 450. Wall, The UnitedStates and the Making
contemporary artist had been the 71.Riley,conversation with the of PostwarFrance, p. 124. On Coca-
subject of such a lavish book before. author, May 29, 1998. At the time, Cola's colonization of France, see
54. David Thompson, "Art of Jackson Riley probably would not have known ibid., pp. 122-26.
Pollock," Times,November 7, 1958. Allan Kaprow's article "The Legacyof 84. Georges Mathieu, Au-Dela du

230
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

Notes

I would like to thank my colleague 1950, p. 233. Today," The Listener, January 26,
Michela Parkin for her considerable 16. Sylvester, About Modem Art (Lon 1956, pp. 146-47.
assistance in researching this paper. don: Chatto and Windus, 1996), p. 20. 32. Homer Cahill, "American Paint
I am grateful to the staff of the Ar 17. Greenberg and Sylvester respec ing and Sculpture in the Twentieth
chives at The Museum of Modern Art, tively, "The European View of Ameri Century," Modern Art in the United
the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and the can Art," The Nation, November 25, States: A Selection from the Collections
Tate Gallery for help in providing 1950, pp. 490-93. of The Museum of Modem Art, New York,
information, and to the librarians at 18. Alan Davie, letter to the author, exh. cat. (London: Tate Gallery, 1956),
the Tate Gallery for their aid. March 1997. p. 22. In his catalogue introduction
19. Denys Sutton, "The Challenge of for the American Pavilion at the
1. Lewis Galantiere, quoted in Aline American Art," Horizon, October Venice Biennale of 1950, Alfred H.
B. Louchheim, "Americans in Italy," 1949, p. 281. Barr, Jr., had already described Pollock
New York Times, September 10, 1950. 20. "Opposing Forces in Art," Times, as "born in the far west in a town
2. Louchheim, "Americans in Italy." January 30, 1953. In the late 1950s, that takes its name from Buffalo Bill."
3. Bertrand Russell, "British and William Green became notorious for 33. Pierre Jeannerat, in the Daily Mail,
American Nationalism," Horizon, bicycling over his paintings. In 1961, January 7, 1956.
January 1945, p. 29. the British comedian Tony Hancock 34. Robert Stowe, in the Daily Worker,
4. I use the word "modernist" to made a popular film, The Rebel, in January 11, 1956.
describe a sympathy for the modern which he performed a similar act. 35. Lawrence Alloway, "US Modern:
rather than in the art-historical sense. 21. Eric Newton, "Around the London Paintings," Art News, January 21,
5. Georgina Dix, "American Galleries," The Listener, February 19, 1956, pp. 1, 9.
Conversation Piece," Horizon, 1953, p. 316. 36. The fact that in later writings
November 1945, pp. 324, 327. 22. Robert Melville, "Exhibitions," Alloway continued to apply terms of
6. One counterbalance to this wave Architectural Review, April 1953, pp. belligerence to Pollock's paintings
of anti-American feeling was the 73-74. Among the paintings on view suggests that he did. See, for example,
weekly broadcast on BBC radio by by Pollock was One: Number 31 (1950, his review of the Pollock retrospective
Alistair Cooke, who also contributed although the catalogue lists the date at the Whitechapel in 1958: "The paint
to The Listener. These broadcasts as 1949). The painting filled a wall — has been showered down like a satu
would have reached a wider public indeed it was too large for it, and was ration bombing raid." Alloway, "The
than Horizon. shown, Sylvester recalls in conversa Art of Jackson Pollock," The Listener,
7. Cyril Connolly, "Introduction," tion, with one end rolled up. November 27, 1958, p. 888.
Horizon, October 1947, p. 11. Among 23. See for example "Drip. Drip . . . ," 37. John Berger, "The Battle," New
the contributors to this special issue Star, July 1, 1958: "The results might Statesman and Nation, January 21,
were Clement Greenberg, W. H. be good for wallpaper or carpet de 1956, p. 70.
Auden, James Thrall Soby, Philip signs"; and William Gaunt, "What 38. Anton Ehrenzweig, "The Modern
Johnson, Marshall McLuhan, and Makes a Painting Decorative," Times, Artist and the Creative Accident," The
Christopher Isherwood. December 23, 1958, on the concept Listener, January 12, 1956, pp. 53-55.
8. S. Horler, World's Press News, of the word "decorative," which had 39. Newton, "As the British View Our
January 22, 1948, quoted in Paul recurred in many reviews of the Pol Art," New YorkTimes, January 15, 1956.
Swann, The Hollywood Feature Film in lock retrospective at the Whitechapel 40. Sylvester, About Modem Art, p. 20.
Postwar Britain (London: Croom Art Gallery that year. 41. Sylvester, "Expressionism, German
Helm, 1987), p. 107. 24. Patrick Heron, "'Opposing Forces': and American," Arts, December 1956,
9. See Pierre Sorlin, European Cinemas, Paintings by Seven Artists," New States pp. 25-26. Sylvester's reference to
European Societies 1939-1990 (New man and Nation, February 21, 1953. Dionysos is an interesting recurrence
York: Routledge, 1991), p. 95. Tele 25. Heron, "Inspiration for the of Spender's use of this concept to de
vision too brought images of Ameri Painter," New Statesman and Nation, scribe American writers; see note 13.
can life to England, particularly in January 1, 1955, p. 7. 42. Sylvester, "End of the Streamlined
the later 1950s; the BBC resisted 26. Nonfigurative abstraction had Era," Times, August 2, 1955.
American imports for much of the appeared briefly in British art of the 43. Basil Taylor, "Contemporary Arts:
decade, but the advent of commer 1930s, in the paintings of Rodrigo Modern American Painting,"
cial television in 1957 opened the Moynihan and, most famously, Ben Spectator, January 20, 1956, p. 80.
floodgates. Nicholson, but both artists' work 44. Heron, "The Americans at the Tate
10. Herbert Read, ms. dated October could be seen as referring to reality. Gallery," Arts, March 1956, pp. 15, 16.
24, 1951, in the BBC Written Archives. Heron admired Nicholson, but was 45. Alloway, "US Modern: Paintings,"
Quoted in Anne Massey, The critical of the artist's most nonrefer- pp. 1, 9.
Independent Group (Manchester: at the ential works, his white reliefs. 46. Denny, conversation with the
University Press, 1995), p. 78. 27. Read, "A Blot on the Scutcheon," author, November 18, 1997.
11.Stephen Spender, "The Situation of Encounter, July 1955, pp. 54-57. 47. "Neo-Romanticism" is the term
the American Writer," Horizon, March 28. Harold Rosenberg, "The American applied to painting made from the
1949, p. 163. Action Painters," Art News, December late 1930s through World War II by
12. Robyn Denny, letter to the author, 1952, pp. 22-23, 48-50. artists such as John Craxton, John
December 8, 1998. 29. Tony del Renzio gave a lecture based Minton, John Piper, and Graham
13. Spender, "The Situation of the on Rosenberg's ideas in 1953 at the Sutherland, who produced moody
American Writer," p. 165. ICA, but apparently to limited effect. depictions of the British landscape
14. Greenberg, "The Present Prospects 30. The Paris exhibition included and regarded their progenitors as
of American Painting and Sculpture," architecture and film sections that William Blake and Samuel Palmer.
Horizon, October 1947, pp. 26, 30. were not shown in London. "Constructivism" was a postwar
15. David Sylvester, "The Venice 31. Meyer Schapiro, "The Younger movement that extended the prewar
Biennale," The Nation, September 9, Generation American Painters of concept of geometric abstraction;

229
 JACKSON POLLOCK AND THE AMERICANIZATION OF EUROPE

tachisme (Paris: Rene Julliard, 1963). York,from Frankfurtto Paris."Estienne author, February 23, 1998.
85. "Pour alter oil tu tie sais pas, tu dois was not unaware of Pollock; he had 113.Bruno Alfieri, "A Short Text on
aller par oil tu ne sais pas." Vehemences reviewed the Janis show at the Galerie the Pictures of Jackson Pollock," Ar
confrontees,exh. cat. (Paris: Galerie de France in L'Observateur,on March chives of American Art, Washington,
Nina Dausset, 1951). 29, 1952. Either he could not con D.C. See also Naifeh and Smith, fack
86. Michel Tapie, Un Art autre (Paris: nect Pollock to the artist's European son Pollock:An AmericanSaga, p. 605.
Gabriel-Giraud, 1952), facsimile ed. contemporaries or he suffered from 114.Ibid.
Paris: Artcurial, 1994. the need to assert Parisian precedent. 115.Despite the postwar hope for a
87. La Peinture aux Etats-Unis 96. Guy Dornand, in Liberation, broad-minded approach to art,
d'Amerique,a special issue of Art April 7, 1955. Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of Italy's
d'Aujourd'hui,June 1951. 97. Andre Chastel, "Au Musee d'Art Communist Party, effectively split the
88. Michel Seuphor, "Paris-New York Moderne," Le Monde,April 2, 1955. Italian art world when he reviewed a
1951," in ibid., p. 4. Christian Zervos agreed with Chas- 1948 exhibition of contemporary
89. This view seems to have been tel's view; see his "Les Expositions," Italian art, held in Bologna, in
shared by the editor of Art Cahiers d'Art 30, 1955, pp. 25-26. Rinascita,the Party's official paper.
d'Aujourd'hui,Leon Degand, who 98. The critics included Roger Writing under his known pseudo
wrote in the same issue, "We lack Bordier, Degand, and Guy Habasque. nym, Roderigo di Castiglia, he con
contact with the young painters of Art d'Aujourd'hui,January 1956. demned the "new art" as a horror.
the United States as much as they Restany agreed with this sentiment; Artists responded either by breaking
lack contact with ours. . . . We always see his "Le Geste et le rythme," with the Party or, like Renato
gain in meeting each other, above all Cimaise,September-October1957,p. 30. Guttuso, rallying to the cause. Rina
the young researchers preoccupied by 99. Robert Rosenblum, "La Peinture scita, October 1948. See Mario De
the same problems." Degand, "Avert- americaine depuis la seconde guerre Micheli, "Realismand the Post-war
issement," in ibid., inside front cover. mondiale," Art d'Aujourd'hui,,July Debate," in Emily Braun, ed., Italian
90. Tapie, "Jackson Pollock avec 1958, p. 13. See also Dore Ashton, Art in the 20th Century:Painting and
nous," facksonPollock,exh. cat. "Lettre de New York," Cimaise, Sculpture1900-1988, exh. cat. (Lon
(Paris: Paul Facchetti, 1952), n.p. November-December 1956, p. 29, don: Royal Academy of Arts, 1989),
91. Edouard Jaguer, conversation with and, "La Signature americaine," p. 283.
the author, October 16, 1997. XXe siecle,March 1958. 116.Marcello Venturoli, "Jackson
92. G.M., "Aspects de la peinture 100. Porter McCray, letter to Jean Pollock e gli astrattisi italiani," Paese
d'avant-garde,"Combat,March 18, 1952. Cassou, February 14, 1958. Archives Sera, March 13-14, 1958.
93. Pierre Soulages, conversation of the Reunion des musees nation- 117.Mario Alicata, in Giovanni
with the author, May 22, 1998. aux, Musee du Louvre, Paris. Russo'swords, "presides over the
94. There were 14,530 paid admis 101.Restany, conversation with the intellectual activities" of the Party.
sions and several thousand more by author, November 5, 1997. 118.Russo, "Una mostra di Pollock a
invitation. The exhibition was part 102. Robertson, conversation with Roma provoca discordie tra i pittori
of a festival, "Salute to France," orga the author, September 10, 1997. di sinistra," Corriered'Informazione,
nized at the request of the French 103. Michel Ragon, "Art Today in March 26-27, 1958.
government under the auspices of the United States," Cimaise, 119.Giorgio Mascherpa, "II Triste
the American Embassy.The festival January-March 1959, p. 7. Equivoco Dei Pittori . . . ," L'ltalia,
included an exhibition at the Orang- 104. Franfoise Choay, "Jackson June 13, 1958.
erie of paintings from American col Pollock," L'Oeil,July-August 1958. 120. Mario Lepore, "Avanguardia
lections, ranging from David to Tou 105. Soulages, conversation with the USA," Visto,June 14, 1958.
louse-Lautrec; America's connoisseur- author, May 22, 1998. 121."La Pittura AmericanaHa Ritrovato
ship was on trial as much as its painters. 106. Restany, conversation with the L'Allegria,"II Giomo,June 10, 1958.
95. Pierre Restany, conversation with author, November 5, 1997. 122.Enrico Crispolti, Pollock(Milan:
the author, November 5, 1997. For 107.See Christopher Duggan, A Pesce d'Oro, 1958), p. 15. As an
evidence of how ill-informed the crit ConciseHistoryof Italy (Cambridge: at example of an American intellectual
ics of the national press were about the University Press, 1994), p. 252. Crispolti cites Arthur Miller.
American art, see Charles Estienne in 108. See Christopher Wagstaff, "Italy 123.Lionello Venturi, Italian Painters
Combat, Spring 1954, on the birth of in the Post-War International Cinema of Today(New York:Universe Books,
the informelat the Salon d'Octobre, Market," in Duggan and Wagstaff,eds., 1959), p. 12, and Ashton, "Art:
and Jaguer's response in the same Italy in the Cold War: Politics,Culture Moderns' Old Friend," New York
journal on April 5, "Revolution and Society1948-58 (Oxford: at the Times,November 13, 1958.
d'Octobre ou le 18 Brumaire": "How University Press, 1995), pp. 94-95. 124.Mario Marioni, "Moderna Pittura
can you pass by in silence the magis 109. See Diego Zancani, "Anglo- Americano a Milano," LiberaStampa,
terial contribution constituted since American Linguistic Borrowings, July 1, 1958.
1943 in America by the work of Pol 1947-58," in ibid., pp. 167-87. 125.In II TempoSettimana,March 20,
lock, de Kooning, Rothko, Baziotes, 110.See Philip Rylands and Enzo di 1958, and Avanti, 1958 (date
Reinhardt, Motherwell; and later . . . Martino, Flyingthe Flag for Art: The unknown), respectively.
of Clifford Still and Sam Francis? It is UnitedStates and the VeniceBiennale 126. Lorenza Trucchi, "L'Anarchia
not possible to cover up this America 1895-1991 (Richmond, Va.: Wyld- Positiva di Pollock," La Fiera
in this way, the only America that bore and Wolferstan, 1993), pp. 87-89. Letteraria,March 16, 1958.
counts in our view." Jaguer went on 111.Catherine Viviano, in Steven 127.Marco Valsecchi, "II Vulcanico
to assert, like Tapie, that American Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Pollock," II TempoSettimana,March
abstraction was part of an interna facksonPollock:An AmericanSaga (Lon 20, 1958.
tional movement taking place "from don: Barrie and Jenkins, 1989), p. 605. 128. Dario Micacchi, "II Deserto del-
Paris to Copenhagen, from Milan to 112.Emilio Vedova, conversation with l'impotenza nella pittura di Pollock,"
San Francisco, from Rome to New Michela Parkin on behalf of the L'Unita,March 12, 1958.

231
 KIRK VARNEDOE

Fig. I. Morris Louis.Beta

Lambda. I960. Synthetic
polymer paint on canvas,
/.
3 8 ft. 7 in. x 13ft. 4/4 in.
(262.6 x 407 cm). The Mus
eum of Modern Art, New
York. Cift of Mrs. Abner
Brenner

Fig. 2. Eva Hesse. Untitled

(RopePiece).1969-70. Latex
over rope, string, and wire.
Two strands; dimensions
variable. Whitney Museum
of American Art, New York.
Purchase, with funds from
Eli and Edythe L. Broad, the
Mrs. Percy Uris Purchase
Fund, and the Painting and
Sculpture Committee

of mounting this latest Pollock retrospective that I became a modernist again. Or,
put another way, I refocused on the Pollock within the pictures as opposed to the
one conjured by the literature or by posthumous influences. The more I looked at
and lived with Pollock's paintings, the more there seemed to me to be ignored
or slighted truths about them —one by one and as a life's work—that still needed
recognizing and articulating, and that must necessarily alter and constrain our
notions of what Pollock might legitimatelystand for when he is interpreted.
This is not an essentialist argument for an ur-Pollock, nor is there any final
ity in it. But we don't need to believe in any final, monolithic truth about an
artist to find some statements about him truer than others. We keep attempting,
by trial and error, to construct a surer basis for future readings that might be less
flawed than the ones we inherited. Such a progress needn't aim so much to dis
credit older notions as to temper them and meld them into something more

234
 Open-Ended Conclusions about
Jackson Pollock

Kirk Varnedoe

In 1998, I had a brush with postmodernism. In an essay draft, I suggested that the
way to understand a powerful creator's work was to see what subsequent artists
made of it—define what the art was, in other words, by studying what it did. This
approach seemed justified by the linguistic premise that the meaning of a word
depends on the way it is used. But by putting use, or influence, first—as William
Rubin protested when he read that draft—I was inadvertently nodding toward
the more problematic notion (and postmodernist credo) that there are no fixed
truths, only interpretations. And on top of that, Rubin further insisted, it was
wrong to assume that an artist's best followers were automatically that artist's
best interpreters.
To be specific, I had discounted what Clement Greenberg proposed as Jack
son Pollock's direct legacy (in stained-canvas work like that of Morris Louis [fig.
1] and Kenneth Noland) in favor of what I saw as a more productive influence
on the work of sculptors such as Eva Hesse (fig. 2) and Richard Serra. I felt that
Hesse's and Serra's art, being more compelling, told us a stronger truth about
Pollock. Rubin demurred: even if we allow that the sculptors were more power
ful creators, he argued, this doesn't preclude the possibility that their reading of
Pollock might have been faulty, and that the painters actually understood some
true, or truer, aspect of Pollock's art—an aspect that might in future be taken up
to potent effect by an artist of surpassing achievement.
Put back into generalities, this counterargument holds that, even as we
value creative misinterpretation, we can still rank some interpretations as less
mis-, or more true, than others. And that ranking would depend, not on the
interpreters' creative power, but on the acuteness of their discernment about the
original object of attention. Above all this view insists that the art at the origin
point —in this case Pollock's—is not an infinitely polyvalent proposition, open
to all readings, but something about which one can be, in varying degrees, right
or wrong.
That is, of course, one of the reasons for retrospective exhibitions: we need
the art itself to measure the justice of our ideas about it. And it was in the process

233
 KIRK VARNEDOE

center, under the belly; plate 26) are defined in the same gray paint, apparently
on the same plane and in equivalent terms. The general practice of liberal
painterly experiment followed by strong self-editing, and this particular way of
thinking about shape in terms of positive and negative areas, without concern
for line binding form, seem to bridge toward later abstractions in general, and
perhaps most tellingly toward Pollock's 1948 experiments with cutting forms out
of webs of poured paint.
In Male and Female of c. 1942, by the same token, it has always been evident
that there were "premonitory" passages of forcefully flung liquid paint. But
when this picture hung beside The Moon Woman, from the same year, it seemed
newly apparent how elaborately Pollock varied the passages of thickened and
thinned paint in both, and how often he used an extreme dilution of pigment
to obtain effects, not simply of violent splatter, but of subtle caress and softened,
almost phosphorescent halation of color. In parts of Moon Woman, this yields a
delicacy and tenderness totally at odds with the general repute of the emerging
artist's supposedly ham-fisted expressionism.
Finally, in The She-Wolf,in Pasiphae, and in many other early canvases, we
find an evident practice of revisiting the same curve or contour both in black
and in white, or in two alternative colors. The most blatant example is the repet
itive overlay of signatures in The Moon-WomanCuts the Circle,but a related strategy
recurs throughout the contours of that image, and in countless other passages
among the 1942-44 paintings. Such self-following, or self-doubling, is conso
nant with the practice described by Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, in which the constant
reworking of what was already on the canvas became for Pollock a prescribed
road to personal style; and it dovetails as well with James Coddington's findings
as to the way Pollock built some of his 1947 abstractions by recurrently playing
3 off, and restructuring, the rhythms and massings of an initial figurative matrix.
This self-following also points— in the way it nudges the rhythm of the line
away from the task of describing a bounded form—to still broader consistencies
of approach within Pollock's work, both before and after the advent of the
poured abstractions.
Overpainting, dilution, self-following—in these specific aspects of inven
tively ambitious practice, it no longer seems adequate to characterize the rela
tion between early and mature work as one of failure versus success, or inepti
tude before achievement. And the larger point is not simply that the early works
are better than we thought. It is that, in this and other important ways, a new
experience of the paintings brought together in the retrospective appears to
undermine or contradict the familiar, biographically driven recounting of how
Pollock came to be Pollock.
The romance of Pollock's live-hard-die-young biography has been and is
powerfully seductive, fostering a narrative of struggling ascent peppered by crises

236
 OPEN-ENDED CONCLUSIONS ABOUT JACKSON POLLOCK

telling, more subtly tuned to the nature of the art. A ready example might be the
early reading of Pollock's art as an emblem of fragmentation, barbarism, and
angst. Already by the late 1950s such dramatically bleak visions had been dis
placed, in print, by recognition of the delicately lyrical and lushly beautiful aspects
of the paintings. Those first conceptions of savagery have not been wholly aban
doned —they tell one truth worth knowing —but now they can only hold convic
tion when they're subsumed within a more complexly calibrated estimation.
Sometimes, too, new experience revives ideas that have fallen into neglect;
the room of Pollock's early- 1940s paintings in the recent exhibition is a case in
point. Since the 1960s a wide consensus, even among Pollock's admirers, has
held that his figurative work of the early and mid- 1940s is (regardless of any
interest we may have in its subject matter, Jungian or otherwise) bad painting.
In countless retellings of Pollock's story, struggling ineptitude in this early period
has been the staple prelude to the emergence of liberated fluidity in the abstrac
tions of 1947-50. Yet all along we've known that the sharpest eyes of the time
saw it differently. Greenberg latched on to Pollock right away, and had already
declared him the strongest painter of his generation ("and perhaps the greatest
1) one to appear since Miro" by 1946. James Thrall Soby also saw the quality, and
got The Museum of Modern Art to buy The She-Wolfout of Pollock's inaugural
show. The 1998 exhibition, in reuniting several works from that 1943 debut,
made it easier to reconnect with those long-ago affirmations than to sustain the
condescensions of the intervening years. Perhaps 1980s painting like that of
Georg Baselitz and Sigmar Polke has altered the way we look, or perhaps we are
in general less invested in the agon between figuration and abstraction than
were critics of previous decades. But for whatever reason, the recent exhibition
revalidated the first-blush enthusiasms, and begged reconsideration of the ways
these paintings relate to their time and to the larger career of their creator. What
was striking about seeing them together, after fifty-five years, is what, I strongly
suspect, was evident to Greenberg and the others right away: that any faults here
have far, far less to do with a dearth of ability than with a frame-busting surfeit
2) of ambition. ("He takes," as Greenberg said, "orders he can't fill." In a picture
such as Guardians of the Secretthere are, to steal a phrase from the contemporary
painter Terry Winters, "six or seven paintings trying to get out"; and it was the
inventive variety of those endeavors, not the failures of their coalescence, that
leapt to the eye in 1998.
In Guardians and in She-Wolf,for example, it's long been evident how a dark
gray overpainting defines shapes like those of the dog at the bottom of Guardians,
carving them out from turbulent fields of scumbled and spattered paint. What
begs fresh notice, though, are the ambiguities of figure versus ground in these
overlays—how, for instance, in She-Wolf, negative or background zones (above
the animal's back) and unexpected solid forms (the diamond with a hole in its

235
 KIRK VARNEDOE

Pollock's black poured paintings of 1951

as "regressing" to recover some of his
early, Picasso-derived figuration; but much
less time has been given to examining
how this instance dovetails with a broader
strategy of self-recovery or doubling back,
by which such later abstractions as Ocean
Greyness and (Untitled) Scent (fig. 7) also
move noticeably back onto terrain first
opened up by Eyes in the Heat in 1946 (fig.
8). Throughout his later work, in fact,
Pollock revisits a variety of options
touched on, then passed over, in his pas
sage toward the "classic" drip or poured
paintings of 1947-50.
These parallelisms across time are
counterpointed by marked differences
within a given moment's production. The
sharp distinctions between the two series
painted in 1946 have already been alluded
to—the cursive, cartoony drawing and
cheery colors of the Accabonac Creek pic
tures seeming to embody an aesthetic and
emotional universe far removed from that
of the Sounds in the Grass canvases. But

Fig. 3. Jackson Pollock.

Birth, c. 1941(ot: c. 1938-41).
l3
/» Oil on canvas, 45 x 2l"/» in.
(116.4x 55.1 cm). Tate Gallery,
London. Purchased 1985

Fig. 4. Jackson Pollock.

StenographicFigure,c. 1942.
Oil on linen, 40 x 56 in.
(101.6x 142.2 cm). The Museum
of Modern Art, New York. Mr.
and Mrs. Walter Bareiss Fund

238
 OPEN-ENDED CONCLUSIONS ABOUT JACKSON POLLOCK

and ending in a downward slide toward fated tragedy. The faltering decline has,
if anything, been an even more telling model than the stumbling ascent. It has
been easy to fixate on the conjunction between a documented emotional crisis
in 1951 and the sharp shift away from the poured abstractions that same year,
and then to accept as logical and inevitable the melancholy parallelism between
Pollock's personal deterioration after 1952 and his declining, erratic production
as a painter. These years of seeming lock-step links between life outside and
inside the studio have colored our vision of Pollock's evolution as an artist in
somewhat the same way Hans Namuth's photos have colored our idea of his
method. In both cases we are dealing with a singular chapter in a broader story,
and we extrapolate at our peril.
As the recent exhibition's chronological layout helped emphasize, the biog
raphy and the art are often fundamentally out of synchrony. In several major
instances, important artistic shifts have no link to biographical change, and vice
versa. Pollock's ten years of student toil provide a largely blank and unvarying
prelude after which —suddenly, at the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the
1940s, when his emotional life seems mired in turmoil —the career gets jump-
started by an entirely new focus and will to success. In 1943, pictures with
poured paint appear "prematurely," with neither evident immediate stimulus
nor apparent immediate consequence. The extraordinary Mural for Peggy
Guggenheim (plate 1) similarly has no precedent and no direct issue. In 1946,
Pollock paints two separate series in two sharply opposed manners, though his
life is more consistently stabilized than ever before. In 1947, the all-important
advent of a new style of poured abstractions does not seem to correspond to any
notable event or change in surrounding circumstances; the following year, con
versely, one of Pollock's most important life shifts, away from alcoholic binges,
brings no telling redirection in that already inaugurated style.
Walking back and forth through the exhibition allowed one, though, to see
alternative rhymes, rhythms, and disjunctions, largely independent of the famil
iar linear arrow of Pollock's biography. These structures center on the likeness of
things produced at widely separate times, and conversely on the differences
among things created in close proximity. The volumetric contortions of Birth
(1942; fig. 3), for instance, are miles away from the curvilinear rhythms and
lighter hues of the next year's Stenographic Figure (fig. 4). The former is deeply
entangled with Picasso while the latter seems to reflect an influence of Matisse,
carried to Pollock by Lee Krasner (and picked up by her from Hans Hofmann).
It's the same dualism that recurs a decade later, when the markedly Picassoid
Ritual (fig. 5) is created in the same year as Easter and the Totem (fig. 6), Pollock's
evident nod to the effect of Matisse's 1951-52 retrospective in New York. The
recurrence of that Picasso-Matisse pairing belongs, moreover, to a pattern of
returning in the '50s to the work of the early and mid-'40s. It's common to see

237
KIRK VARNEDOE

it's worth concentrating fur

ther on the signal differ
ences that separate individ
ual works even within the
Sounds in the Grass group.
Although Pollock pulled
them together under one
rubric, the contrasts in tech
nique, structure, density,
and palette among, say, the
frothing toothpaste curls of
Shimmering Substance (plate
31), the turgidly knotted
ropes of Eyes in the Heat, and
the fine sgraffito scumbling
of Croaking Movement (plate
16), might well strike us as
more salient than the low-
common-denominator fac
tors of painterly abstraction
that they share.

Fig. 7. Jackson Pollock. Untitled (Scent).

c. 1953-55. Oil and enamel on canvas, 78 x
57/i in. (99 x 146 cm). Collection David Geffen,
LosAngeles

Fig. 8. Jackson Pollock. Eyesin the Heat

(Sounds in the Crass Series). 1946. Oil on
canvas, 54 x 43 in. (137.2x 109.2 cm). Peggy
Cuggenheim Collection, Venice. The Solomon
R. Cuggenheim Foundation, New York

240
 OPEN-ENDED CONCLUSIONS ABOUT JACKSON POLLOCK

Fig. 5. Jackson Pollock. Ritual. 1953. Oil on

canvas, 7 ft. 6/i in. x 42/, in. (229.9 x 108 cm).
Collection Robert and Jane Meyerhoff,
Phoenix, Maryland

Fig. 6. Jackson Pollock. Easter and the Totem.

1953. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 10/ain. x 58 in.
(208.6 x 147.3cm). The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. Cift of Lee Krasner in memory
of Jackson Pollock

239
 KIRK VARNEDOE

innovations and the narrative of his biography is matched, on an even more

important level, by the disconnection between these various pictures as we now
see them and the nature of the man as anecdotal history allows us to understand
him. This is especially true in regard to the poured paintings, which —it needs
stressing anew—are not expressionist art in any standard sense of the term.
Pollock's distance from expressionism, in terms of historical linkage, was of
course insisted upon initially by Greenberg and has been reemphasized by
Rubin, with both authors (and others) positioning the painter in a line of
4 descent from Cubism and Impressionism. But these arguments for Pollock's
roots in a Paris-based modern tradition, which downplay the role of raw emo
tional outpouring in his painting, have often been greeted with suspicion, as
tokens of a desire to deal in an art-for-art's-sake realm antiseptically divorced
from the messiness of life. Nothing could be farther from what I have in mind.
My problem with the expressionist model —the idea of venting private feelings
onto canvas—is not that it overemphasizes Pollock's individuality but ultimately
that it shortchanges it. No set of stories we have about Pollock, no description
of his character or account of him as a person, is anywhere near adequate to the
variety of expression we find in the paintings. Those who believe it takes a wor
ried man to sing a worried song, and who would explain the lines in the paint
ings as the uncoiled lineaments of Pollock's internal knots, are stuck trying to
make complex art match up with inadequate, cardboard models of a personality.
Such analysts must constrain the paintings to fit the spotty mosaic of ultimately
shallow guesses made about Pollock's psyche by those who knew him, or alter
natively risk projecting onto these same works their own untestable surmises
about the same unknowable inner life. Either way, the process diminishes both
the art and the person behind it. We need to accept that the "behavior" demon
strated on these canvases may be sharply different from any Pollock manifested
in other areas of his life, and that the range of character the work embodies —
with its complex blends of masculine and feminine elements, and its commin
gling of aggressive impulse and sophisticated control —may not correspond to
any other evidence of Pollock's persona, or even to any understanding of himself
the artist could articulate in other terms or by other means. The pulverized, softly
mottled, cloudy romanticism of Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950 (plates 6, 10-15,
17, 18), created by a fanatically complex reworking of the surface with an infin
5 ity of speckled incidents and subtly aerated glazes, or the obsessively swirled
nets of steadily fine white line in Number 20, 1948 (plate 37)—these are willfully
controlled worlds of feeling that present us with aspects of their maker's tem
perament otherwise lost to history and perhaps never set forth in any other form.
People are not neat, integrated packages, and their lives and psyches are
often compartmentalized, in smaller and larger ways. Pollock in the studio and
on canvas was not the same man as Pollock in the house or on the road.

242
 OPEN-ENDED CONCLUSIONS ABOUT JACKSON POLLOCK

The principal revelation of the retrospective, though, was the rich variety
among the poured or drip pictures. Even pictures executed in close temporal
proximity show fundamental differences of approach, not simply in their exe
cution but from the initial conception forward. The horizontal Lucifer (plate 7)
and the vertical Enchanted Forest (plate 36), for example, both date from 1947,
and both involve pouring over an initial base involving brushwork. But what
fundamentally different paintings! The broad underlying motley of pale blue
and sand in Lucifer is skeined over, in gluily viscous, sluggish drizzlings of black
enamel, with a fibrous network of dendritelike clusters, spiked by long, finely
stretched, low-relief shooting-star darts of teal, yellow, and orange oil paint
squeezed from the tube, and overgarlanded with rightward-dripping festoons of
green (flung on at the last, while the picture was standing vertically). The result
is a sense of unbounded and directionless drift that, for all the implicit turbu
lence, has an unimpeded, slackened pace, and tempers the inherently visionary
drama of the light-through-darkness image with a sense of reverie. In contrast to
this cosmos, Enchanted Forest is all earth and water. The limited palette of gray-
browns and rust accents is set down in soaking, saturated swags of thinned-flat
medium, with broadly sweeping, weedy rhythms whose loops are punctuated
with areas of molten puddling and glutted by a murky oversplattering of watery
washes and droplets —especially of an off-white closely cousined to the initial
ground tone. The painting's swollen, aqueously milky fullness, its soft, churning
rhythms, and its limited hue structure stand leagues away from Lucifer.
From the moment of their conception through every decision in their exe
cution, these were always vastly different paintings, and the list of their crucial
dissimilarities —palette; ground; dilution and mix of mediums; speed; structure;
density —is so imposing that it virtually belies, even within this one year, the
notion of any common strategy that could be a called a style or method. And
the problem only becomes more complex as Pollock's experience with poured
abstraction grows. On the one hand, despite their differences in pace, palette,
and feeling, the structural similarities among pictures of similar format in dif
ferent years—such as Number 13A, 1948: Arabesque and Number 2, 1949—suggest
an artist working within a repertoire of genres or familiar, retrievable formulae.
On the other, the broad variety of essentially one-off approaches in one period —
now comparing Arabesque to Number 1A, 1948 (plate 2), or Number 5, 1948, or
Number 11A, 1948 (Black, White and Gray) (p. 148, fig. 7) all in the same year—
underline how fertilely inconsistent Pollock was, constantly reinventing his
approach, on widely different scales and in broadly varying emotional ranges,
throughout the "classic" years of 1947-50. Whether picture by picture or year by
year, Pollock's work does not lend itself to being organized according to any con
sistent, linear model of development —or linked in any steadily evident fashion
with the unfolding of his life. And the disconnections between the order of his

241
 KIRK VARNEDOE

longer sustain such myths. The evidence of Pollock's works, one by one and as a
sequence of development, argue for a different set of understandings about the
underpinnings of radical innovation in modern art—one in which the debunk
ing of both determinism and chance could reestablish both the radical role of
individual agency and the fertile flexibility of art's conventions.
Something very important is at stake here. Standing before a great Pollock
poured painting— and most especially, at the retrospective, standing surrounded
by the three monumental poured paintings of 1950 (plates 3-5)—people are
moved in tremendously powerful ways. And it seems impossible to understand
why this is so, why Pollock's paintings have the peculiar power they have as art,
without acknowledging the very particular and personal ways in which they
were shaped as an intricate set of forms, through a complex blend of intent and
accident, of reflex and reconsideration, of broad risk-taking and fine-tuned
manipulation. And what is at issue ultimately is not only the stature of Pollock's
accomplishment, but something even more fundamental, about the promises of
what modern art can, at its best, achieve.
Modern art s experiments have always implied a wager. Viewers are asked to
give up a lot: no more rosy sunsets or historical chronicles or cuddly dogs or
pretty faces or palm trees or, often, even any recognizable things; in Pollock's
more extreme case, not even anything we would readily know how to call com
position, or hierarchy of forms, or pictorial order. But if we are going to give all
this up, and allow artists to wreak havoc with our traditions, we have been led
to expect we will get something in return. On the most immediate level, mod
ern art was supposed to generate from its ruptures a set of forms and an orches
tration of thought and feeling that we would embrace as more specific to our
time more uniquely anchored in, and generative of, the credo that we and our
moment are separate from older modes and other epochs. So hungry are we for
this affirmation that we have often tended to overvalorize the modernist de
struction of earlier cultural conventions as a self-justifying act, salutary and cre
ative in itself—and in the process often to confuse novelty with innovation, and
nihilism with creativity. But in that bargain, we risk accepting, as recompense for
all we have given up, only a new and cultish tradition of inbred one-upmanship.
The balancing premise of modern art was implicit in Cezanne's statement
of his ambition to "redo Poussin after nature"— that is, to try to recapture and
reformulate, by the most progressive and specifically contemporary means (in
his case, of Impressionist naturalism), the achievements he so admired in one of
his greatest forebears. This is perhaps the most imposing promise of modern art:
that what will be left after all the eliminations and destructions will not be just
an exhilarating void or an ennoblingly empty ache, but new, unexpected, and
unfamiliar languages of art with sufficient suppleness and range to allow the
expressions of our own realms of feeling to equal or surpass, in fresh and

244
 OPEN-ENDED CONCLUSIONS ABOUT JACKSON POLLOCK

Ironically, it's those who try to explain the "fragmentation" and putatively dis
turbed turbulence of the paintings as one-to-one indices of the inner man who
ask us to accept a falsely neat ideal of integration, wholeness, and consistency,
between the different aspects of Pollock's psychic makeup and the variety of
expressions in his art. On the other hand, by disconnecting what we see in
Pollock's paintings from the schematic anecdotes we have about his life, we can
allow more of him, not less, into his art. We can begin to see how the person
who emerged on these canvases was in many ways antithetical to—and certainly
complex in other ways than —the person who comes down to us in family rem
iniscences, fragmentary and often borrowed quotes, and cliched sagas of binges
at the Cedar Bar.
The search for such finer-grained discrimination fueled the examination, in
the retrospective and its accompanying publication, of the way Pollock actually
made the poured or drip paintings. In insisting on the evidence of refined con
trol and complex patterns of intent in these paintings, the aim was not to make
a fetish of technique; as Pollock himself averred, the end is what counts, and
technique is only a means of getting there. But if we are to understand what
these pictures are—to say what they properly evidence, and can legitimately be
made to stand for—we need once and for all to scotch the false myths of wild
and heedless improvisation that cling to them. And what we propose to replace
those romances with is hardly the flat-footed conservatism of some traditionally
premeditated craft. Just as certainly as Pollock's work belies the simplistic unity
inherent in the expressionist idea of inner feeling poured into outer form, so too
it will not be accommodated within crude dichotomies between the planned
and the unplanned, the intended and the automatic, the knowing and the
unconscious, the controlled and the accidental. The constant interplay and feed
back among these aspects of his practice was too swift, too inseparably interwo
ven, to allow for neat antitheses or clear either/or choices. Pollock's improvisa-
tional spontaneity was, as Pepe Karmel has suggested, akin to that of the jazz
musician who stitches together, on the fly and in wholly unpredictable ways, a
repertoire of familiar riffs—or, as I have said elsewhere, to that of the great ath
lete or dancer who, operating beyond any programmed move or convention,
achieves a spectacular grace, its intense, of-the-moment presentness a seamless
blend of unthinking spasm and trained will.
Accident and fatality have been the twin plagues of our understanding of
Pollock. The two romances —the ideas, respectively, of abandonment to
untamed chaos and of entrapment by tragic destiny —have twinned with each
other to surround his work with the modern myth of an involuntary art, born
of some irresistible necessity or external impulsion, and hence projected beneath
or above the mundane thresholds of mere fumbling intent, or into zones of free
dom beyond the manacles of conventional cultural construction. We cannot any

243
 Index

Alfieri, Bruno 93, 94, 101, d'Harnoncourt, Rene 9 Heartfield, John 42 Maeght gallery 219
223, 224 Dix, Georgina 202 Held, A1 65 Malevich, Kasimir 16
Alicata, Mario 226 Doerner, Max 113 Heller, Ben 11,12 Mancusi-Ungaro, Carol 236
Alloway, Lawrence 35, Donati, Enrico 218 Hemingway, Ernest 203 Mangold, Robert 64
208-10, 213 Dorival, Bernard 220 Herner, Irene 42 Marin, John 223
Andre, Carl 175 Dornand, Guy 219 Heron, Patrick 206, 209 Martin, Philip 218
Lever 174 Dove, Arthur 223 Hesiod 74 Masson, Andre 39, 73, 74, 158
Appel, Karel 218 Drexler, Arthur 62 Hesse, Eva 175, 196, 233 Antilles 73
Arnheim, Rudolph 23 Drouin, Rene 218 Untitled (Rope Piece) 234 Mathieu, Georges 206, 216,
Ashton, Dore 219 Dubuffet, Jean 17,29,217 Hofmann, Hans 29, 36, 37, 217
Auden, W. H. 71 Duncan, Isadora 30 39, 78, 213, 236 Matisse, Henri 10, 16, 40, 64,
Fantasia 28 66, 210, 236
Bachelard, Gaston 34 Earwicker, H. C. 29 Holmes, Martha 100 Matta, Roberto 117, 119
Baker, Betsy 155 Ehrenzweig, Anton 208 Hopper, Edward 219 Mayer, Ralph 113
Balzac, Honore de 77 Einstein, Carl 72, 73 Horn, Axel 42, 45, 52 McBride, Henry 77
Banham, Reyner 218 Eisenstein, Sergei 42 Hunter, Sam 10, 35, 212, 219 McCray, Porter 220
Barr, Alfred H. 9-11,40,73, Elderfield, John 184, 185 Hurlburt, Dolores Valdivia McNeil, George 66
75, 87, 213, 223 El Greco 41, 43, 103 Diagram of Siqueiros's com Melville, Herman 204
Barrer, Gertrude 84 Elliot, Gerald 64 position for Portrait of the Melville, Robert 206
Baselitz, Georg 235 Empson, William 195, 196 Bourgeoisie 54 Messinger, Lisa Mintz 42
Bataille, Georges 161, 168 Ernst, Max 39, 73, 74 Hurlburt, Laurance 42 Michaux, Henri 206, 217
Baziotes, William 46, 78, 223 Michelangelo 155
Beaudoin, Kenneth 84 Faulkner, William 203, 204 Jaguer, Edouard 216, 218 Miller, Dorothy 111
Beckmann, Max 10 Fautrier, Jean 217 Janis, Harriet 12 Miro, Joan 9, 36, 39, 47, 77,
Benglis, Lynda 196 Fermi, Enrico 30 Janis, Sidney 11, 12, 75, 83, 78, 80, 84, 85, 87, 89, 92,
Benton, Thomas Hart 35, 37, Fin 205 88, 150, 217 93, 204, 218, 235
39, 43, 44, 45, 47, 52, 55, Fliess, Wilhelm 195 Jeannerat, Pierre 208 The Beautiful Bird Revealing
64, 66, 84, 102 Fontana, Lucio 223 Johns, Jasper 168 the Unknown to a Pair of
Berger, John 208, 212 Fougeron, Andre Diver 169 Lovers 78
Berggruen, Heinz 218 Civilisation Atlantique 215 Johnson, Philip 64 Moller, Hans 81, 87, 88
Blake, Peter 62, 63 Francis, Sam 206, 218 Judd, Donald 64, 164 Chessplayers 82
Bloom, Harold 55, 71, 161 Frankenthaler, Helen 8, 181-99 Jung, Carl 155 Mondrian, Piet 10, 12, 16, 36,
Bocour, Leonard 112, 149 Before the Caves 142; Blue 37, 64, 93
Bois, Yve-Alain 160 Territory 184; Europa 192; Kadish, Reuben 43, 44, 60 Monet, Claude 38, 93, 156
Bonnard, Pierre 210 Holocaust 183; Jacob's Kamrowski, Gerard 46 Morris, Robert 160, 161, 163,
Braque, Georges 36, 71, 73, 206 Ladder 193; Mountains and Kandinsky, Vasily 36, 39, 75, 168, 170
Breton, Andre 223 Sea 142, 191; Seven Types of 204, 226 Untitled 163, Untitled
Brian, Doris 76 Ambiguity 143 Kaprow, Allan 62, 160 (Tangle) 163
Brown, G. Baldwin 89 Freud, Sigmund 71, 161, 163, Yard 160 Motherwell, Robert 88, 117,
Brus, Giinter 63 195, 196 Karmel, Pepe 103-5, 120, 155, 145, 185
Bryen, Camille 216 Fried, Michael 23, 27, 165, 156, 171 Moy, Seong 84
Bucarelli, Palma 225 187, 188 Kelly, Ellsworth 64 Mussolini, Benito 222
Burchfield, Charles 40 Friedman, B. H. 42, 46, 52 Khrushchev, Nikita 222
Busa, Peter 52, 61, 84, 102, 117 Fuchs, Claus 22 Klee, Paul 73, 80 Naifeh, Steven 42, 46, 59, 60
The Thing in the Present 86 Klein, Yves 64 Namuth, Hans 26, 29, 30, 63,
Calantiere, Lewis 201, 205 Kline, Franz 213 86-88, 92, 100, 102, 155-7,
Cahill, Homer 207 Genauer, Emily 81, 87, 88 Kooning, Willem de 33, 34, 161, 170, 212, 214, 217,
Calder, Alexander 205 Gershwin, George 44 60, 65, 149, 204, 213, 217 220, 227, 236
Campbell, Lawrence 195 Gindertael, R. V. 218 Kosuth, Joseph 164 Newby, Howard 203
Capogrossi, Giuseppe 216, 217 Giotto 41, 193 Kounellis, Jannis 227 Newman, Arnold 100
Carmean, E. A. 155 Goetz, Alexander 218 Krasner, Lee 10-12, 36-38, 46, Newman, Barnett 64, 213, 220
Caro, Anthony 213 Goodnough, Robert 87 56, 57, 60, 64, 71, 81, Newton, Eric 206, 208
Carpentier, Charles 219 Gorky, Arshile 34, 204, 223 110-12, 145, 155, 236 Noland, Kenneth 186, 188,
Cassou, Jean 220 Gottlieb, Adolph 213 Krauss, Rosalind 11, 59-60 189, 192, 194, 233
Cezanne, Paul 33, 244 Graham, John 37, 39, 77 Thaw 167; installation view
Chastel, Andre 219 Greenberg, Clement 10, 23, Landau, Ellen 42 showing Coarse Shadow and
Chirico, Giorgio de 43 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 57, 64, Lanyon, Peter 213 Stria 166
Choay, Franfoise 220 65, 71, 72, 84, 88, 94, 112, Laszlo, Violet de 29 Novros, David 64
Coddington, James 149, 236 155, 156, 158, 160, 163-7, Lauterbach, Ann 65
Coldstream, William 209 175, 185-8, 190, 204, Lautreamont, Le Compte de O'Connor, Francis V. 12, 42
Connolly, Cyril 202 205, 233, 235, 242 30 O'Hara, Frank 11, 35
Cortes, Hernando 48 Gromaire, Marcel 17 Leger, Fernand 10, 12, 75, 83 O'Keeffe, Georgia 223
Courbet, Gustave 16, 27 Guggenheim, Peggy 10, 37, Lehman, Harold 36, 42, 43, Onslow-Ford, Gordon 39
Crispolti, Enrico 226, 227 61, 73, 78, 118, 119, 159, 44, 45, 57, 59 Oppenheimer, Max 22
cummings, e. e. 203 205, 223, 236 Leiris gallery 219 Orozco, Jose Clemente 8, 35,
Guglielmi, Louis 223 Lepore, Mario 226 38-44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51,
Dannatt, Trevor 210 Guilbaut, Serge 29, 214 Levi-Strauss, Claude 15, 185 52, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 64
Dausset, Nina 216 Guston, Philip 34, 43, 44, LeWitt, Sol 64 The Barricade 50, La
Davie, Alan 205 57, 60, 213 Lieberman, William 11 Belicosidad (The Spanish
Davis, Stuart 223 Louchheim, Aline B. 201, 202, Conquest: War Scene) 51,
Degottex, Jean 218 Hartley, Marsden 223 205 Cortes 48, Dive Bomber and
Delacroix, Eugene 16 Harten, Jiirgen 42 Louis, Morris 149, 186-90, Tank 41, Gods of the Modern
Deleuze, Gilles 175 Hartung, Hans 217 192, 194, 233 World (The Epic of American
Demuth, Charles 223 Hayter, Stanley William 74, Beta Lambda 234 Civilization, panel 17) 49,
Denny, Robyn 203, 204, 209, 83, 93 Lunacharsky, Anatoly 40 Man of Fire 47
213 Combat 85

246
 OPEN-ENDED CONCLUSIONS ABOUT JACKSON POLLOCK

unhackneyed terms, the density and range of the greatest human expressions—
Shakespeare, Beethoven —we have inherited.
For a long time now, Pollock has been admired as a great eliminator and
destroyer, and trumpeted as a poster boy for the anticultural freedom and essen
tially anarchic, antihumanist force of modern art. This is at best only half the
story. Pollock's particular kind of modern innovation undeniably derives much
of its cultural power from the corrosive, liberating power of its negations. The
countless ways in which it rejects the traditions of painting have long been sear-
ingly apparent. But, like the best of modern art, it also has tremendous genera
tive, and regenerative, power. In return for all that it takes away from art's tradi
tions, it gives back something fertile, complex, and expandable —and this not
simply by clearing the decks, but by the range of expressive powers in the origi
nal language of form it deploys. When Pollock eliminates all that he eliminates
from painting, what is left is not chaos, or anarchy, or heedless spontaneity.
What is produced is a densely complex language of form, capable of an enor
mous range of expression, from the monumental to the intimate, from the lyri
cal to the apocalyptic, from the basely crude to the ethereally fine—and perhaps
most enthrallingly, capable of conjuring all these things near simultaneously, in
a special wedding of intransigent abstract materiality and rich metaphoric evo
cation that will not be prized apart. The dream of modern art may be an impos
sible one, and the wager unlikely—that individual freedoms can yield shared cul
tures, and that the apparent negation of tradition can rebuild something of
equal worth, binding us paradoxically both to our time and simultaneously to
the greatest achievements of the past—but in Pollock's best work, we feel, near
the end of modern art's first century, that the gamble was redeemed.

Notes

1.Clement Greenberg,"Art," The Nation

160 no. 14 (April 7, 1945): 397.
2. Greenberg, "Art," The Nation 157
no. 22 (November 27, 1943): 621.
3. See Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, "Jackson
Pollock: Response as Dialogue," and
James Coddington, "No Chaos Damn
It," both in the present volume.
4. See William S. Rubin, "Jackson
Pollock and the Modern Tradition,"
parts I-IV, Artforum5 nos. 6 (February
1967): 14-22, 7 (March 1967): 28-37,
8 (April 1967): 18-31, and 9 (May
1967): 28-33.
5. See Coddington, "No Chaos Damn
It," in the present volume.

245
 Acknowledgments

The symposium of which this volume is a record was organized by the Museum's
Department of Education with the enthusiastic support of Patterson Sims, Dep
uty Director for Education and Research Support. Josiana Bianchi, Public Programs
Coordinator, and Maribel Bastian, Public Programs Assistant, helped us to attract
a large and attentive audience, and made sure that the event went off with ad
mirable smoothness. Over the course of two days, our guest authors —T. J. Clark,
James Coddington, Rosalind Krauss, Jeremy Lewison, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro,
Robert Storr, and Anne Wagner—shared their diverse insights into Pollock and
participated in vigorous discussion and debate.
Translating this event into book form was no easy task. Delphine Dannaud,
Administrative Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, and Anna
Indych, our original Research Assistant for the Pollock exhibition, obtained essen
tial photographs, filled countless informational lacunae, and were an adminis
trative godsend. In the Publications Department, David Frankel, Editor, helped
all of us clarify our thoughts and sharpened our prose. Christina Grillo, Senior
Production Assistant, worked miracles to get the book printed on schedule and
on budget. Michael Maegraith, Publisher, bore with us despite daunting logisti
cal difficulties. We are indebted to Steven Schoenfelder for the exceptionally
handsome cover and layout, crafted to harmonize with the design of Jackson
Pollock, the book published in 1998 to accompany the Pollock exhibition.
Finally we are deeply grateful to The David Geffen Foundation, which has
funded this and both of the other publications associated with the exhibition —
Jackson Pollock, and Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles, and Reviews,a collection
of earlier writings on the artist published as a companion to the present volume.

—KV and PK

248
 Photograph Credits

Ossorio, Alfonso 55, 120, 145, Color] 82; Untitled Smith, Tony 56, 59, 62, 63, Courtesy Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Photograph by Steven
Sloman:143,192.
170, 206 [Composition with Donkey 64, 155, 170 O 1997 Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips

Ozenfant, Amedee 75, 76, 83, 90 Head] 51; Untitled [Red Sobel, Janet 39 Academy, Andover, Mass. Photograph by Greg Heins,
Boston: 106.
La Belle Vie 76 Painting 1-7] 182; Untitled Soby, James Thrall 10, 78, 235 DavidAllison:91, figs.20, 21; 148.
(Scent) 240; Untitled (Woman) Soulages, Pierre 218, 221 Courtesy Jackson Pollock Papers, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Paalen, Wolfgang 39 53; White Light 135 Spender, Stephen 203, 204 Rephotographed by Lee Ewing: 188.
Parsons, Betty (Betty Parsons Pollock, Roy 43 Speyer, Darthea 218 The Art Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved. O 1997,
photograph by Greg Williams: 1S9. O 1999: SI, fig. 11.
Gallery) 18-21, 23, 25, 27, Pollock, Sande 43, 44, 60 Stalin, Joseph 222 James Coddington and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro: 105; 107;
29, 30, 60, 86, 120, 186 Posada, Jose Guadalupe 41 Stamos, Theodoras 223 124, pis. 7, 8; 125, pi. 10; 126, pi. 11; 127, pi. 12; 128,
pis. 13, 14; 129, pi. 15; 130, pis. 17, 18; 131, pi. 19; 132,
Picabia, Francis 39 Potter, Jeffrey 42 Steig, William 205 pi. 20; 133, pi. 21; 134, pi. 22; 135, pi. 23; 136, pis. 25,
Picasso, Pablo 8, 9, 10, 16, 33, Steinberg, Leo 165, 166 26; 137, pi. 27; 138, pi. 28; 139, pis. 29, 30; 140, pi. 31;

34, 36-39, 46-48, 55, 64-66, Quirt, Walter 83 Stella, Frank 64 141, pi. 32; 149.
O 1998 Trustees of Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.: 49,
71-75, 77-81, 83, 84, 88, 90, The Crucified 85 Stella, Joseph 223
92-94, 155, 170, 204, 206, Stevens, Wallace 16, 17, 21, Andre Fougeron Estate/Artists Right Society (ARS), N.Y.: 215.
C 1999 Helen Frankenthaler: 142, pi. 33. Courtesy
224, 236, 237 Ragon, Michel 218, 220 22, 30 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Dot and line drawing 78, La Rauschenberg, Robert 94 Still, Clyfford 150, 213 Gianfranco Gorgoni, New York: 172.
C The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.
Crucifixion 74, Painter and Rebus 94 Stowe, Robert 208 Photograph by David Heald: 240, fig. 8. Photograph by
Model 72, The Swimmer 75, Read, Herbert 87, 203, 207 Sutherland, Graham 205 Sergio Martucci: 129, pi. 16.

Two Women in front of a Renau, John Joseph 42 Sutton, Denys 205, 214 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian
Window 79 Restany, Pierre 218, 220, 221 Sweeney, James Johnson 10 Institution, Washington, D.C. Photograph by Lee
Stalsworth: 176, fig. 18.
Pistoletto, Michelangelo 227 Reynolds, Joshua 75 Sylvester, David 204, 205, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dtisseldorf.
Polcari, Stephen 42 Riley, Bridget 209, 213 208-10, 213 Photograph by Walter Klein: 122, pi. 3; 125, pi. 9.
O 1990 Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of
Polke, Sigmar 235 Riopelle, Jean-Paul 206,217,218 Art. All rights reserved: 19, fig. 3.
Pollock, Charles 43, 60, 61 Rivera, Diego 35, 39, 40, 41, Tal Coat, Rene Pierre 17, 218 O 1999 Andre Masson Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS),

Pollock, Frank 118 42, 43, 44 Tapi6, Michel 205, 206, 216, N.Y. Courtesy Giraudon: 73.
Herbert Matter. Courtesy Staley Wise Gallery: 119.
Pollock, Jackson Robertson, Bryan 35, 210, 212, 217, 219, 220, 224 Courtesy Jason McCoy Gallery: 82, fig. 12.

Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 220 Taubes, Frederic 113, 146 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. All rights
reserved. © 1994: 48, fig. 6. © 1998: 123, pi. 5. © The
1950 18, 19, 123, 124, 156, Rohn, Matthew L. 171 Taylor, Basil 209 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 50, fig. 9.

157; Bald Woman with Diagram for Pollock's Teller, Edmund 22,30 © 1999 Estate of Joan Mlr6/ Artists Rights Society (ARS),
N.Y. Photograph © The Museum of Modern Art.
Skeleton 49; Birth 238; Black Convergence: Number 10, 1952 Thompson, D'Arcy 17 Photograph by Colten: 78, fig. 8.
and White Painting III 56; 171 Thompson, David 210 © 1999 Robert Morris/A.R.S. Photograph by Rudolph
Burckhardt, courtesy Leo Castelli Gallery: 163, fig. 9.
Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952 Rose, Barbara 184, 185 Thurber, James 203 © 1999 The Museum of Modern Art, New York: 156, 193.
134; Convergence: Number 10, Rose, Bernice 147 Tintoretto 43, 103 Photograph by Tom Grlesel: 84. Photographs by Kate
Keller: 80; 85, fig. 15; 122, pi. 4; 163, fig. 10; 176, fig. 19;
1952 135; Croaking Rosenberg, Harold 33, 35, 57, Titian 193 234, fig. 1; 238, fig. 4; 239, fig. 6. Photograph by James
Movement 129; The 63, 166, 167, 207, 208, 212 Tobey, Mark 93, 223 Mathews: 162, fig. 7. Photograph by Mali Olatun|i: 104.

Debutante 146; The Deep Rosenblum, Robert 219, 220 Tomlin, Bradley Walker 223 Photographs by Soichl Sunami: 41; 45; 50, fig. 10.
Photographs by John Wronn: 121, pi. 2; 135, pi. 24.
139, 150; Easter and the Rothko, Mark 64, 84, 213, 220, Toyen 218 © The Museum of Modern Art. Photocomposites: 156, fig.

Totem 239; Echo: Number 25, 223 Truman, Harry 22 1; 157,figs.2-4.

O The Museum of Modern Art Archives, International
1951 132; Enchanted Forest Rothschild, Judith 78 Turnbull, William 213 Council/International Program Exhibition Records: 211,

144; Eyes in the Heat 240; Rubin, William 11, 12, 34, 36, Twombly, Cy 94, 161, 170 figs. 1-3; 224; 225.
Nagashima Museum, Kagoshima City: S3, fig. 14.
Full Fathom Five 104, 105; 38, 39, 156, 175, 233, 242 The Italians 162 O 1999 Hans Namuth Ltd. Courtesy Pollock-Krasner House

Lavender Mist: Number 1, Russell, Alfred 217 Tyler, Parker 21-23, 25, 30, and Study Center, East Hampton, Long Island. Jackson
Pollock Catalogue Raisonn6 Archive: 18; 19, fig. 2.
1950 123, 125-30; Lucifer Russell, Bertrand 202 182, 183 Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, The
124; Male and Female in Russell, John 210 Tzara, Tristan 218 University of Arizona: 25.
© 1998 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art,
Search of a Symbol 79; The Russo, Giovanni 226 Washington, D.C. Photograph by Richard Carafelli: 123,
Moon-Woman Cuts the Circle Ryman, Robert 64 Ubac, Raoul 205 pi. 6.
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa: 174.
13 7; Mural 118,119,121; © Kenneth Noland/Licensed by VAGA, New York: 166, 167.
Number 1A, 1948 121; Sadoul, Georges 216 Vaccaro, Tony 112, 149, 150 Edward Owen: 239, fig. 5.

Number 5, 1948 145; Number Sakharov, Andrei 22 Valsecchi, Marco 227 Gordon Parks/Life Magazine © Time, Inc.: 184, fig. 3.
Philadelphia Museum of Art: 20, fig. 4.
11A, 1948 (Black, White and Saltzman, Lisa 182, 184 Varnedoe, Kirk 118 © 1999 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS),

Gray) 148; Number 14, 1948 Sartre, Jean-Paul 212, 221 Vasconcelos, Jose 40 N.Y.: 74. Photograph courtesy The Museum of Modern
Art, New York, by Kate Keller 78, fig. 7. Photograph
103; Number 20, 1948 144; Schapiro, Meyer 207 Vedova, Emilio 223 courtesy The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, by Allen

Number 6, 1950 28; Number Schoenberg, Arnold 158 Venturi, Lionello 227 Mewbourn: 79, fig. 9. Photograph courtesy R.M.N.-
Picasso,by J.G.Berizzi: 72. Photograph courtesy R.M.N.-
15, 1950 19; Number 19, Scott, William 205 Venturoli, Marcello 225, 226 Picasso, by R. G. Ojeda: 75.
1950 20; Number 20, 1950 Seiberling, Dorothy 87, 88 Viviano, Catherine 223 Courtesy Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East
Hampton, Long Island. Jackson Pollock Catalogue
27; Number 22, 1950 20; Serpan, Iaroslav 206 Vollard, Ambroise 77 Raisonn* Archive: 20, fig. 5; 47, fig. 4; 56; 79, fig. 10;
Number 27, 1950 24, 25; Serra, Richard 55, 170-3, 175, 118; 189.
© Robert Rauschenberg/Licensed by VAGA, N.Y.: 94.
Number 28, 1950 131; 233 Wahl, Theodore 46 Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design: 183.
Number 32, 1950 122, 125; 2-2-1: To Dickie and Tina 176, Warhol, Andy 60, 161, 164, Courtesy Matthew L. Rohn: 171.

Number 14, 1951 57; Number Casting 173, Cutting Device: 170 Courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York.
Photograph by Josh Nefsky: 86.
22, 1951 133; Ocean Base Plate Measure 176 Oxidation Painting 162 Suzanne Siano: 150, fig. 10.

Greyness 139; One: Number Seuphor, Michel 217, 218 Watson, Peter 205 Tate Gallery, London: 57; 238, fig. 3.
The University of Arizona Museum of Art: 27.
31, 1950 91, 122; Shahn, Ben 207,219 Weil-Lorac, M. 215 C University of California, Berkeley, Art Museum.

Phosphorescence 106, 107; Sheeler, Charles 223 Wescher, Herta 218 Photograph by Benjamin Blackwell: 28, fig. 9; 142, pi.
34. Photograph by Colin McRae: 28, fig. 10.
Ritual 141, 239; The She- Siqueiros, David Alfaro 8, 35, Wheeler, Steve 36 © 1959, The University of Iowa Museum of Art. All rights

Wolf 136; Shimmering 38-46, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, Winters, Terry 235 reserved: 121, pi. 1.
Courtesy University Gallery, University of Minnesota: 85,
Substance 140; Stenographic 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 109, 167 Wdlfflin, Heinrich 160 fig. 15.
Figure 80, 238; Totem Lesson Birth of Fascism (first version) Wols 158, 205, 217 © Tony Vaccaro: 150, fig. 9.
Kirk Varnedoe: 144, pi. 36; 144, pi. 37.
2 138; Untitled, c. 1938-41 53, Collective Suicide 45, Wright, William 57, 58 Anne Wagner: 191, figs. 7, 8.
48; Untitled, c. 1938-41 50; Portrait of the Bourgeoisie 54 Wyeth, Andrew 207, 219 Courtesy Joan T. Washburn Gallery, New York: 49, fig. 7.
© 1998 The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York:
Untitled, c. 1939 47; Sironi, Mario 41 184, fig. 4; 234, fig. 2. Photograph by Geoffrey Clements:
Untitled, c. 1939-42 89; Smith, Adam 30 89, fig. 19. O 1999, photograph by Steven Sloman: 24. ©

Untitled, 1944 159; Untitled, Smith, Gregory White 42, Yale University Art Gallery. Photograph by Joseph Szaszfai:
1944-45 84; Untitled, c. 46, 59, 60 103.
1946 91; Untitled, 1951 189; Smith, Joseph 56 Wilfrid Zogbaum. Courtesy Jackson Pollock Papers,

Untitled [Black Pouring over Smith, Richard 213 Washington, D.C. Rephotographed by Lee Ewing: 145.

247
JacksonPollockNewApproach
Jackson Pollock is widely considered the most challenging and influential Ameri
artist of the twentieth century. In his revolutionary paintings of the late 1940s,
poured paint into complex webs of interlacing lines, rhythmically punctuated
pools of color. With their allover composition, apparent abstraction, and spon
neous but controlled paint-handling, these powerful works announced the em
gence of Abstract Expressionism.
In 1998-99, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized a landmark re
spective of Pollock's work, making it possible for a new generation of artists a
viewers to experience his paintings firsthand. During the exhibition, nine lead
scholars gathered at the Museum to discuss Pollock's work and its meaning tod
Their essays, collected in this volume, demonstrate the continued relevance of Pollo
work for contemporary art, and the vitality and diversity of contemporary criticism
This book is accompanied by a companion volume, Jackson Pollock: Intervie
Articles, and Reviews, collecting essential older texts by or about Pollock. Along w
Jackson Pollock, the sumptuously illustrated catalogue of the exhibition, these bo
offer an indispensable overview of a painter who decisively changed the nature
modern art.

248 pages; 145 illustrations (37 in color) Printed in Italy ISBN 0-87070-086-3 (MoMA, Thames & Hudson) * ISBN 0-
6202-0 (Abrams) A companion volume to Jackson Pollock (1998; 336 pages; 227 color and 198 duotone illustrations; IS
87070-068-5 [MoMA], 0-8109-6193-8 [Abrams], 1-85437-275-0 [Tate]); and to Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles, ami R
(1999; 284 pages; ISBN 0-87070-037-5 (MoMA, Thames & Hudson), 0-8109-6212-8 (Abrams) Cover: Jackson Pollock. Numb
19.48(detail). 1948. Oil and enamel on canvas, 68 in. x 8 ft. 8 in. (172.7 x 264.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Pur
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, II West 53 Street, New York, New York 10019 (www.moma.or
The Museum nf Mnriom

300198616