ENERGY MADE VISIBLE

Photo: ©Arnold Newman

FRIEDMAN
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 Acclaim for Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

“Friedman’s enduring biography of Pollock is essential reading for any-

one interested in the artist’s life and work.”
—Jeffrey Potter, author of To a Violent Grave:
An Oral Biography of Jackson Pollock

“A compelling biography of the one-time enfant terrible of modern ab-

stract art, by an author who wisely lets his subject reveal himself as
much as possible through his letters to his friends and family. ... Artist and
man, one as turbulent and tragic as the other, are superbly intertwined
in this portrait as they were in Pollock’s brief life.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Friedman’s Pollock is a close as one could have gotten to him... . His

analysis of the paintings is, thank heaven, simple and unpretentious, and
he doesn’t try to fill in the unfillable with notions that appear scholarly
but are in truth pure gas.” —Los Angeles Times

“Crammed with revelatory details.” —Boston Globe

“Only an artist with B.H. Friedman’s skill and talent could have written
about Jackson Pollock so that it is possible to see and hear him. The
book is invaluable to me as a painter because of its perceptions.”
—Jim Dine

“An important and authoritative book... . It will take its place as a key-
stone for any further studies of Pollock and his world and will be read
for many years to come.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“Significant in substance and insights, [this book] is written in a vibrant

style....An important, multifaceted view of an American art innova-
tor.” —Booklist
“(Jackson Pollock} is not likely to be superseded. ... [Friedman] writes
with ease and competence about the paintings and art in general....
Partisan but just and equally good as introduction or reference.”
—Kirkus

“This biography, which successfully recreates the atmosphere surround-

ing both Pollock’s career and the beginnings of the New York school of
Abstract Expressionism, is moving and wholly engaging.”
—Library Journal

“The book will be read—and should be read—for the valuable details it

brings us about a period of American art that is only now beginning to
acquire a serious historical literature.”
—Hilton Kramer, New York Times Book Review

“For evaluation, interpretation, biography, quoted material from letters,

reviews, interviews, art show catalogs; for analysis of the artist’s work
and human essence, Friedman’s book will be difficult to surpass.”
—Detroit Sunday News
Jackson Pollock

Energy Made Visible

 By B.H. FRIEDMAN

Novels
CIRCLES
YARBOROUGH
WHISPERS
MUSEUM
ALMOST A LIFE
THE POLYGAMIST
Story Collections
COMING CLOSE
BETWEEN THE FLAGS
Biographies
JACKSON POLLOCK: ENERGY MADE VISIBLE
GERTRUDE VANDERBILT WHITNEY
(with Flora Biddle)
Monographs (in whole or in part)
SCHOOL OF NEW YORK: Some Younger Artists
ROBERT GOODNOUGH
LEE KRASNER
ALFONSO OSSORIO
SALVATORE SCARPITTA
MYRON STOUT
DAVID PORTER
CROSSCURRENTS: East Hampton and Provincetown
MICHAEL LEKAKIS
FRANZ KLINE
Plays
THE CRITIC
BEAUTY BUSINESS
CASE HISTORY
HEART OF A BOY
MIRRORS
 Energy Made Visible

&D Cc <« oe

DA CAPO PRESS
 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Friedman, B. H. (Bernard Harper), 1926-
Jackson Pollock: energy made visible / by B. H. Friedman.—1st Da
Capo Press ed.
Doc:
Originally published: New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-306-80664-9
1. Pollock, Jackson, 1912-1956. 2. Painters—United States—Biography.
3. Abstract expressionism—United States. I. Title.
ND237.P73F7 1995
759.13—dc20
[B] 95-21130
CIP

45678910 02010099

First Da Capo Press edition 1995

A member of the Perseus Books Group
This Da Capo Press paperback edition of Jackson Pollock is an
unabridged republication of the edition first published in New York
in 1972, with textual emendations, a new foreword by the author,
and new photos. It is reprinted by arrangement with the author.

Copyright © 1972 by B.H. Friedman

New foreword copyright © 1995 by B.H. Friedman

The She-Wolf, Guardians of the Secret, No. 14A, Number 8, Lucifer,

No. 3, Convergence, and Search are reprinted by permission of the
Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
PERMISSIONS The New Republic for “Jackson Pollock,” by
The author and publishers are grateful to the Manny Farber, © 1945, Harrison-Blaine of
following for permission to include quoted New Jersey, Inc.
extracts: The New Yorker for reviews which appeared
between 1943 and 1945; “Unframed Space,”
in “The Talk of the Town,” August 5, 1950
Art in America for “Who Was Jackson
Pantheon Books, a division of Random House,
Pollock?” by Francine and Cleve Gray,
Inc., for an excerpt from An Emotional
May-June 1967
Memoir of Franz Kline, by Fielding Dawson,
Art News for “The American Action Painters,” Copyright © 1967 by Fielding Dawson
by Harold Rosenberg
Partisan Review for ‘Art Chronicle: Feeling
City Lights Books for “A Step Away from Is All,” by Clement Greenberg, January-
Them,” by Frank O'Hara from Lunch Poems February 1952, vol. 19, no 1, © 1952 by
© 1964, City Lights Books Partisan Review; “ American-Type Painting”
Horizon Press for “The American Action by Clement Greenberg, Spring 1955, vol. 22,
Painters,” by Harold Rosenberg, from no. 2, © 1955 by Partisan Review
Tradition of the New, 1959 and “Foreword Provincetown Review for “Daniel T. Miller’’
to the Second Edition,” by Harold Rosenberg by James T. Valliere, no. 7, Fall 1968
from The Anxious Object, 1959
TIME, The Weekly Newsmagazine for “The
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for “A Step Away Best?,"’ December 1, 1947, Copyright Time
from Them,” by Frank O'Hara in The Inc.; “Words,’’ February 7, 1949, Copyright
Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, 1971 Time Inc.; “Handful of Fire,” December 26,
LIFE Magazine for “A LIFE Round Table on 1949, Copyright Time Inc.; “Americans
Modern Art,” by Russell Davenport and Abroad,” August 21, 1950, Copyright Time
Winthrop Sargent, October 11, 1948, © 1948 Inc.; ““ Chaos, Damn It,” November 20, 1950,
Time Inc.; “Jackson Pollock,” August 8, 1949, Copyright Time Inc.; ‘The Champ,”
© 1949 Time Inc.; “Rebel Artist’s Tragic December 19, 1955, Copyright Time Inc.;
Ending,’ August 27, 1959, © 1956 Time Inc. “The Wild Ones,’ February 20, 1956,
The Nation for reviews by Jean Connolly, Copyright Time Inc.; ‘Milestones: Died,”
May 1 and 29, 1943; reviews by Clement August 20, 1956, Copyright Time Inc.
Greenberg, November 27, 1943; April 7, University of Missouri Press, Columbia,
1945; June 9, 1945; April 13, 1946, Missouri, for excerpts from An Artist in
December 28, 1946; February 1, 1947; America by Thomas Hart Benton, copyright
January 24, 1948; February 19, 1949 1968 by Thomas Hart Benton
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 Acknowledgments

For making various facts and/or documents available to me, I thank

John I. H. Baur; Rita and Thomas Hart Benton; Peter Blake; Charlotte
and James Brooks; Jeanne and Fritz Bultman; Peter Busa; Leo Castelli;
Butler Coleman, Director of New York Area Office, Archives of American
Art; Whitney Darrow, Jr.; Edward F. Dragon; Morton Feldman; Miss
Inga Forslund, Associate Librarian, Museum of Modern Art; Lloyd Good-
rich; Richard Governale; Philip Guston; Clement Greenberg; Stanley W.
Hayter; Ben Heller; Dr. Joseph L. Henderson; Mrs. Sylvia Henry, Librarian,
Long Island Collection, East Hampton Free Library; Thomas B. Hess; Axel
Horn; Sam Hunter; Sidney Janis; Mervin Jules; Barbara and Reuben
Kadish; Wolf Kahn; Stewart Klonis; Samuel M. Kootz; James Lechay;
Julian Levi; Josephine and John Little; Anica and Conrad Marca-Relli;
Mercedes and Herbert Matter; Patricia Maye; Mrs. Sanford McCoy; Don-
ald McKinney; Robert Motherwell; Hans Namuth; Mrs. Barnett New-
man; Reverend George Nicholson; Alfonso Ossorio; Betty Parsons;
Phillip Pavia; Charles Pollock; Larry Rivers; Bernice Rose; May Natalie
Tabak and Harold Rosenberg; William S. Rubin; Ludwig Sander; Irving
Sandler; Jon Schueler; Springbok Editions, Division of Hallmark Cards;
Tony Smith; Mrs. Patricia Westlake; and William Wright. However, any
interpretations and conclusions drawn from these materials are entirely
my responsibility.
Besides the writers among those names listed above, there are others
 Acknowledgments

viii

with whom I had no direct dealings but from whom I also quote factual
and/or documentary material. I want to thank them too. Of particular value
was the detailed chronology prepared by Francis V. O’Connor and his
research assistants for the 1967 Pollock catalogue published by the Museum
of Modern Art, the interviews of Francine du Plessix and Cleve Gray and
those of James T. Valliere. Again, interpretations and conclusions are my
responsibility.
I also want to thank Joyce Johnson for many valuable editorial
suggestions, and Claire Mozel and her summer helpers Myra Hicks,
Valerie Verdes, and Ruth Latta for a multitude of secretarial chores well
done.
Finally, I want to thank the publishers, listed separately, who granted
permission to reprint material from copyrighted articles and books.
B.H.F.
 Contents
Foreword to the Da Capo Edition
Introduction
Chapter One:
Growing Up in the West: 1912-1929
Chapter Two:
American Scene, New York Scene,
i) Personal Scene: 1930-1941
Chapter Three:
49 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946
Chapter Four:
86 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947
Chapter Five:
107 The Club: An Interchapter: 1948-1962
Chapter Six:
115 Fame: 1948-1949
Chapter Seven:
150 The “Biggest” Year: 1950
Chapter Eight:
169 Black and White: 1951
Chapter Nine:
Loh The Action Painter: 1952
Chapter Ten:
205 The Final Years: 1953-1956
Chapter Eleven:
23 Post-mortem: 1956-
263 Bibliography
BID) Index
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 Foreword to the Da Capo Edition
He was the pure and barbaric new solipsist, who existed—even in
performance, even in the part of a story that is beyond words—
above and to one side and behind and below the words. He was
pictures and text, a temporal animal, so clever that he seems de-
monic while remaining at least semi-irrestible—and not passively so.
He was not an adorable self sitting still. He was as active and
energetic as Puck.
HAROLD BRODKEY
Translating Brando
In 1968 Lee Krasner Pollock, the widow of Jackson Pollock, asked if
I would be interested in writing a biography of her husband for Time-
Life Books, and I entered into a contract with the publisher to do a
short, tightly outlined book for their World of... art series. By coin-
cidence, my editor was a friend and neighbor of Thomas Hart Ben-
ton, Pollock’s most influential teacher, whom I presented, mostly in
Benton’s own words, as a hard-drinking reactionary. The editor
wanted me to soften this characterization but, believing it was accu-
rate as well as important to Pollock’s story, I refused and we agreed
to terminate our contract.
With the cooperation of Lee Krasner, who continued to answer my
questions and provide documents and photographs, I was able to write a
considerably longer and freer biography for McGraw-Hill. Early in the fall
of 1970, when I had substantially finished, I asked Lee to check it. She ex-
plained, as I already knew, that she, like Pollock, disliked reading, and
asked if I would read the book to her. I did this during a period of several
days at her home in Springs, East Hampton, New York. She liked it very
much, asked for a copy, and when we returned to the city, invited my wife
and me to celebrate at a new restaurant in her neighborhood.
About two weeks later I received a letter, obviously written in con-
sultation with her lawyer, requesting me not to publish the book. In sub-
 Foreword to the Da Capo Edition
xii

sequent correspondence, phone conversations, and meetings with her

and her lawyer, I realized that she, perhaps advised by someone else
who had read the biography, had decided that it might hurt Pollock’s
reputation. I was willing to make factual corrections, if needed, but was
unwilling to remove necessary references to Pollock’s alcoholism and
psychiatric history. Again and again I asked what, if anything, should be
corrected. Each time Lee’s lawyer replied that the problem was not spe-
cific but the general tone of the book. We got nowhere.
Inevitably, my long, close relationship with Lee was destroyed. We
were now talking to each other only through lawyers. Hers wrote to
McGraw-Hill threatening to withhold permission to quote from Pol-
lock’s letters. Mine took the position that Lee’s having given me the let-
ters was tantamount to permission to publish them. In addition, I agreed
to indemnify McGraw-Hill against a lawsuit, and the publisher itself ar-
ranged to have three prominent art historians read the book to certify
its reliability.
All of this took time. The book was finally published in New York
in 1972, in London in 1973, and in a McGraw-Hill paperback in 1974.
For the paperback I made some further revisions based on new infor-
mation. But even before publication of the New York hardcover edition,
and continuing through Lee Krasner’s life, she did everything possible to
undermine the book. For example, she often made the statement that
she hadn’t read it, which may have been technically true since I read it
to her; and she emphasized to many reviewers that I was a “fiction
writer,” which was half true since by the time the book was written I
had published about as much fiction as art criticism. However, she cer-
tainly knew about the criticism; it included several affirmative pieces
about Krasner herself: a 1958 catalogue introduction, a 1959 magazine
article, a 1965 monograph, and a 1969 interview.
Since my Pollock biography was first published in paperback more
than twenty years ago, many books on him have been written, some bio-
graphical, some critical, some both. Of these, by far the most valuable
is the four-volume Catalogue Raisonné, 1978, edited by Francis Valen-
 Foreword to the Da Capo Edition
xiil

tine O’Connor and Eugene Victor Thaw. I have relied on it for this new
edition of my book, as does everyone now writing on Pollock. Other
publications present a mixed bag. Ruth Kligman, who was in the car
with Pollock when he died, has written a “memoir” of their brief affair.
In his oral biography Jeffrey Potter, a close friend of Pollock’s, has re-
corded many interviews. In An American Saga Steven Naifeh and Gre-
gory White Smith have suggested that Pollock was gay and that his drip
technique was inspired by watching his father piss—hzither theory con-
vincing. At the risk of seeming immodest, I am pleased that my biogra-
phy has survived so many years—and the publication of so many other
books.

B.H. FRIEDMAN
Wainscott, NY
May 1995
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 Introduction

I first met Lee and Jackson Pollock in the spring of 1955—that is,
slightly over a year before his death. When we met he was forty-three
and I was twenty-eight. I emphasize this discrepancy in age as I want also
to emphasize the discrepancy in our situations. He was already an “old
master” of Abstract Expressionism, then the most vital and original paint-
ing to have emerged in the history of American art. I was a real estate
executive, still—after about six and a half years in business—torn between
the excitement of New York’s postwar building boom and a continuing
desire to write. This I did nights and weekends, having published some
articles, short stories, and poems, but none of the novels I had then
written. So Pollock represented, for one side of my life anyway, a truly
heroic figure: not only that of the committed artist, but one whose name
was synonymous with the expression of freedom, a name as big, as
charged for me then as was that of Dylan Thomas in the medium of
words.
However, Thomas had died the year before, and there was Pollock
suddenly in my living room. Or, I should say, Pollock and Mrs. Pollock.
I was meeting her, too, for the first time. I did not know she painted
under her maiden name, Lee Krasner, nor would I have recognized that
name—she had had only a single one-person show; Pollock had had
about a dozen. She was simply the great man’s wife.
They were there in the apartment because a collector, Ben Heller,
 Introduction

xvi

was considering buying a painting by Pollock and wanted to bring him

to “a friendly environment,” one in which he knew a Pollock hung. In
addition, I had that previous fall written an article for Arts Digest called
“The New Baroque,” dealing with Pollock among other Abstract Ex-
pressionists and illustrated with a painting by him next to one by Rubens
(purposely reproduced upside-down).
Now, after a phone call from Heller telling me he had just returned
with the Pollocks from East Hampton, they were there. Pollock, wearing
a beige tweed sports jacket that looked too small for him, a dress shirt
with collar open and knit tie pulled down, was bigger and bulkier than I
would have guessed from photographs of only a few years before. The
lean rugged face I knew from these pictures was rather bloated and
covered with a stubble of beard he would grow somewhat fuller, though
never very full, during the last months of his life. As we were introduced,
I felt the size and power of his hand.
I hung Pollock’s jacket in the hall closet and watched him lurch
ahead of his wife and down the steps into the living room. From his
awkward movements and the few words I had heard him mutter, it was
‘clear that he was drunk. Mrs. Pollock whispered, “Don’t offer him any-
thing hard—nothing more than beer, if he wants that.” The words were
delivered with a tough clarity. They were neither desperate nor apologetic,
but very direct. I felt already that there was considerable substance to
this “shadow” of Jackson Pollock, this anonymous wife.
Pollock lumbered around the room, stopping only to look at the
art: several pieces from Africa and the South Pacific, three Arp reliefs, a
large collage by Laurens and two very small ones by Schwitters, a small
painting by Feininger and a large one on burlap by Klee, and finally, on
the wall nearest the window, a 1917 Mondrian gouache on paper hang-
ing beside Pollock’s four-by-four oil of 1949, the largest and most recent
work in the collection: all in all, a sort of visual history of my own
search for freedom.
The Mondrian was a work I was sure Pollock would appreciate, one
of the very few done after his lyrical plus-minus image and before he
 Introduction

xvii

developed the more rigid grid of his typical late paintings. In this partic-
ular work, slightly irregular rectangles of color (yellow, red, and blue,
but not quite primary, not quite “pure’’) move rhythmically across the
white sheet in a way that anticipates such late masterpieces as his
Trafalgar Square and Broadway Boogie-Woogie. It was this rhythmic
quality and the suggestion, too, of continuous space extending beyond the
frame that made me feel sure the work would appeal to Pollock.
For a moment he stood in front of the Mondrian with hands out as
if he was about to seize it and fight it. His hands twitched in the air,
seeming to want to touch or feel or somehow reproduce, remake, each
element of the work before him. Then he turned to his own painting, a
skein of silver and green and yellow and brown arabesques, drawn with
spilled and splattered industrial enamels, and again I couldn’t help but
feel that, no matter how different the means, how different the apparent
image, Pollock would respond to the Mondrian as to the work of a brother
making a similar statement in a different way.
He looked at the painting again, turned toward me, and asked in a
loud thick belligerent voice, “Who did that?”
“Mondrian.”
“Shit. Why don’t you have a Cavallon?”
At the time I hardly knew the work of the Italian-American,
Giorgio Cavallon, had indeed dismissed it as being too derivative of
Mondrian, a softer gentler version of the same thing. And I said some-
thing to that effect.
“Shit,” Pollock repeated. ““You’re looking for tame art, familiar art.”
“No. But I guess what’s wild becomes tame and familiar.” I was
thinking of a recent exhibition of the Fauves in which this was the case.
Pollock looked at me very hard. There was an intensity in his eyes,
perhaps a Westerner’s distrust of an Easterner’s glibness, a desire to test it.
“Shit,” he said once more.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or do. Shout “Shit” back
at him? Everyone looked uncomfortable.
He staggered now in front of the window. With his back to it, he
 Introduction

xviii

faced the room, ready, I thought, to tear the art off the walls—all of it,
including his own painting.
Finally Mrs. Pollock spoke: “Come off it, Jackson. You need some
sleep.” She turned to us. “We get up early to make our appointments in
New York. With the stops on the way he gets like this. Is there any place
he can take a nap?”
My wife said we had a spare room with a couch in it. She led the
Pollocks to the back of the apartment. On the way, in the dining vestibule
opposite the living room, he saw Arshile Gorky’s Table Landscape. He
stopped in front of it. Again he assumed something like a fighting stance,
his hands moving in the air, tracing the configuration of the painting.
“That’s better,” he muttered, “much better.”
After Pollock and the women had gone, Ben Heller said, “I’m sorry.
I thought you'd like to meet him.”
“You were right—but not like this.”
“He wasn’t this way in East Hampton. He was drinking a lot of
beer and stopped for more on the way in, but he wasn’t really tense until
we got to the city.... Paul Brach took me to their place in Springs. We
unrolled some of the big paintings, the nine-by-eighteens. Wow, they hit
me in the gut. ... He doesn’t really want to sell, but— I guess I'll have to
work that out... . I can’t think of any better investment. The Impressionists
have reached their peak. The Cubists are high. What’s left? Mird?
Giacometti? Dubuffet? The Americans are the most underpriced . . .”
He was still talking when my wife and Mrs. Pollock returned to
the living room.
“He went right to sleep,” Mrs. Pollock said. “He’ll be all right. He
gets like this when we come to New York—once a week, every week,
until August. The doctors take their vacations in August. ... Tomorrow
we have our sessions. Then the real battle begins—to get him back out
to Long Island. He’s okay then, but when he’s with those cronies of his
at the Cedar, it’s not easy. I never know when he’s going to show up on
Wednesday. One in the morning. Two. Three. Noon. Afternoon. Some-
 Introduction

xix

times we stay an extra day.... Well, now I could stand a drink, a real
drink.” ;
The evening was laid out: we would drink until Pollock woke: up,
we would have dinner, we would deliver Mrs. Pollock to the Earle (a
hotel on Waverly Place at which they stayed) and Pollock himself to
the Cedar Tavern (two blocks away, on University Place). Ben Heller
drank ginger ale while Lee Pollock, my wife Abby, andI finished a bottle
of vodka. Lee talked more about the analytic sessions she and Jackson
went to, his drinking problem, his working problem, and problems of her
Own as a painter married to a painter. She asked some questions about
Abby and me and about Ben Heller and Judy (his wife, who had re-
mained on Long Island), but mostly she talked about herself and
Jackson. There was no doubt she considered him, not only the best
painter in America, but in the world. Names kept coming up: Gorky, de
Kooning, Tomlin, Kline, Newman, Brooks, Still . . . Though I knew
their work, I didn’t know any of them personally, and two of them, Gorky
and Tomlin, were dead.
“You would have liked Tomlin,” she said. “He was something like
you—shy and aloof. He was just coming out to live near us when he had
his heart attack. The move was too much for him.”
I was digesting that “shy and aloof.” I hardly heard the rest of what
she said. “You'll see some of them at the Cedar.”

Pollock came down the hall. “What are you all doing?” he asked.
“I’m hungry.”
He looked gentler than he had before—a big brown bear, rather
than a grizzly. His eyes had receded with Sleep, his face was not quite open.
“How would you like a shower before we go out to dinner?” Lee
asked.
The answer was yes. Abby showed him where the shower was. In
ten minutes he returned with his eyes and face wide open.
“That was great. Do you have a beer? Bud? Schlitz?”
 Introduction

xX

“Only Heineken’s.”
“Oh... okay...in the bottle.”
I gave it to him that way. He relaxed on the couch, lifting the bottle
to his mouth in one big paw, holding a cigarette in the other. After the
first swallow he said, “Good.” He finished the beer. “Real good.”
“Let’s eat,” Lee said.
We went around the corner to Billy's, an unpretentious steak place.
There, with dinner, he had more beer—on draft. He was responsive now
to my specific questions about his life and work. At one point he said
something like: “A man’s life zs his work; his work és his life. That's
what's bothering me— I’m not working much anymore. I go to my studio,
but nothing happens. ... I don’t want to repeat myself.”
I argued that by definition an artist’s work could be only part of
his life, though in another sense it might be bigger or—more accurately
—stronger and surely more enduring than the life itself.
Pollock listened carefully to what I said, thought about it for a
moment, then shook his head: “No. They're the same thing. They’re
inseparable.” He locked the fingers of his hands to show me what he
meant.
He asked many questions about my life and was surprised that I
considered it to some degree separate from my work. “But what are you
really involved with?”
This was a phrase I would hear again and again during the time I
knew Pollock. “I’m involved with both—business and writing.”
“You don’t feel the need to choose?”
“Sometimes I have trouble juggling two lives, but I want to try it
for a while. My folk heroes are Wallace Stevens and Charles Ives.” I
smiled.
There was no response from Pollock. I didn’t know if he recognized
the names of the poet and the composer or knew that they both had been
insurance company executives. I started to explain
“Why are you talking about other people’s lives? I’m asking about
yours.”
 Introduction

xxi

I told him about what I did in business and what I had written. In
response to something I said about the difficulty of designing good-looking
office buildings in New York under the existing zoning, he asked if I
knew Tony Smith.
“No.”
“He's a great architect. A student of Wright’s. You should hear him
recite Joyce. He knows whole hunks of Finnegans Wake.”
“I read the architecture magazines. I don’t remember seeing his
name.”
“He won’t let them reproduce his work. He’s done a studio for Fritz
Bultman on the Cape, and a house for Stamos at Greenport, and one now
in an abandoned rock quarry outside New Haven for Olsen, the man who
bought Blue Poles. I’ve never seen the Olsen place, but it must be the
best thing Tony has done. He's a great architect, he’s my friend.”
As earlier with Cavallon and then with Smith, so it was with writers.
Pollock had faith in those he knew and felt committed to them, partic-
ularly Peter Matthiessen and Donald Braider, both of whom lived in the
East Hampton area. When I mentioned something I had written, or was
writing, or wanted to write, his questions were always about the same:
What did it mean to me? What was my involvement with it? Why had
I chosen a particular subject and not another?
Pollock was asking questions like these about my piece on “The New
Baroque,” when a truck on First Avenue backfired. At the restaurant,
until then, he had been calm—probing and intense, but calm. Now he
jumped from his seat and stared out the window, trying, through a film
of air-conditioning condensation, to make out the cause of the noise. He
shook his head, wiped his broad, bulging, sweating brow, and sat down.
“I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know how you live here.” He asked the
waiter for another beer. When he finished that he said, “Let’s leave.”
It was fairly late, eleven or so. I don’t remember—none of those
present do—whether only I went with Pollock to the Cedar that night,
or Abby and I did, or none of us did. I have a vague impression of Lee
Pollock’s wanting to get to the Earle to catch up on phone calls, an
 Introduction

xxii

equally vague one of Ben Heller’s wanting to get a good night's sleep
before an early conference. But whether I went there that first night or
soon after is unimportant. What remains in my mind is the feeling of
going there with Pollock, what it was like to enter the place with him.
By coincidence I had been there before, but only during the day.
Between the fall of 48 and ’49, I was the manager of an apartment
house at 1 University Place and had learned to go to the Cedar Tavern to
retrieve the superintendent or a handyman. I don’t think I knew the
name of the bar. It was simply that place down the block where the
maintenance crew went, an ugly, almost empty neighborhood bar where
drinks were cheap and one wondered how the owner paid the rent.
But now, at night, almost seven years later, the place was mobbed.
Even outside there was a crowd which greeted Jackson. And inside, guys
—there were hardly any women—stood two- and three-deep at the bar.
“Hi, Jackson,” they yelled as we entered, “Hi, Jack.” Several of them
wanted to buy him a drink. Others created space at the bar. He picked
an opening, led me to it, said the first drink was on him, and began
introducing me to whoever was there on either side and behind us, an
area which was filling up deeper than anyplace else at the bar. Again, I
don’t remember just who was there that first night, whenever it was. I do
remember that within several visits, I met many near-contemporaries of
Pollock’s (Kline, Guston, de Kooning ...) and a lot of younger artists
(Brach, Leslie, Rauschenberg, Rivers, Goldberg, Kanovitz...) and
Frank O'Hara, who was writing about them, and Morty Feldman, who
had composed the music for the Namuth-Falkenberg documentary film
on Pollock, and other photographers, dancers, critics, dealers ... In short,
through Pollock, mostly at the Cedar, I met the art world.
Perhaps that drab bar deserves a book in itself. During the fifties it
was the one place everyone went: students, established artists, artists from
out-of-town and from abroad; there one could make contact with New
York, with where it was happening and the men who were making it
happen. And there I was listening to Jackson being greeted, watching
 Introduction

xxiii

his back being slapped and his arms punched, and wondering what all
these people wanted from him. To have bought him a drink? To have
had a drink bought by him? To have touched him for luck? To have been
touched by him? What? The more I watched and listened, the more
convinced I became that for this crowd he was a kind of talisman. Young
artists, many of them unknown to him, pressed in—touching, touching,
touching for luck—because he had run so many of their risks for them,
had, as de Kooning said, “broken the ice.” Yes, that seemed to be it,
there was a desire for some of his success to rub off (his success as an
artist—there had been no appreciable monetary success), and a desire
also to thank him for those risks he had run, the permissions he had
granted. The greetings, the backslaps, the playful punching and nudging
were all ways of expressing thanks. At least that was one side of it, the
decent side. But there was an indecent voyeuristic side, too, among others
who frequented the bar. For them Jackson was a freak, part of the enter-
tainment, a notorious figure in the art world who had somehow succeeded
in spite of himself, in spite, as they said, of his not being the draftsman
de Kooning was. Some of these regulars bought Jackson drinks because
they wanted him to act freakish, wanted to see what would happen this
time.
Many, perhaps most of us there at the bar, and particularly those of
my Own generation, came from rather sheltered and constricting middle-
class backgrounds. For us, surely for me, Pollock represented both the
ability to have endured material poverty and to have found and expressed
spiritual freedom—freedom as acceptance and affirmation of life’s natural
rhythms. Yes, that was the positive side—what he had done, the body
of work he represented, the range in that work from the most tender
lyricism to the most violent images. And on the negative side was the
desperation with which he was drinking (whiskey now, at the Cedar) and
the inability he had spoken of to function as a painter, when for the first
time in his life almost anything he put on canvas would have sold. Just
as I felt he was being treated as a magical object by artists here at the
 Introduction

Xxiv

bar, I felt that he himself had a sense of having been turned into an object,
not magical but commercial, by the larger and more call art world
of collectors, dealers, museum people, journalists..
His voice became thicker, his vocabulary more Rocsite as he con-
tinued to drink, trying to kill whatever pain was gnawing at him and to
relocate his own identity, the identity he may have felt he had given or
sold to the world. It was painful to watch him, knowing that he would
find nothing at the bottom of the bottle but anonymous oblivion, a black-
out, censorship of himself; painful to see this man become sodden beside
me when only an hour before he had been talking intelligibly and
expressing interest in himself and others. He staggered now to the john,
stumbling and rough-housing as he made his way through the crowd.
This was the man who had “danced” Autumn Rhythm and Lavender
Mist and Blue Poles and maybe a dozen more of the most graceful
paintings ever made in America or anywhere else.
What had happened to him, that other man of whom hardly more »
than the aura remained? How had he lost contact with this other self?
What had he done to himself? And what had been done to him? I don’t
know if I can answer these questions. I don’t know if anyone can. But
I hope that in what follows there are at least leads to the answers.
Jackson Pollock

Energy Made Visible

+
 Chapter One

Growing Up in the West

(1912-1929)
There is at the back of every artist's mind something like a pattern or a type
of architecture. The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. It is a
thing like the landscape of his dreams; the sort of world he would like to make
or in which he would wish to wander; the strange flora and fauna of his own
secret planet; the sort of thing he likes to think about. This general atmosphere,
and pattern or structure of growth, governs all his creations, however varied.
G. K. CHESTERTON

On January 28, 1912, when Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyo-
ming, nothing could have seemed less likely to his parents than that this
son, their fifth and last, would grow up to be the most famous painter
of his generation—a generation destined, for the first time in the history
of American art, to achieve international recognition, influence, and fi-
nally leadership. Nor, of course, could they have guessed that even the
most external facts of his life would be oversimplified to create a popu-
lar myth as distorted as those concerning such nineteenth-century paint-
ers as Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh—artists who also died
young.
Pollock has been described in European art journals as the leader
of “the School of California,” a hard-riding hard-drinking cowboy from
the Wild West who came roaring, maybe even shooting, his way into
New York where he took the art galleries by storm, and at forty-four, at
the height of his powers, died in an automobile accident, perhaps drunk-
enly, perhaps suicidally (according to much unfounded gossip, denials
which perpetuated it, and published statements,* including that of at least
one fellow painter**)....
Jackson Pollock: what a perfect name; so strong, so tough, so

* Most recently, A. Alvarez in The Savage God: a study of suicide, 1971.

** See Robert Motherwell, Bibliography No. 127.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

American. California: just the right state to have come from. Forty-four:
the age at which Scott Fitzgerald died. An automobile accident, maybe
a drunken one at that; with two girls in the car, one killed, one badly
injured: again, so American. And yet, as with all myths about artists, the
truths are fractional at best—the real adventures take place, not on the
highways or at the roadside:taverns, but in the loneliness of the studio.
Although it may not make as good a movie, that’s where the action is.
There the artist has to face himself. And the outside world—its recognition
or snub, its version of success or failure—don’t these enter the studio, don’t
they intrude? Yes, all this is part of the story too, but hardly mythic; after
all, success is as American as apple pie—even when, like Pollock, one
chokes on it.
Jackson Pollock’s parents, Stella May McClure and LeRoy Pollock,
were both in their late thirties when he was born, the mother a year older
than the father. They had been raised in Tingley, Iowa, and came from
rather stern backgrounds, hers Irish, his Scotch-Irish, both Presbyterian.
About 1890, the father, born McCoy, had taken the surname of his
adoptive parents, neighbors of his natural parents, who had both died
within a year. As a boy LeRoy Pollock learned frontier skills—mainly
ranching, farming and, later, surveying—by which, with difficulty, he
supported his wife and sons. There is nothing in his background or in the
external facts of his life which would make one predict that all five of his
sons would want early in life to become artists. Charles (Cecil) Pollock
(1902-— )is a painter who has also taught art; (Marvin) Jay Pollock
(1904—_) is a rotogravure etcher; Frank (Leslie) Pollock (1907— )
studied writing, though he became a rose farmer; and Sanford (LeRoy)
Pollock (1909-63), who changed his last name to McCoy, was a painter,
rotogravure platemaker, serigrapher, and silk screen printer. Where did
the strain of sensitivity and creativity come from?
Some members of the family trace it to Stella Pollock’s interest in
weaving, crocheting, and quiltimg. She was also an excellent seamstress
and made shirts for the entire family. However, in all this work one sees
 Growing Up in the West: 1912-1929

competence and craft, not necessarily sensitivity and creativity, and surely
not originality. Stella, the “cottage weaver,” stayed within a framework of
folk conventions and given patterns. As one studies family pictures of her,
the rigidity of a frame there, too, is what strikes one most forcefully: a
large full-busted woman, always erect and stern. In contrast, pictures of
LeRoy Pollock are typically relaxed and smiling. His face and body
suggest a gentleness and sensitivity, a warmth rubbed a little raw, that
may well have been the product of hard abrasive years. Before working
at the sheep ranch in Cody, he had been a dishwasher at the Irma Hotel
there, then a plasterer, then partner in a stone-crushing plant. When
(Paul) Jackson was born, LeRoy’s occupation was listed on the birth
certificate as “stone mason and cement work.”
Charles remembers his parents as “excellent craftsmen: they knew
how to grow things, they knew how to make things. But neither of them
had a sense for- business or commercial profit.” Stella Pollock worried,
maybe even more than her husband, about the details of managing family
affairs. However, Charles recalls that she liked beautiful things. One time
he wanted fancy shirts instead of the plain blue work shirts she had been
making. She took him to Goldwater’s in Phoenix and let him buy some
silk pongee. Though Stella shared LeRoy Pollock’s life, his gentler
qualities, if they existed in her, were hidden or repressed. Her outward
mask was more contained, less subjective and expressive. Compositely,
the two parents present much of the ambivalence—that mixture of
tenderness and aggression, inwardness and outwardness—that would
exist in Jackson and intensify throughout his life.
Perhaps because of LeRoy Pollock’s lack of “business sense,” perhaps
because of a more profound and unconscious restlessness, the family was
constantly on the move during Jackson’s childhood. Before he was one
they had left Cody to settle in San Diego. That didn’t work out. The next
year his father bought a small truck farm in Phoenix. Within four years
it was auctioned and the Pollocks moved to a fruit farm in Chico, Cali-
fornia, and then, within four more years, to yet another in Janesville,
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

California. From there, in 1922, they moved to Orland, California. Thus,

by the age of ten, Jackson had lived in six homes in three states, and the
moving wasn’t over yet. By then, too, his eldest brother, Charles, had left
home to work for the layout department of the Los Angeles Times, while
studying at the Otis Art Institute. From Los Angeles during the next sev-
eral years Charles sent his brothers copies of The American Mercury and
The Dial which contained avant-garde art and literature. It is doubtful
that these would have interested Jackson when he was between ten and
twelve, but probable that they did later on.
Except for Charles, the family was on the move again in 1923. That
fall they returned to Arizona, where LeRoy Pollock found a truck and
dairy farm outside Phoenix. By now, ten years after their first stay here,
Jackson was old enough to explore Indian ruins and visit reservations
where ceremonial dances and sand paintings may have been tourist
attractions and brightly colored dolls and blankets sold as souvenirs.
However, his esthetic appreciation of American Indian art would come
later, reinforcing childhood memories of bold abstract designs and
“primitive” colors in sand and “war paint.” This stay in Arizona was
brief. In the spring they moved back to Chico; shortly thereafter to River-
side, just beyond Los Angeles and surrounded by citrus groves and vine-
yards. That is where they were, when in September of 1926, Charles
registered at the Art Students League in New York.
By the following summer, though only fifteen and a half, Jackson
was already almost five foot ten, the height he would reach as his body
filled out during later years. Even at this age his build was strong and
athletic, with particularly powerful capable-looking hands, despite the
scarred gnarled tip of his right index finger which at eleven had been
axed off either by himself while chopping wood or by a friend while
killing a chicken on the farm outside Phoenix. (Whichever was true, he
liked best to tell the story of how the chicken went for the tip of his
finger and how he rescued it just in time to be sewn back on.) His face,
too, was already almost that of a man, each feature—which would be-
 Growing Up in the West: 1912-1929

come more pronounced as he grew older—clearly and characteristically

there: the strong protruding line of the brow; the deep-set, intense, and,
at the same time, vulnerable hazel eyes; the heavy bridge of the nose
moving irregularly to the tip; the sensuous mouth; the rugged jaw line;
the cleft chin—all topped by light brown hair. Yes, he would have been
cast as a cowboy, even including that suggestion of vulnerability and shy-
ness in his eyes.
From photographs as well as from the recollections of friends and
family, we know that Jackson Pollock was a handsome young man.
Until the last years of his life (and to a lesser extent, even then), the
power, energy, and intensity of his face and body were magnetic, even
charismatic, and as such must have affected his career. This was true, too,
of the intensity of his moods and his projection of them. School friends
remember this aspect of Pollock’s personality, and years later his widow
said, “Whatever Jackson felt, he felt more intensely than anyone I’ve
known; when he was angry, he was angrier; when he was happy, he was
happier; when he was quiet, he was quieter .. .”*
That summer of 1927 he and Sandy, the second youngest of the
brothers, worked at surveying, which was by then their father’s profession.
For the job, along the north rim of Grand Canyon, they went toasite
set up in much the same way as a lumber camp. The teams of surveyors
would sleep in log cabins, eat enormous breakfasts in the messhall, take
lunch with them on horseback, and return at night for dinner—and
drinking. We can only guess about young Jackson (he began using his
middle name about now and dropped Paul completely when he moved to
New York three years later) in this environment, working with an
experienced surveyor, perhaps as a linesman or at clearing brush; return-
ing to camp, exhausted but exhilarated by the scenery, wild life, and sense
of space (he would identify with these aspects of nature throughout his
life); putting away his meat and potatoes, maybe having seconds; and

* See Bibliography No. 14.

 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

then drinking with the older men, trying to compensate for his youth by
being aggressively “manly.” Yes, within this context, the name “Jackson”
would have had the right ring, with its echoes of General Andrew Jackson
and General “Stonewall” Jackson. Even when shortened to “‘Jack,” which
old friends and family would call him, the name still sounded right—
terse, tough, and, again, manly—very different from the biblical saintly
SPaul.]
During this summer Jackson discovered that alcohol—mostly, at
this time, wine and beer, rarely hard liquor—seemed somehow to resolve
the conflicts within him between tenderness and aggression, made him
feel calm and mote at ease in a society which was neither calm nor easy.
This early, he was on his way to becoming an alcoholic. While others
close to him shared the intense inner conflicts which made Jackson drink, he
would be the only one to accept “alcoholism” as a diagnosis, to seek its cure
(mostly in psychiatric therapy—Freudian, Jungian, Sullivanian, group—
but also in homeopathy, hypnosis, and biochemistry), and finally to over-
come drinking during a brief but very productive period late in his career.
However, though Jackson’s desire for alcohol was great, his tolerance
was low, as if his system were allergic to it. Many of his friends remem-
ber how wildly drunk he became on comparatively small amounts of wine
and beer and, of course, even smaller amounts of whiskey. When he
drank a lot—and he could hold a bottle of whiskey, even though high
from almost the first sip—he just got that much drunker before passing
out. Finally, to distinguish between Jackson’s case and that of the more
ordinary tippler, when he drank he didn’t just become Jackson happy
or Jackson sad or Jackson uninhibited; there was personality change.
He, like Dr. Jekyll, became someone else, though his potion was alcohol.
In short, Jackson’s problem was clearly physiological as well as psycho-
logical.
However, again given the example of his older brothers, Jackson had
discovered a more positive way than alcohol to deal with his active—
 Growing Up in the West: 1912-1929

passive ambivalence and the resulting tension. He had found that he liked
to draw and that in doing so he could, at least temporarily, act out, put
on paper, the resolution of anxieties that liquor only dulled. To our
knowledge, no work from this early period survives—we can only
imagine the sense of excitement the sensitive and rather introverted boy
in his mid-teens must have experienced as, there on paper, his greatest
hopes and worst fears were able to exist together and become suddenly,
magically, as compatible as dark line against light ground. And we can
only imagine—as we will later be able actually to see—the images of
father and mother, male and female, the whole dichotomy of active and
passive principles being resolved in art. Life’s discrepancies must have
fallen more comfortably on the sketch pad than on Jackson’s shoulders;
life there, under his pencil or pen or whatever, must have seemed calmer.
After his first summer of surveying, Jackson went to Riverside High
School. There he met the painter-sculptor Reuben Kadish with whom he
would remain in intermittent contact for the rest of his life. In March,
when the Pollock family moved into Los Angeles, Jackson left Riverside
High and wanted to enroll at Manual Arts High School. However, he had
to wait until the following fall, at which time he met Philip Guston and
Manuel Tolegian, two more artists to whom he would be close for a while
and with whom he would continue to have contact throughout his life.
But, at the time, his most important relationship was with an art teacher
named Frederick Schwankovsky who introduced him to Far Eastern reli-
gions, particularly Buddhism, and to the contemporary teachings of Krish-
namurti. Pollock went to several camp-meetings of this Hindu poet and
mystic at Ojai, north of Los Angeles. One can get a sense of what Jackson
heard there from Life in Freedom, a 1928 collection of Krishnamurti’s
“Camp-Fire addresses.” Here is a brief but typical passage from “the Search”:
“I have painted my picture on the canvas and I want you to examine it
critically, not blindly. I want you to create because of that picture a new
picture for yourself. I want you to fall in love with the picture, not with the
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

10

painter, to fall in love with the Truth and not with him who brings the
Truth. Fall in love with yourself and then you will fall in love with
everyone.”
Schwankovsky, known as “Schwanie” at school, believed in complete
openness to all kinds of experience—religious, esthetic, political. Besides
the camp meetings, he took his students to a Theosophy church. He lec-
tured to them on the ethics of vegetarianism. He performed experiments
in extrasensory perception, especially as this related to a Universal Con-
sciousness. For example, he would have his students and students in other
parts of the country write letters simultaneously in order to prove that
they had concerns in common. Rather than offering a focus of youthful
rebellion, these teachings and experiments must have satisfied a need in
Jackson. Although his parents were nominal Presbyterians, they were not
churchgoers; their creed was closer to pantheism than to any Christian
sect. And for Jackson, too, a mystical and contemplative identification
with the natural flow of life was already more meaningful than any for-
mal church.
Rebellion and protest, as such, were expressed in another way, also
encouraged by Schwankovsky. During this 1928-29 academic year Pol-
lock was expelled from Manual Arts for having taken part, along with
Guston and Tolegian, in the preparation and distribution of the Journal
of Liberty, two printed attacks on the high-school faculty, particularly
the English Department, and its overemphasis on athletics. When Jack-
son learned that at the same time Kadish had independently organized
similar protests at Riverside, which the newspapers had described as part
of a Communist conspiracy, he phoned Kadish and reestablished contact
with him. From then until the end of the year these two, as well as Gus-
ton, Tolegian, and Donald Brown, a writer particularly interested in
Joyce and Cummings, were very close. Though drawn together as “politi-
cal trouble-makers,” their real interest was in art. Kadish recalls that they
were already reading transition, the avant-garde literary magazine which
had begun publication in April 1927. “We were living a European fan-
 Growing Up in the West: 1912-1929

il

tasy,” Kadish says. “We knew we didn’t belong in the Los Angeles Water
Color Club or the Art Association. Siqueiros coming to L. A. meant as
much then as did the Surrealists coming to New York in the forties.”
Pollock was not readmitted to Manual Arts until the following fall
—after another summer of surveying, this time with his father in Santa
Ynez, California—and he was soon in trouble again, as indicated by the
following long letter, one of the few which survives from this period of
Jackson's life. (Note: Frank was in New York studying licerature at
Columbia, while Charles was still there at the Art Students League.)

Los Angeles
Oct. 22 1929
Dear Charles and Frank:
I am sorry for having been so slow with my correspondence to you. I
have been very busy getting adjusted in school, but another climax has arisen.
I have been ousted from school again. The head of the Physical Ed. Dept. and I
came to blows the other day. We saw the principal about it but he was too
thick to see my side. He told me to get out and find another school. I have a
number of teachers backing me so there is some possibility of my getting back.
If I can not get back 1 am not sure what I will do. 1 have thought of going to
Mexico city if there is any means of making a livelihood there.
Another fellow and I are in some more very serious trouble. We loaned
two girls some money to run a way. We were ignorant of the law at the time.
We did it merely through friend ship. But now they have us, 1 am not sure
what the outcomes will be. The penalty is from six to twelve months in jail.
We are both minors so it would probably be some kind of a reform school.
They found the girls today in Phoenix and are bringing them back.
If I get back in school I will have to be very careful about my actions. The
whole outfit think 1 am a rotten rebel from Russia. 1 will have to go about very
quietly for along period until 1 win a good reputation. I find it useless to try
and fight an army with a spit ball.
I have read and re-read your letter with clearer understanding each time.
Altho I am some better this year | am far from knowing the meaning of real
work. I have subscribed for the “Creative Art’, and “The Arts’. From the
Creative Art 1 am able to under stand you better and it gives me a new outlook
on life.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

12

I have dropped religion for the present. Should 1 follow the Occult
Mysticism it wouldn't be for commercial purposes. 1 am doubtful of my talent,
so what ever I choose to be, will be accomplished only by long study and work.
I fear it will be forced and mechanical. Architecture interests me but not in the
sense painting and sculptoring does. 1 became accquainted with Rivera's work
through a number of Communist meetings 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 January 1929 on Rivera. I certainly
admire his work. The other magizines I could not find.
As to what I would like to be. It is difficult to say. An Artist of some kind.
If nothing else I shall always study the Arts. People have always frightened and
bored me consequently I have been within my own shell and have not accom-
plished anything materially. In fact to talk in a group I was so frightened that
I could not think logically. 1 am gradually overcoming it now. | am taking
American Literature, Contemporary Literature, Clay Modeling and the life class.
We are very fortunate in that this is the only school in the city that have
models. Altho it is difficult to have a nude and get by the board, Schwankovsky
ts brave enough to have them.
Frank 1 am sorry I have not sent you the typewriter sooner I got a box
for it but it is too small I will get another and send it immediately. How is
school going? Are you in any activity? Is Mart still in the city? We have not
heard for a long time in fact the letters have slacked from all of you.
Sande is doing quite well now. He has an office and handles all the adver-
tising. He continues to make his weekend trip to Riverside,
Affectionately
Jack

In this letter we have a summary of the seventeen-year-old boy's

confusions and gropings, a portrait of the artist as a young man. He knew
only that he wanted to be “an Artist of some kind.” The capitalization is
touching, especially within the context of his attraction to radical politics,
for it was only an attraction, not a distraction. Jackson never confused art
and politics and never joined a political party. From his teens on he
remained faithful to Art, with a capital A, absolutely single-minded in his
desire to be “an Artist of some kind.”
For the spring term, with Schwankovsky’s help, Jackson was once
 Growing Up in the West: 1912-1929

13

again admitted to Manual Arts, but now as a part-time student, on partial

probation. He stayed there until summer. However, early in the term
(three days after his eighteenth birthday), he described his new routine
and current state of mind:
los angeles
yan 31 1930
dear charles .
i am continually having new experiences and am going through a
wavering evolution which leave my mind in an unsettled state. too 1 am a bit
lazy and careless with my crrespondance i am sorry i seem so uniterested in your
helping me but from now on there will be more interest and a hastier reply to
your letters. my letters are undoubtedly egotistical but it is myself that 1 am
interested in now. i suppose mother keeps you posted on family matter
school is still boresome but i have settled myself to its rules and the ringing
bells so t have not been in trouble lately. this term i am going to go but one half
day the rest i will spend reading and working here at home. i am quite shure i will
be able to accomplish a lot more. in school i will take life drawing and clay
modeling. i have started doing some thing with clay and have found a bit of
encouragement from my teacher. my drawing i will tell you frankly is rotten it
seems to lack freedom and rythem it is cold and lifeless. it isn’t worth the
postage to send tt, i think there should be a advancement soon if it is ever to
come and then i will send you some drawings. the truth of it is i have never
really gotten down to real work and finish a piece i usually get disgusted with
it and lose interest. water color i like but have never worked with it much.
altho i feel t will make an artist of some kind i have never proven to myself nor
any body else that i have it in me.
this
so called happy part of one’s life youth to me is a bit of damnable hell if i could
come to some conclusion about my self and life perhaps then i could see something
to work for. my mind blazes up with some illusion for a couple of weeks then tt
smoalters down to a bit of nothing the more i read and the more i think i am
thinking the darker things become. i am still interested in theosophy and am
studing a book light on the path every thing it has to say seems to be contrary
to the essence of modern life but after it is under stood and lived up to i think
it is avery helpful guide. i wish you would get one and tell me what you think of
it. they only cost thirty cents if you can not find one i will send you one.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

14

we have
gotten up a group and have arranged for a furnace where we can have our stuff
fired. we will give the owner a commission for the firing and glazing. there is
chance of my making a little book money.
tam
hoping you will flow freely with criticism and advice and book lists i no longer
dream as i used to perhaps i can derive some good from it.
i met geritz at a lecture on wood block cutting he asked about you and sends
his regards the fellow you mentioned of coming
here has not arrived
Jack

Written only about three months after the October letter, this one is
surprising in several ways: the lower case throughout, the eccentric punc-
tuation and paragraphing, the use of the fancy nonword “boresome.”
Jackson had indeed been reading—perhaps e. e. cummings, in one of the
more avant-garde literary magazines such as The Dial. It may seem a
mechanical thing for an author using a typewriter not to shift to capitals
or to indent paragraphs in the conventional way. However, even these
affectations are small rebellious gestures, indicating a fight against what
one has been taught. The words compulsive and obsessive are as applica-
ble to such typing as to Pollock’s typically cramped handwriting (which
was to open up only much later—and then on canvas, not on stationery).
Even more remarkable is this eighteen-year-old boy’s judgment of his
drawing: “it seems to lack freedom and rythem it is cold and lifeless.”
No painter was to become more involved with freedom and rhythm as a
means of conveying warmth and life to his art. But, again, that will take
time and effort, mostly in the studio. There this shy, emotionally disturbed
and conflicted, incipiently alcoholic young man will come as close as he
can to finding the roots he never had as a child.
 Chapter Two

American Scene, New York Scene,

Personal Scene
(1930-1941)
Modernity is that which is ephemeral, fugitive, contingent upon the occasion;
it is half of art, whose other half is the eternal and unchangeable.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
The Painter of Modern Life

Until now Jackson Pollock’s story has been his own, a private one based
on a few facts, a few documents. From here on it becomes more public, a
part of art history. To understand it one needs to know at least a little
about what had happened up to this point, not only in American art but
in modern European art. No matter how radical an artist may seem he is
never born of a vacuum; there is always a dialogue between his present
and the past, his search for new forms and already existing traditions.
There is no need to trace in detail the ever-accelerating discoveries
in painting, from the great Impressionists of the nineteenth century,
through turn-of-the-century Post-Impressionism, to Matisse, Picasso, Kan-
dinsky, Mondrian. ... It is necessary only to emphasize that during this
brief period of about fifty years—from, say, Manet’s masterpieces of the
early 1860s until about the beginning of World War I and the Synthetic
Cubism of Picasso and Braque, as well as the pure abstractions of Kandin-
sky and Mondrian—almost every major art discovery of roughly the first
half of the twentieth century had already been made, if not fully devel-
oped. Even Surrealism had been anticipated in work outside the main-
stream by such artists as Redon, Rousseau, and Ensor. In short, circa 1860
to 1910 represents a sort of Second Renaissance, during which the Im-
pressionists and Post-Impressionists discovered new ways in which to con-
vey greater optical reality by fragmenting (and/or simplifying) color and
form and by using these for their own sake, for their sensory and emo-
tional impact, for their expressiveness.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

16

Picasso followed the structural leads suggested by Cézanne, who

“wished to make out of Impressionism something solid and durable.”
Matisse looked more to Gauguin and Lautrec for his less intellectualized,
more organic, plastic values: a delight in sensuous color and flowing line.
It is ironic that he was pejoratively labeled a “Fauve” (literally, a wild
beast) just as, a few years later, Picasso was labeled a “Cubist.” Through
the early years of this century, these two, more than any others, continued
and led the revolution against pictorial realism and beyond it, toward
pure abstraction. Indeed for another forty years—that is, up to about the
middle of the twentieth century—the two most powerful art currents will
remain Cubism and Expressionism: Cubism, leading to Dutch de Stijl
(particularly Mondrian), Russian Constructivism, Italian Futurism, the
German Bauhaus, Hard-Edge, Minimalism, etc.; and Expressionism, of
which Matisse and other so-called Fauves represent the most joyous flow-
ing line and flamboyant happy color, as opposed to the more tortured
line and typically muddier color associated with North European Ex- °
pressionists. However, we will see these two main currents converge,
not only in Surrealism and later in Abstract Expressionism, but in the
work of Picasso and Matisse themselves. Picasso may at one moment be
classified an Expressionist and at another a Surrealist; and Matisse, sim-
ilarly, an Expressionist and then a near-Cubist and/or Formalist. But one
of the things this book is about, especially in relation to Pollock, is the
meaninglessness of such labels. They work only up to a point, the same
point as such seeming oppositions as Classicism and Romanticism. Then
one has to face the content of unclassifiable work, that not only of a
Picasso or a Matisse but of any artist big enough to contain both an objec-
tive and a subjective world.
While these various discoveries were being made in Europe—most
of them by the time of Jackson Pollock’s birth, just a year before the
Armory Show—little by way of really adventurous esthetic discovery had
taken place here. The main line of American painting had been and con-
tinued to be realistic. Except for an underground avant garde, working in
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

17

abstract modes deriving mostly from European contact and examples, the
revolution here was in subject matter rather than in form.
Remember that then there was no network of fast mass visual com-
munication. Even techniques for reproducing pictures were crude and
expensive. When contemporary avant-garde art was reproduced, it got
into such comparatively highbrow magazines as those which Charles Pol-
lock had been sending to his brothers or even smaller, more specialized
periodicals. There were no well-printed, wide-rangit.g large-circulation
magazines. What existed—Streer and Smith, Saturday Evening Post,
Collier’s—was not aimed at a public with an international cultural orien-
tation. That audience did not exist. On the contrary, the popular audience
expected its art to be as illustrative, topical, and immediate as that day's
big-city newspaper photographs. Many of the American artists who satis-
fied these requirements were excellent draftsmen and even powerful
painters, but, obviously, within this context, not one was an originator or
esthetic revolutionary; not one changed the history of art as had the
Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Fauves, and Cubists.
The Americans who had learned from the newest traditions, Cubism
and Expressionism, and had practiced them throughout the ’teens, twen-
ties, and thirties—Marin, Maurer, Russell, Macdonald-Wright, Hartley,
Joseph Stella, Weber, Dove, Covert, O’Keeffe, Davis, etc—were all in a
sense artists’ artists, appealing to each other and to a specialized audience.
It was the Realists, along with the Academicians, who continued to have
broad appeal, receive mural commissions, illustrate books and periodicals,
make posters, have articles written about them in popular publications.
Only after World War II, with Jackson Pollock and his generation and
with the advent of more efficient and knowledgeable mass media, is the
avant garde given attention and publicity even as the work is being pro-
duced. What we will then observe is technology in mass media eliminat-
ing the time lag.
It is not surprising that in 1926, when Charles Pollock went to New
York to continue his art education, he enrolled at the Art Students
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

18

League. Despite its French Renaissance-style building (at 215 West 57th
Street, between Broadway and Seventh Avenue), the League was, some
fifty years after its establishment, by far the most vital, as well as the
largest, art school in the United States. Nor is it surprising that Charles
selected a semi-Academic, semi-Realistic teacher. This kind of work—
“visible” and therefore “successful”—-was typically what was being
taught. Nor, finally, is it surprising that, when Jackson joined his brother
at the League four years later, he would—after sculpting for a few weeks
at the tuition-free Greenwich House—enroll with the same man. His
name was Thomas Hart Benton.
At the time of the Armory Show Benton had just returned from
Europe and was working in the abstract Cubist style of his friend Mac-
donald-Wright. However, although he lost interest in these particular
experiments with form and color and the optical theories that went with
them, he never stopped seeking new theories and rules for the perfect paint-
ing. Increasingly he applied such Renaissance principles as foreshorten- -
ing, perspective, and chiaroscuro to American subject matter—an attempt
to pull native Realism back into the Academy. His friend and apologist
Thomas Craven, with whom he had shared astudio, quotes him as saying
of this period, “I wallowed in every cockeyed ism that came along and it
took me ten years to get all the modernist dirt out of my system.” The
“modernist dirt” came from the big cities, particularly Paris and New
York. Benton preached a return to the purer dirt of Renaissance Italy as
well as that of his native Missouri. In his autobiography he speaks of the
Stieglitz group (Marin, Hartley, O'Keeffe, Dove) as “an intellectually
diseased lot, victims of sickly rationalization, psychic inversions, and God-
awful self-cultivations.” Again and again he baits city people, whom he
equates with foreigners, socialists, intellectuals, degenerates; and con-
versely embraces rural hairy-chested hard-drinking masculinity. All of this
he does with such great energy and enthusiasm that one is almost dis-
tracted from his limitations and crudities as a thinker.
Perhaps it was Benton’s exaggeratedly tough masculine stance which
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

19

appealed to Charles and Jackson Pollock; perhaps, too, it was his success.
Like their father, Benton had come from a small Midwestern town
(Neosho, Mo.). Unlike him, Benton had managed, against the same great
odds, to gain recognition and to “show” the city people. By the twenties
he was already planning My American Epic in Paint, a series of sixty-four
historical panels (of which sixteen were completed), and doing rural
landscapes and portraits of “American types.” In this last category, even
such a comparatively small work as the Whitney Museum’s The Lord is
My Shepherd (1926) illustrates very well Benton’s strengths and weak-
nesses. The idea of the painting is obvious, even crude. In front of a sam-
pler bearing the title legend, a humbly dressed old couple sit with heads
downcast finishing a sparse meal. They look past each other in silence.
They have nothing to say, nowhere to go; no shepherd can lead them any-
where but to death. Compared with realistic portraits of the elderly by
Rembrandt and Hals or the American Eakins, Benton’s old man and
woman are not seen in depth or with any large degree of compassion.
They are stylized props used to illustrate a message. What virtues the
painting has are formal, as though part of a preconceived layout rather
than emerging from the subjects themselves: the strong colors, the line
of the man’s slightly stooped silhouette against the simple curve of the
chairback, the rhythm of folds in his sleeve and his wife’s dress and the
knuckles of both their hands, the placement of objects on the table and
the couple’s own placement in the overall composition. Indeed the power
of the couple’s hands, and particularly the exaggerated size of the man’s,
seems to contradict the sentiment of the painting. Benton’s own energy
and power are inconsistent with that of his subject. This inconsistency,
this continuing interest in stylized abstraction (while publicly denying it)
and, particularly, in rhythmic composition, may also explain in part Jack-
son Pollock’s admiration for an artist who in retrospect stands for values
mostly opposed to those which eventually became Pollock’s own.
Through the late twenties and the thirties Benton’s work became
more and more satirical, even grotesque. Just as his “straight” portraits
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

20

lack depth and compassion, his satire lacks the steady penetrating gaze
and implicit positive values of a Goya or a Daumier. On one hand, Ben-
ton was in love with the energy and scale of America (its revivalist meet-
ings, dance halls, movie houses, sporting events, and other subjects which
interested the Realists); on the other hand and at the same time, he was
revolted by these phenomena. His satire is often as ambivalent as Sin-
clair Lewis's writing of the period. For a while Benton scoffs equally at
the “effete” and “radical” city (e.g., City Scenes) and the rural South and
wild West (Susanna and the Elders), at the reformer and the racketeer,
at popular and highbrow entertainment. Revealingly he writes: “... when
I take stock of myself, apart from alcoholic drinks and the equally intoxi-
cating effects of words, I find that I don’t believe anything very much.”*
The Man from Missouri barely believes what he sees: in his eyes regional
subject matter will not become transcendently universal, it will be reduced
to local color.
During the first year Jackson Pollock was in Benton’s Life Drawing, .
Painting, and Composition class, working five evenings a week and sub-
jecting his work to criticism as much as twice a week, it is unlikely that
the student would have been as aware of his teacher’s inadequacies and
prejudices as of his vitality. Benton was ingratiating. He didn’t criticize
unless he was asked to. Many nights he ran up the five flights of stairs to
Studio 9—stinking, even out in the corridor, of the sulfur from egg tem-
pera, a favorite medium of his—and shouted from the doorway, “Any-
body want criticism?” If no one answered, he’d turn around and leave
without going into the studio.
In answer to a questionnaire published a dozen years later, Pollock
said, “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 who would have provided a
much less strong opposition. At the same time, Benton introduced me to
Renaissance art.”** Notice the phrase “later on’: at first Pollock was a
* See Bibliography No. 16.
** See Bibliography No. 1.
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

21

devoted student of Benton, not, as is often stated, a rebel against him.

As we look at Pollock’s sketchbooks of the thirties—probably done-
subsequent to his classes with Benton, but nevertheless related to them—
sheet after sheet is filled with copies of High Renaissance and Baroque
studies of stylized drapery and the human body, many by Rubens, Rem-
brandt, late Michelangelo, Tintoretto, and mostly El Greco, all favorites
of Benton, particularly the last three. These studies are sometimes re-
duced to cubes and simplified outlines in accordance with Benton’s use of
exercises by Diirer, Sch6n, and Cambiaso. Whether the drawings are of
drapery, a single figure, or a group, typically they emphasize the rhythmic
energy of the subject, frequently by the use of strong diagonals. On some
sheets freer, rougher, more personal and expressionistic drawing appears
along with the studies. On others, recognizable self-portraits are incor-
porated in the compositions. Either way, whether by introducing his emo-
tional self or his literal self, it is clear that however accomplished Pol-
lock’s draftsmanship had become under Benton’s tutelage, he wanted also
to express something more personal than was possible within the frame-
work of drawings based upon Renaissance or even Baroque masters.
Few of Pollock’s oils survive from the middle thirties. In those that
do, such as The Covered Wagon and Going West, Benton’s influence is
clear. So is that of El Greco, a Baroque forerunner of Expressionistic dis-
tortion on whose work so many of the drawings in Pollock’s sketchbook
are based. And so, finally, is that of Albert P. Ryder, that native Expres-
sionistic sport whose work is intensely personal and compressed, yet
swirling and exploding out into some larger world beyond the self. Pol-
lock later described Ryder as “the only American master who interests
me.”* The title Landscape with Rider, of about the same period, might
have been intended as a verbal and visual pun. As in Rydet’s work, Pol-
lock’s subject matter is not literal and the painting values are extremely
plastic.
These early sketches with their personal intrusions, these oils with
their groping for the self within American subject matter, came—whether
* See Bibliography No. 1.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

22

directly or indirectly—from Benton’s classes. Throughout this work we

see Benton’s emphasis on Renaissance draftsmanship and composition,
echoes of Michelangelo in the use of foreshortening, perspective, and
chiaroscuro. But beyond classroom studies and formal lectures, perhaps
during coffee breaks (even when Pollock was clearing tables in the cafe-
teria to earn part of his tuition), perhaps during visits by the students to
Benton’s home, more must have rubbed off—Benton’s own “American-
ness.””
After Jackson’s first year at the League, he wrote Charles a postcard
from Fulton, Missouri, on June 10, 1931, while on a hitchhiking trip to
Los Angeles with Manuel Tolegian, now also enrolled at the League:

Seeing swell country and interesting people—haven't done much sketching—

experienced the most marvelous lightning storm (in Indiana) I was ready to
die any moment. This Missouri state is most impossible to catch a ride in—and
there’s four thousand bums on the highway. Tried to catch a freight in Indi-
anapolis and got thrown out of sight the damned thing was going too fast— |
spent one night in jail—haven't seen Tolegian in five days—think he’s ahead
of me,

Before the end of June, in a letter to Charles and Frank he wrote:

My trip was a peach. 1 got a number of kicks in the but and put in jail twice
with days of hunger—but what a worthwhile experience. I would be on the
road yet if my money had lasted. I got in Monday afternoon exactly three weeks
after starting. The country began getting interesting in Kansas—the wheat was
just beginning to turn and the farmers were making preparation for harvest. |
saw the negroes playing poker, shooting craps and dancing along the Missis-
sippi in St. Louis. The miners and prostitutes in Terre Haute Indiana gave
swell color—their both starving—working for a quarter—digging their graves.
1 quit the highway in southern Kansas and grabbed a freight—went
through Oklahoma and the Panhandle of Texas—met a lot of interesting bums
—cutthroats and the average American looking for work—the freights are full,
men going west men going east and as many going north and south a million
of them. I rode trains through to San Bernardino and caught a ride into Los
Angeles. Tolegian made the trip in 11 days he got a thru ride from Pueblo to
L.A. I guess he had a fine trip—neither of us did much drawing.
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

23

The “swell color’—local, no doubt—of the miners and prostitutes

in Terre Haute, and the “interesting bums” in the Texas Panhandle are
recognizable as responses that may well have been inspired by Benton.
The excitement of being “on the road” would have come more probably
from Jackson himself. He loved the feel of moving fast through the
countryside in a car or truck and was to doa lot of driving, some of it
restless and reckless, right up to the moment of his death.
That summer after Jackson got home he and Tolegian worked as
lumberjacks at Big Pines, Calif. Before returning to New York, Jackson
wrote Charles again:

The folks have probably told you that 1 have been cutting wood—l have fin-
ished up the job today—and after figuring things out there is damned little
left—barely enough to pay for my salt—at any rate I’m built up again and feel
fine. 1 wish you and Frank could have gotten out for the summer—its quite a
relief. I guess the short stay in the country helped. 1 haven't done any drawing
to speak of. Some more study with Benton and a lot of work is lacking—the
old bunch out here are quite haywire—they think worse of me tho. Sande and
Lote {Sanford’s fiancée] were in San Francisco to see Rivera's mural but found
it impossible, it being in a private meeting room for the Stock Exchange
members. ...
I don’t know what to try and do—more and more I realize I’m sadly in
need of some method of making a living—and its beginning to look as tho I'll
have to take time off if I’m ever to get started. To make matters worse, 1 haven't
any particular interest in that kind of stuff. There is little difficulty in getting
back there—and I suppose I can find something to do—what is your opinion?
The trip through the country is worthwhile regardless of how I might have to
make it. 1 landed here with a dime but could have made the trip easily on ten
dollars....
Dad still has difficulties in losing money—and thinks I’m just a bum—
while mother still holds the old love.

The last short paragraph—a single compressed sentence—is the

knottiest in this letter to his eldest brother, who along with Benton is at
this time one of the two surrogate father figures in his life. After wonder-
ing, earlier in the letter, about what he is going to do, how he will make a
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

24

living, Jackson writes in a confused spirit of self-justification and self-

accusation, as well as father-justification and father-accusation: “Dad
still has difficulties in losing money.” The syntax is sloppy, but the inten-
tion is clear. Jackson is really saying, Even though my father loses money,
he “thinks I’m just a bum.” All this intense compression of the eighteen-
year-old boy’s conflicted feelings precedes the final ellipsis: “while
mother still holds the old love.” One wants to ask if she holds it for Jack-
son or from him, or for or from Jackson’s father.
Charles Pollock has said that his mother encouraged him and his
brothers to do, to become what they wanted. However, with that encour-
agement and love went, one suspects, the condition that her sons be suc-
cessful, able to support themselves and their families better than their
father had supported his. This condition—maybe explicit, but more likely
implicit—was both crippling and motivating. With Jackson, as with some
of his brothers, it may well have been a contributory factor in his need to
drink, to be “manly” at such an early age. And very early on it must also —
have contributed to Jackson’s desire to be a great painter—not just a good
one, but a great one, one who would change the history of art. This ambi-
tion grew steadily from Jackson’s late teens until his thirties, when it was
realized. It is important to remember, though, that during these years it is
always there, however ambiguously presented. The need to show mother,
father (for only a short time longer), brothers, friends, the world, by
means of his painting is one aspect of his ambition; the need to shock
them by behavior is another.
After the return trip to New York—filled with as much of the local
color Benton had taught him to look for as with his own response to
landscape and space—Jackson registered once more at the League, now
in Benton’s class in Mural Painting, on a tuition loan arranged by his
teacher and partially paid for by cafeteria work.
This year, from nine to twelve-thirty, six mornings a week—with
two of criticism by Benton—Jackson again faced the Renaissance, trying
to absorb the laws of composition in the work of the masters and yet
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

25

struggling still to express himself, to resolve the conflict between given

laws and personal necessities. Thus, except for Pollock’s introduction to
greater scale, the second year was pretty much arepetition and extension
of the first. However, an understanding of scale was extremely important
to his later development. For laymen—and indeed for too many so-called
“muralists’—scale is simply a matter of size, a sketch is too often blown
up to fit a space. But for a true artist, scale is part of the conception of a
work, one of the factors which determines its nature. Such an artist under-
stands that forms, colors, textures, all the elements of composition, change
qualitatively as they change quantitatively; that what is exciting or ap-
pealing on a small surface may not be so when simply enlarged. Pollock
was beginning to learn these lessons, to face the problems inherent in
keeping all of a large surface—or one, anyway, of a particular size—alive
and interesting.
A friend of Jackson’s at the League, Whitney Darrow, Jr., now a
New Yorker cartoonist, remembers: “Jackson drew with a real Benton-
esque hollow-and-bump muscularity—always with frenzy, concentration,
wild direct energy. His work was rough—but direct, again—never pol-
ished or graceful. His approach was very much Benton’s: clay models of
a scene painted black and white to study light on figures made from live
models. Exploring muscles of model—on stand in class—by touching the
model. (The ticklish ones didn’t sign up for Benton’s classes. )”
Another classmate, Axel Horn, amplifies: “The ‘hollow and the
bump’ had a symbolic significance like ‘yin and yang.’ It expressed for us
the polarity from negative, recessive softness to positive, solid, projecting
forcefulness.” Horn even speaks of Jackson’s personality transformation
when drunk as the “hollow” becoming the “bump.”
Darrow continues: “There was that pride in being a Westerner. Like
Benton, Jackson looked down then on the East and Europe. He was made
monitor of our class in the fall. He was a very gentle man, considerate,
thoughtful, humorous—unless drunk, when he was often violent and
quarrelsome. One time he got into some kind of fight with a policeman.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

26

I was going to be a character witness, but I was never called to appear

before the judge. Also I heard from our mutual friend Tolegian that he
woke up one night and found Pollock, who had entered his apartment,
standing over him with a drawn knife. Well, that’s hearsay.”
If this is hearsay, there are other first-hand stories of Jackson’s vio-
lence. He tried to throw Guston off a roof. He tried to push Baziotes out
a window. He tried to strangle Siqueiros.... The operative word is
“tried,” but he never tried very hard. He never killed anyone, never badly
hurt anyone until the time of his own death. Rather he shocked and
scared friends to provoke a response, to provoke punishment of himself.
Again and again we hear of Pollock hitting friends or strangers only until
he is hit back.
Again, in his autobiography (the third revised edition, 1968, which
contains much more material on Pollock than earlier editions), Benton
shows us still more of Pollock’s complex personality. He describes how,
first in New York and later in Martha’s Vineyard:
Jack's appealing nature made him a sort of family intimate. Rita, my wife, took
to him immediately as did our son T.P., then just coming out of babyhood.
Jack became the boy's idol and through that our chief baby sitter. He was too
proud to take money, so Rita paid him for his guardianship sessions by feeding
him. He became our most frequent dinner guest....
In the summers of the thirties Jack was a frequent and long-staying v15t-
tor at our place in Martha's Vineyard, where he helped me with the chores,
gardening, painting trim, cutting firewood, and the like. We fixed up a little
house where he could live and paint {“Jack’s shack” is still there}. He was treated
as one of the family and encouraged to participate in all gatherings.... Jack
never spoke at these gatherings and, though drinks were occasionally available,
rarely touched them. Though plainly intelligent, he seemed to have no intel-
lectual curiosity. He was not a reader. In all the time of our Vineyard intimacy,
I never saw him with a book in his hands, not even a whodunit. He was mostly
a silent, inwardly turned boy and even in gay company carried something of an
aura of unhappiness about him. But everybody liked him just the same. The
appeal he had for us was generally shared.
Although in our company Jack was quiet and reticent, rumors would oc-
 American Scene, New Y ork Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

27

casionally reach us that he was not always so. Tales, emanating from student
parties in New York, revealed a quite different person. Gwe him sufficient
alcohol, it was said, and he became loud,. boisterous, combative, and sometimes
completely unmanageable.

A rather lengthy anecdote follows concerning a visit to the Vineyard dur-

ing which Jackson was arrested for disturbing the peace after buying a
bottle of gin (intended as a gift for Benton), drinking it, renting a bike,
and then chasing girls until he fell off. He was fined $10, paid by Benton.
A year after the publication of Benton’s revised autobiography, he
was interviewed by a reporter and spoke more brusquely: “ ‘I don’t like to
go into the private lives of my pupils. And I don’t like to talk about
artists, in general. I’ll talk about a man’s work, but not about him per-
sonally. But I guess I can tell you that Jackson was a sweet boy who be-
came a violent alcoholic. He had talent. And I'll tell you another thing.
Jackson Pollock was the best colorist America ever had. That’s never
mentioned about him. His later work? I guess it was all right for him.’ ”*
The differences between Benton’s official autobiography and his off-
the-cuff statements are more than tonal. There is little doubt in the minds
of those who watched Pollock identify more and more closely with
Benton that, along with everything else, the older man’s heavy drinking
influenced his protégé, or at least could be justified as part of the example
to be followed. Pollock may well have connected the drinking with
Benton’s comparative freedom as a painter and his seemingly relaxed, but
really driving, relationship with dealers, collectors, and the commissioners
of murals. For Pollock, Benton’s drinking may indeed have appeared to
be a necessary ingredient of the formula for success which Pollock himself
wanted so desperately.

In May, when his second year at the League was completed, he again
made a cross-country trip. This time going West to see his family he
traveled in comparative style—in an old touring car—with his brother
* See Bibliography No. 113.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

28

Charles, a girl named Laura, and Whitney Darrow. Although there had
been some talk of a “sketching trip” (which is the way it is usually de-
scribed in biographical writing on Pollock), Darrow remembers it not as an
artistic ramble but as a way to get to California; he himself was included
as a paying passenger to help defray expenses. Jackson did, however,
bring along a box of hard colored crayons which had to be dipped in
water before use. On the return trip, when Darrow drove through the
desert, Jackson, lacking extra water for crayon-dipping, would spit on the
crayons and then sketch enthusiastically. Some of the time he chewed cut
plug tobacco, and both Benton classmates rolled and smoked Bull
Durham, lighting the hand-rolled cigarettes with a flick of the thumbnail
across a large “kitchen” match. Such Americana was a substantial part of
the return in a $100 Ford Darrow bought in L.A. And Darrow remem-
bers Jackson’s somewhat ecstatic appreciation of desert earth colors, the
detours to see plantations in Alabama and Tennessee and stevedores load-
ing bales of cotton in New Orleans, the hillbilly songs Jackson played on
the Jew’s harp, the cowboy boots he wore.
While in Los Angeles, Jackson saw little of his father, who was by
then a Gounty Road Supervisor, laying out new roads and in charge of
some two or three hundred prison laborers. The work was steady but hard,
and kept him away from home a great deal. Those who remember LeRoy
Pollock from this period say he was a no-nonsense type, very. quiet and
generally respected. Perhaps the father was too tired to respond much to
Jackson’s talk about art in general and Benton in particular. Surely at
this time his mother was more patient with her youngest son, her last
baby. She doted upon his every word concerning art and, more particu-
larly, Benton and other famous teachers at the League.
Before returning East, Pollock and Darrow went to see the Duco
murals sprayed by Siqueiros on the cement exterior of the Chouinard Art
School. This was at least Pollock’s fourth direct contact with work of the
Mexican muralists. There had been the references to Rivera in Jackson’s
long letter of October 22, 1929, to Charles and Frank. The following
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

29

year, just before his first trip to New York, Charles had taken him to
Pomona College to see Orozco’s recently completed Prometheus fresco,
which Jackson then thought the most important twentieth-century paint-
ing. And that same fall, in New York, when Benton and Orozco began
murals at the New School for Social Research, Pollock helped support
himself by doing “action posing” for Benton, at which time he must also
have seen Orozco and his work. A few years later he would watch Rivera
paint at the New Workers School on West 14th Street, and then Pollock
would join Siqueiros nearby in his “experimental workshop” on the west
side of Union Square. Among living artists, this group of Mexican mural-
ists was second only to Benton in profound influence on Pollock’s work of
the thirties. As Peter Busa, a friend of Pollock’s at the League, has ob-
served: “Benton taught Pollock about ideals of beauty; these Mexicans
taught him that art could be ‘ugly.’ ”
The relationship of the Mexican muralists to their audience could
not have been more different from that of Benton to his. Politically, they
moved to the left with their revolution, producing works conceived as
propaganda; Benton moved to the right as his country moved to the left
during the Depression. Esthetically, the Mexican artists communicated
with a tradition of semiabstraction and stylization—reflecting a cultural
heritage dating back to the Mayans, Olmecs, and Aztecs. Benton, having
embraced abstraction, was turning right once more—towards the Acad-
emy.
However, the politically revolutionary content of work by the Mexi-
can muralists ultimately influenced Pollock no more than the politically
reactionary content of Benton’s work. Though Pollock had seen compara-
tive poverty in his own home and a more generally grinding poverty in
his trips across the country, and though he, like so many during the De-
pression, was attracted to various leftist groups, he never did paintings
that were specifically social in orientation and resisted concepts of art as
sociology or politics or propaganda. As he said, “painting is not illustra-
tion.”
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

30

Pollock’s debt to Siqueiros is obvious in the small highly Expres-

sionistic painting Woman (of the late thirties) and to Orozco in the
angularly rhythmic paintings and crayon drawings of the same period.
However, more important than what Pollock borrowed for a while from
any of the Mexicans is the reinforcement of more general ideas about the
mural itself, about painting as a wall, an environment. Like Benton, the
Mexicans extended Pollock’s still-formative ideas as to the possibility of
handling a large space in a way that was continuous and lively; like him,
they contributed to Pollock’s stylistic development. As to the content of
Pollock’s work, he was still discovering that this could not be learned or
borrowed from outside examples but would have to be found within
himself.

When Pollock returned from Los Angeles, he registered for the

second time in Mural Painting. This was to be his fifth and last term with
Benton. As Darrow mentioned, Pollock was made monitor of his class, -
and was thus exempted from tuition. This arrangement lasted through
the fall term. In December Benton stopped teaching to do a commission
for the State of Indiana, and in January Pollock registered for painting
classes with John Sloan.
Pollock may have respected Sloan as a great Realist, a founder of the
Eight, an organizer of the Armory Show, a militant illustrator; but all
this was history. We know from Sloan’s work of the thirties that, al-
though he had lost none of his proficiency as a draftsman, his style and
choice of subject matter had become tamer, more gentle and impression-
istic than in the early years of his career. Pollock missed the vitality and
ambitiousness of Benton’s work, however often that vitality was misplaced
and that ambition excessive. Sloan—at the time over sixty, twenty years
older than Benton—did not challenge Pollock; he is not mentioned in
Pollock’s public statements or correspondence, and we know that in
February and March Pollock registered for other classes with Robert
Laurent in sculpture. This, along with making pottery, would remain an
 American Scene, New Y ork Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

31

“interest of Pollock’s throughout his life—a clue perhaps to his longing

for a different, more solid, three-dimensional reality than that which he
was to create in his later work. Still more peripheral was an interest in
lithography, but, although Pollock made lithographs during the thirties,
this was a medium in which he was not comfortable. Typically his
lithographs are influenced by Benton’s style and subject matter, and to
pull them he needed the help of a professional printmaker, usually
Theodore Wahl at the League. ;
Though the relationship with Benton would remain by far the most
profound of those Pollock established at the League, he would, before
leaving there and later when visiting, meet many other artists whose paths
would cross his own in future years. For example, there was a group
known as “the Armenians”—the painter Arshile Gorky, the sculptors
Raoul Hague and Reuben Nakian—who used to hang around the cafe-
teria, sometimes joined by their countryman, Pollock’s friend Tolegian.
Of this group, Gorky, despite some difficulty with English, was particu-
larly eloquent; he liked to match his “poetry” against the tougher, more
direct verbal style of his friend Stuart Davis, who taught at the League
during 1931-32. Another unusually eloquent talker was the sculptor
John Flannagan, whose Irish brogue was a strong contrast to the voices
of “the Armenians.” One more contrasting voice—hoarse and slightly
Italian-accented—came from the young sculptor Phillip Pavia, who would
years later found The Club* and include on its panels such other young
artists formerly at the League as Harry Holtzman and Will Barnet. But
besides those who were around the League as teachers, students, or regular
visitors, there were also guest speakers: some, like Lewis Mumford, who
dealt with broad cultural themes; others, more specialized, who lectured
on artists outside the curriculum (e.g., Mondrian) or on topics of practical
interest such as the emerging art program for Rockefeller Center. There
was even a reading of “Anna Livia Plurabelle” in 1932 when that sec-

* See Chapter Five.

 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

32

tion of Finnegans Wake was separately published. Some of all this, how-
ever difficult to measure, must have rubbed off on Pollock.

Early in 1933, those Pollock brothers in New York (Charles, with

his wife Elizabeth; Frank; and Jackson—all struggling to make ends
meet in Greenwich Village) received word that their father, only fifty-
six, was dying, that there was no hope. On March 6 he died of malignant
endocarditis, but they couldn’t afford to go to Los Angeles for the funeral.
Less than two weeks after his death, Stella Pollock wrote a long touching
letter to “My Dear Sons and daughter/Charles and Elizabeth Frank and
Jack.” In it she mentions having moved her husband’s bed across the
east windows in the dining room so he could see the snow-capped
mountains with green hills below and flowers—in short, the outdoors he
loved. She says he never complained despite drenching night sweats and
running a temperature all the time. His last pleasures were, as always,
simple. Saturday morning he listened to a speech by President Roosevelt
and thought it was wonderful, and he listened to the news and music
at various other times. Sunday morning he heard the Tabernacle Choir
from Salt Lake City, but by about noon he could hardly get his breath,
and by evening Marvin (as his mother still called him, though the rest of
the family called him Jay) went for the doctor. As he returned with the
doctor, his father died in his mother’s arms.
Sanford was then nearby visiting his fiancée Arloie Connaway, who
had been his Riverside High School sweetheart since 1927. When Marvin
called him, both the news and the fact that he had not been at home left
him “paralyzed with grief.” He expressd his deep sorrow ina letter to his
brothers and sister-in-law written about the same time as his mother’s but
much shorter. He writes that their father’s “absence will leave a gap in
our lives which can only be filled by our untiring efforts toward those
cultural things which he, as a sensitive man, found so sordidly lacking in
our civilization. Our beautiful mother is bearing up in a strong courageous
manner— She is a most inspiring person. The emotional strain is tre-
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

33

mendous—she found tears and consolation in your telegram and seems to

find strength in her indomitable love for her sons. .. .”
Though Benton returned to the League in the fall of 1933, Pollock
took no more classes with him—or with anyone else. However, along
with other students, he did quite regularly join Tom Benton and his wife,
Rita, for their “musical Monday evenings” of folk-singing and guitar-
playing, with Jackson still doing his best—never very good—on the
Jew’s harp. And later, when the Bentons settled in Kansas City, Pollock
remained in touch with them and continued to visit them during the
summer on the Vineyard. A letter from Benton before he left New York
indicates his affection for Pollock and encouragement of the young
painter:

Before I get started on my own stuff and forget everything else I want to
tell you I think the little sketches you left around here are magnificent. Your
color is rich and beautiful. You've the stuff old kid—all you have to do ts keep
it up. You ought to give some time to drawing—but I do not somehow or
other feel the lack of drawing in the stuff left here. It seems to go without tt.
Rita has framed your little lithograph and it carries well. See you around the
tenth with the others.

After LeRoy Pollock’s death Jackson shared an apartment with

Charles and his wife, and in the summer of 1934 he and Charles were on
the road again. They covered 8,000 miles in a second-hand Model T Ford,
first visiting coal-mining areas in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and
Kentucky; then traveling through the South; then going cross-country to
their mother in Los Angeles, and visiting her sister in Iowa on the way
back. There was no more talk of local color. The color was the same
everywhere—the dismal gray of Depression poverty.
In Los Angeles, Jackson once again showed his interest in sculpture.
The old county courthouse had been demolished to make way for a new
one, and the sandstone from the old building had been dumped in the
Los Angeles River (a “river” only during and just after the heavy winter
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

34

rains). Jackson got his friend Reuben Kadish to help him fish a block
of sandstone from the river bed. Pollock did some preliminary carving,
but, as far as we know, never completed the sculpture.
When Charles and Jackson got back to New York, Sandy joined
them. He and Jackson got a small unheated apartment above a lumber-
yard at 76 West Houston Street and Charles, who had been teaching part-
time at the City and Country School, found them a shared job there as
janitors at $10 per week. Caroline Pratt, the school’s director, and Helen
Marot, a teacher there, were extremely sensitive to Jackson’s alcoholism
and the emotional problems underlying it. Miss Marot had been a social
crusader earlier in her life, but now, almost seventy and somewhat dis-
illusioned with mass movements, she had become more interested in
psychology, more hopeful for the particular individual than for a general
class or group. Both women, but particularly Helen Marot, helped and
encouraged Jackson throughout the thirties, one of the most difficult
periods of his life—aggravated for him, as for almost everyone, by the
terrible economic condition of the country, and for artists in particular,
by the death of the art market. Janitorial work must have been demeaning
enough for men of Sandy’s and Jackson’s sensitivity, but in addition they
had to go on relief and sometimes were even forced to steal fuel and food.
Rita and Tom Benton helped by urging Jackson to paint ceramic plates
and bowls which she sold in the basement of Frederic Newlin Price’s
Feragil Gallery. (Price was Benton’s dealer and the author of a book on
Ryder.) In February 1935 when Pollock exhibited a watercolor called
Threshers at the Brooklyn Museum, he listed this gallery as handling his
work. For a time Jackson worked, too, for the city’s Emergency Relief
Bureau, as a “stonecutter,” cleaning the Saint-Gaudens statue of Peter
Cooper in Cooper Square.
By summer, as part of Roosevelt's National Recovery program, the
Federal Art Project (like the Writer’s Project, Theater Project, etc.) of
the Works Projects Administration had been formed. As with other re-
covery programs, the idea was to create employment. Specifically, the
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

35

federal government envisaged as much art as possible in public locations:

administrative buildings, post offices, courthouses, schools, hospitals, and
so forth. The Project was divided into parts: sculpture, graphics, mural
painting, and easel painting. Typically, mural painting attracted mostly
artists in the Realistic tradition, including Regionalists and Social Realists,
who could fulfill commissions of a given size on a given theme, usually
historical or regional. The easel project offered more freedom as to size
and subject matter as well as to working hours and conditions. Where
muralists were supervised on a daily basis by a senior artist in his studio
or in one rented for a specific project, easel painters were permitted to
work in their own studios pretty much at their own pace. It is not sur-
prising therefore that artists tending toward greater abstraction, which
still meant mostly toward aspects of Cubism and Expressionism, were at-
tracted to the easel project. However, there was much overlapping, and it
must be emphasized that the underlying attraction to both painting
projects was very simply the need for economic help.
Pollock was fortunate in joining the easel project, where his prin-
cipal supervisor was Burgoyne Diller. Diller’s style, profoundly influenced
by that of Mondrian, had, like his master’s, emerged from Cubism to pure
hard-edged Abstraction. Nevertheless he was tolerant of Pollock’s Expres-
sionistic explorations—and also of his rather “romantic” working methods,
based usually on waiting for inspiration which sometimes had to be stimu-
lated by alcohol. Pollock was supposed to turn out one painting every four to
eight weeks, depending on size, for allocation to public buildings. When
these paintings were late or unsuitable, Diller “covered” for Pollock.
Somehow, with only brief interruptions, Pollock remained on the Project
until the beginning of 1943, when it was discontinued.
Not many paintings of the mid- to late thirties can be located, if they
have survived. Charles Pollock owns Jackson’s sketch for two murals at
Greenwich House, done in oil on wrapping paper in 1933 or 1934. The
lower sketch of five musicians is energetically Bentonesque in style as in
instrumentation (a banjo or guitar, an accordion, a clarinet, and possibly
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

36

two mouth instruments such as an harmonica or a Jew’s harp). Then, if

one wants to count them as paintings, there are several bowls and plates
done under Benton’s influence and in his collection along with landscapes
done on Martha’s Vineyard. The Archives of American Art has a photo-
graph of Night Pasture, about which we know neither whereabouts nor
dimensions but only that it was done before 1937. It too is Bentonesque in
the stylized angularity of the man behind horse and plow, set against a
turbulent landscape and sky. Ryder’s influence is apparent in the previ-
ously mentioned Landscape with Rider and ina self-portrait. Finally, there
is The Flame, dated 1937, and an untitled undated abstraction of about
the same time. However, all of these works, indebted as they are to Benton
and then Ryder, are consistent in their Expressionistic contours, free brush-
work, and movement toward abstraction.
For such work Pollock was paid roughly $100 a month. Over the
period from 1935 to 1943 he averaged less than $1,000 a year. But at
least he was able to keep on painting. He was able, also, to keep on drink-
ing. Painters who were on the Project remember “check-cashing sprees”
not unlike payday binges in the army or navy. Jackson, still only in his
early twenties, was once again part of a hard-drinking community, curbed
by lack of funds.
Soon after Jackson joined the Project, Charles and his wife, Eliza-
beth, left New York to go to Washington where Charles would work for
the Resettlement Administration. Thereafter he had little contact with
Jackson, and Sandy became increasingly close to him. In September
they moved into Charles’s 8th Street apartment, anticipating Sandy's
marriage to Arloie Connaway.
Charles’s apartment, where Jackson had lived for about a year after
their father’s death, was on the top. floor of a five-story building owned
and well maintained by Sailors’ Snug Harbor, a charitable trust for the
benefit of needy sailors. It was luxurious compared with cold-water flats
the younger brothers had previously shared. The big front room facing
north became Jackson’s studio (though not closed off until two years
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

37

later) and a very small roomy beside it, his bedroom. Sandy's studio, in
the center of the floor-through, was smaller and darker. However, the
bedroom he and Arloie had was much larger than Jackson’s and in closer
proximity to the bath and the kitchen where all of them ate their meals.
For almost seven years—from early 1936 until late 1942—Sandy and
Arloie remained with Jackson in this apartment, somehow surviving the
inevitable friction of close quarters (made even closer when friends, in-
cluding Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish, came to New York and stayed
with Jackson). The problems presented by Jackson’s drinking made the
situation still more difficult. As will be seen in Sandy’s letters, the rela-
tionship of the McCoys to Jackson was to become more like that of ideally
sympathetic parents than of a brother and sister-in-law.
In the spring of 1936 Siqueiros started a workshop at Union Square.
Jackson, his brother Sandy, and at least two of his former classmates from
the League, Axel Horn and Mervin Jules, worked there. Horn says* it was

for the express purpose of experimentation with new technological develop-

ments in materials and tools. Paints including the then new nitro-cellulose
lacquers and silicones, surfaces such as plywoods and asbestos panels, and paint
applicators including airbrushes and sprayguns, were some of the materials and
techniques to be explored and applied. We were going to put out to pasture
the “stick with hairs on its end” as Siqueiros called the brush.
New art forms for the use and exposure to large masses of people were to
be initiated, Our stated aim was to perfect such new media even though they
might be comparatively impermanent, since they would be seen by hundreds of
thousands of people in the form of floats, posters, changeable murals in sub-
ways, multi-reproduced graphics, etc.
Spurred on by Siqueiros, whose energy and torrential flow of ideas and
new projects stimulated us all to a high pitch of activity, everything became
material for our investigations. For instance, lacquer opened up enormous pos-
sibilities in the application of color. We sprayed through stencils and friskets,
embedded wood, metal, sand.and paper. We used it in thin glazes or built it up
into thick globs. We poured it, dripped it, spattered it, hurled it at the picture

* See Bibliography No. 122.

 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

38

surface. It dried quickly, almost instantly, and could be removed at will even
though thoroughly dry and hard. What emerged was an endless variety of acci-
dental effects. Siquetros soon constructed a theory and system of “controlled
accidents.” ...
Of course, we used all of these devices to enhance paintings with literary
content. No one thought of them as ends in themselves. The genesis of Pol-
lock’s mature art began to be discernible only when he began to exploit these
techniques as final statement.

In addition to Horn’s recollections, Mervin Jules recalls Siqueiros’s

practice of preparing panels by splattering and dripping on them so that
this abstractly patterned underpainting would stimulate the figurative
imagery to follow. This preparatory technique, and the experiments with
“controlled accidents,’ and the use of “Duco” and other enamels—
Siqueiros was, according to the critic Harold Rosenberg, “known locally
as ‘Il Duco’ ”’—all must have influenced Pollock. However, these new
techniques, as well as the dream of making mural-sized paintings, would
be repressed until Pollock needed them to express the subject matter he
would some ten years later discover in himself. Meanwhile, his parting
with Siqueiros was violent. Siqueiros was about to leave for Spain to
join the Loyalists, and, according to Horn, a farewell party was given for
him in a loft. When someone proposed a toast, he was missing and so
was Pollock. Eventually they were found under a table. “Each had his
hands around the other’s throat and was silently attempting to choke the
other into unconsciousness, Jack in a wild exhilarated effort and Siqueiros
in a desperate attempt to save himself. Sandy McCoy moved in and with a
deft right to the jaw unlocked Jack’s fingers... .”
Toward the end of 1936, while living for a short time in a $5-per-
month farm house near French Town, New Jersey, Jackson wrecked a
Ford which Charles had given him before leaving New York and did
$80 worth of damage to the car he hit. By early the following year, at
the urging of Caroline Pratt and Helen Marot as well as Sandy, he began
psychiatric treatment for alcoholism.
In February, soon after beginning this therapy, Jackson—along with
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

39

Sandy, Philip Guston, and Manuel Tolegian, among others—exhibited

at the Temporary Galleries of the Municipal Art Committee. At this
short-lived gallery, run without commission for the benefit of artists work-
ing in the city, Jackson showed a Bentonesque tempera painting called
Cotton Pickers. Sometime between this exhibition and the following sum-
mer Charles Pollock moved to Detroit to do layouts and political cartoons
for the United Automobile Workers newspaper. In July, Jackson, visiting
the Bentons on Martha’s Vineyard, was arrested fer drunkenness and
disturbing the peace. On July 27, 1937, less than a week after this inci-
dent and apparently without knowledge of it, Sandy wrote Charles in
Detroit explaining why he couldn’t accept a job opening on the newspaper
there:

Jack has been having a very difficult time with himself. This past year has
been a succession of periods of emotional instability for him which is usually
expressed by a complete loss of responsibility both to himself and to us. Ac-
companied, of course, with drinking. It came to the point where it was obvious
that the man needed help. He was mentally sick. So 1 took him to a well recom-
mended Doctor, a Psychiatrist, who has been trying to help the man find. him-
self. As you know, troubles such as his are very deep-rooted, in childhood usu-
ally, and it takes along while to get them ironed out. He has been going some
six months now and I feel there is a slight improvement in his point of view.
So without giving the impression that I am trying to be a wet nurse to Jack,
honestly 1 would be fearful of the results if he were left alone with no one to
keep him in check....There is no cause for alarm, he simply must be watched
and guided intelligently.... Jack is at the Vineyard for a three week vacation.
| 1 am sure it will do him much good.

In October, Jackson again exhibited a single painting, a watercolor,

at the opening of the new WPA Federal Art Gallery. The following
February Sandy wrote Charles, whom Jackson had stopped to see in
Detroit after a Christmas visit to the Bentons in Missouri:

Our plans for the summer are very indefinite except for one important
thing which is to get Jack out of New York. It has only been with a very com-
mendable and courageous effort on his part that he has held himself in check. 1
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

40

don’t remember whether I told you but in the first part of the winter he was in
serious mental shape and 1 was worried as hell about him. He's in pretty good
condition now, doing some fine work but needs relief badly from New York.

However, Jackson’s alcoholism became worse. On June 9, 1938, he

was dropped from the Project for “continued absence,’ and two days
later, with the help of his psychiatrist and Helen Marot, he became a
patient at the Westchester Division of N.Y. Hospital, known as Bloom-
ingdale’s. There, during the summer, as part of his therapy, he drew and
made some hammered copper bowls and plaques.
The Bentons had hoped Jackson would be able to spend part of the
summer with them. They wrote him from Kansas City in the fall:

I saw your stuff in N.Y. and later a picture that my brother has. | am very
strongly for you as an artist. You're a damn fool if you don’t cut out the monkey
business and get to work.
Tom
I was worried about you for 4 months, and can’t tell you how relieved I was to
hear from you.
We all hope & pray that you settle down & work—G& we mean work
hard paint hard— So few have the ability to say something interesting thru
their work— You have— Tom & 1 & many others believe in you....
Tom gave up drinking last July and this summer he had a most productive
one and greatly improved....
Do let us hear from you. Remember our house is always opened for you....
Rita

Despite Benton’s example at this time, Pollock continued to drink,

even after being readmitted to the Project in late November. Early in
1939 Helen Marot, by now approaching her mid-seventies, persuaded him
to reenter psychiatric therapy and, through Mrs. Cary Baynes, a mutual
friend, she persuaded Dr. Joseph L. Henderson, a Jungian who had re-
cently set up practice in New York, to take him on as a patient. The
doctor writes from memory (i.e., without having taken notes at the time
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

41

and without having either numbered or dated the drawings which will be
referred to) in his unpublished lecture “Jackson Pollock: A Psychological
Commentary” (1968):

Early in my psychiatric career, a friend asked me to see a young artist profes-

stonally while he was convalescing from a mental breakdown. Since he was ex-
tremely unverbal, we had great trouble in finding a common language and I
doubted I could do much to help him. Communication was, however, made
possible by his bringing me a series of drawings illustrating the experience he
had been through. They seemed to demonstrate phases of his sickness and they
were followed by others showing a gradual development during therapy into
a healthier condition, a psychological reintegration, which allowed him to re-
cover to a considerable extent during the next two years. In contrast to these
there were a number of sketches which reflected the influence of Picasso in his
“Guernica” period, or of Orozco, and would have to be classified as expert-
mental works....

Dr. Henderson wrote* about this introduction:

... It sounded as if I had set Pollock the task of portraying the unconscious in
these drawings. This was not the case. He was already drawing them, and when
I found it out, 1 asked for them, He brought me a few of the drawings each time
in the first year of his treatment, and I commented upon them spontaneously,
without establishing any psychotherapeutic rules. He did not have free assoct-
ations, nor did he wish to discuss his own reactions to my comments. He was
much too close to the symbolism of the drawings to tolerate any real objectivity
toward them. 1 had to be content with saying only what he could assimilate at
any given time, and that was not much. There were long silences. Most of my
comments centered around the nature of the archetypal symbolism in his draw-
ings. I never could get onto a more personal level with him, until after he
stopped bringing the drawings. So you see my role was mainly to empathize
with his feeling about the drawings and share his experience without trying
to “interpret” them in the ordinary sense. They provided a bridge to communi-
cation, and it gave him the assurance that at least one other person understood
something of their abstruse language.
* Letter of Nov. 11, 1969, to the author.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

42

Pollock saw Henderson once.a week regularly and, as necessary, the

doctor “fitted in some extra appointments.” In the section of the lecture
devoted to slides of individual drawings, Dr. Henderson starts with three
representing (1) “violent agitation,” (2) “paralysis or withdrawal of
vital energy,” and (3) “pathological form of introversion.” Henderson
comments:
Following a prolonged period of representing human figures and animals in an
anguished, dismembered or lamed condition, there came a new development in
the drawings Pollock made during therapy. This was not merely the dissocia-
tion of schizophrenia, though he was frequently close to it. It has seemed to me
4 parallel with similar states of mind ritually induced among tribal societies or
in shamanistic trance states. In this light the patient appears to have been in a
state similar to the novice in a tribal initiation rite during which he is ritually
dismembered at the onset of an ordeal whose goal is to change him from a boy
into a4 man.

This passage in Henderson’s paper is the only one where the word “schizo-
phrenia” occurs and then only in this qualified context. The widely pub-
licized statement of art historian C. L. Wysuph that “Henderson diagnosed
Pollock’s illness as schizophrenia” is therefore inaccurate, as it has been
labeled by Henderson himself. Furthermore, the title of the monograph
in which the statement appears, Jackson Pollock: Psychoanalytic Draw-
ings (1970), is misleading, since the drawings in it were not done speci-
fically for Henderson but relate to others done both before and after this
time, including some periods when Pollock was also in therapy.
Perhaps Dr. Henderson himself should have been reminded of this.
In the remaining drawings discussed in his lecture—drawings, it must
again be emphasized, neither numbered nor dated—he sees a movement
towards relative health: new ordering symbols (the cross, the circle, the
square, the mandala, the axis mundi), opposing elements brought increas-
ingly into a harmonious whole, including Jung’s archetypal dominants of
square and circle. Of one image Dr. Henderson remarks, “Those pathetic
upper limbs reaching upward toward an unfeeling purely schematic
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

43

female torso must denote a problem left unsolved and perhaps insoluble,
a frustrated longing for the all-giving Mother.”
Whether or not one agrees with Dr. Henderson’s interpretations, one
can at least substantially accept the biographical information which
emerges toward the end of the lecture:
...1 shared his transference with an older woman friend of his.... 1 never met
Miss Marot, but I talked to her occasionally by telephone when there was some
question as to whether the artist was being adequately cared for, especially dur-
ing the times when he was drinking heavily. We invariably found that his fre-
quently missing attention to reality was admirably being supplied by his
brother (Sanford Pollock) near whom he lived and with whom he shared a
studio {apartment}. If his brother carried much of his reality function, it be-
came clear to me as time went on that he relied upon his woman friend for his
need to give and receive feeling, while he relied upon me mainly to help him
structure ego-consciousness and his thinking function toward achieving a more
rational and objective view of his life and his art. His own highly developed
function of intuition needed no help from anyone, but did need to be rescued
from time to time from a crucifying sense of isolation....

Dr. Henderson goes on to quote a phone call from Helen Marot: “"...1
saw Jackson Pollock last night and he talked for hours in a stormy but
fascinating way about himself and his painting. I don’t know but it seems
to me we may have a genius on our hands.’” The doctor comments:

I was inclined to minimize this possibility because of my anxious concern with

the strongly pathological elements I saw in his material, but I thanked her and
I agreed to discuss with her some practical ways in which she or 1 could help
him with his career. Only a week or so later, Pollock told me she had died sua-
denly. The effect of this loss was to push him back again into some of his old
troubles, with an alcoholic binge as the outward symptom. This was not, how-
ever, entirely regressive in as much as a truly glorious wake seemed justified for
such a spectal friend. Pollock saw the humor of this himself and I knew that he
would come out of this period without any lasting damage to his psychic health.
Not long after this, 1 had to tell him that 1 would be leaving New York in four
months and would have to refer him to another analyst at that time. I greatly
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

44

feared this would throw him into another regressive phase, but it did not, so
far as I know. He was no longer bringing me his drawings at this time, and
our attention from thence forward dwelt upon his personal conscious prob-
lems, rather than upon the imagery of the unconscious....

One questions the theory of “a truly glorious wake” and, even more,
the possibility of Pollock’s having seen “the humor” in it. However, again,
whether or not one agrees with Dr. Henderson’s interpretations, one can
acknowledge some positive contribution from his therapy for Pollock—
disturbed as he had been and would be again—to have survived both
Helen Marot’s death and the doctor’s departure for the West Coast.
Henderson may have increased Pollock’s awareness that since young
manhood he had been using art to resolve the conflicts within himself—
not only to confirm his sanity but to save his life. However, from here on
Pollock would more and more profoundly equate his work with his life,
and periods of nonproductivity with death.
The one gouache painting and sixty-nine sheets of drawings in
various media (twelve done on both sides of the sheet) which Pollock
showed Henderson are, of course, interesting esthetically as well as clini-
cally, interesting not only image by image—animal figures, totems,
swastikas, mandalas, yin—yangs—but sheet by sheet in the way the images
are laid out on the page. In this work, as in the paintings of a year or two
before (@.g., Masked Image and Birth) Pollock is extremely inventive,
endlessly improvising on the bull, the horse, the serpent, the bird, dancing
figures, and “primitive” designs from the North American and Mexican
Indian. Many of the sheets seem to have been worked in a circular way—
or, if not actually turned by the artist, can be read from more than one
side. The Benton influence is no longer apparent, that of the Mexican
muralists (particularly Orozco) is strong, as is that of Picasso: the
Picasso of the Minotauromachy, and The Dream and Lie of Franco and
particularly Guernica (including the studies for it); Picasso at his most
passionate and powerful; Picasso closest to his own dreams and night-
mares; a Picasso who has learned from Surrealism; a Picasso who will at
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

4s

first dominate and then liberate Pollock. Yes, in Pollock’s continuing

dialogue with art history, the time lag is shortening, he is moving closer
to himself. Whether helped by Picasso’s example, or by analysis, or by the
admittedly destructive and temporary but nevertheless freeing use of
alcohol, or all three, Pollock—now only in his late twenties—is already
close to making the final step toward the creation of his own image as an
artist, the presentation of himself on canvas.

While in therapy with Dr. Henderson, the external pressures af-

fecting Jackson were as great as the internal ones. For example, in March
of 1939 Sanford wrote to Charles:

We have been investigated on the project. Don’t know yet what the result of it
will be. Should they ever catch up with my pack of lies they'll probably put us
in jail and throw the key away! They are mighty clever at keeping the em-
ployees in a constant state of jitters. Jack is still struggling with the problems
of painting and living.

In July the Project was reorganized as the WPA Art Program, with
a proviso that artists employed for more than eighteen months be dis-
missed. Sandy was dropped in August and collected relief until he was
readmitted at the end of the year. Jackson hung on until May 22, 1940.
In June, Sanford wrote to Charles:

We on the project have been forced to sign an affidavit to the effect that we
belonged to neither the Communist or Nazi parties. A wholly illegal procedure.
And now I understand the army is snooping around the Project finding out how
the artists could fit into the “Defense Program.”
Jack is still off the Project. It would be necessary for him to get on relief
before he could get his job back. And the relief bureau is making it as mtsera-
ble as possible for single men. Trying such tricks as suggesting that the Army
has openings for healthy young men....1 would just as soon that Jack doesn’t
get tangled up in the Relief mess and instead have a good healthy summer in
the country. It makes any one nervous to have to go through such an humili-
ating experience and Jack is especially sensitive to that sort of nasty business.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

46

During the summer Jackson wrote to Charles:

I haven’t much to say about my work and things—only that 1 have been going
through violent changes the past couple of years. God knows what will come
out of it all—it’s pretty negative stuff so far.... 1 haven't been up to any of
those competitions. Will try when my work clears up a little more. Phil Guston
and his wife have been winning some of the smaller jobs. I’m still trying to
get back on the project and it doesn’t look any too damned good. At best it will
be another four or five weeks, and then it may be the army instead.

Jackson got back on the Project in October and during the same
month registered for the draft. Sanford wrote to Charles:
They are dropping people like flies on the pretense that they are Reds, for hav-
ing signed a petition about a year ago to have the C.P. put on the ballot. We
remember signing it so we are nervously awaiting the axe. They got 20 in my
department in one day last week. There is no redress. The irony of it is that the
real Party People I know didn’t sign the damn thing and it is suckers like us
who are getting it. 1 could kick myself in the ass for being a damn fool—but
who would of thought they could ever pull one as raw as that. Further more,
when they get us in the Army with the notion that we are Reds you can bet
they will burn our hides. Needless to say we are rigid with fright.

The tensions surrounding the Project and the draft were com-
pounded by Jackson’s having to adjust to a new doctor, Violet Staub de
Laszlo, another Jungian, to whom Henderson had referred him, having
very consciously chosen a woman. Dr. de Laszlo had ideas about the army
making a man of Jackson, making him face his responsibilities, and so
forth. Despite the history of alcoholism, psychiatric therapy, and brief
institutionalization, it was only with great reluctance that she wrote his
draft board the letter that, in April, would assure his being classified IV-F.
The previous May, in yet another letter to Charles, Sanford had
written: “Jack is doing very good work. After years of trying to work
along lines completely unsympathetic to his nature, he has finally dropped
the Benton nonsense and is coming out with an honest creative act.” Then
the good work must have been mainly what he had done while with Dr.
 American Scene, New York Scene, Personal Scene: 1930-1941

47

Henderson. But now in July 1941, more than a year later, Sanford would
again write to Charles, giving him for the first time detailed information
regarding Jackson’s psychiatric problems and esthetic progress:
...In the summer of [1938] he was hospitalized for six months in a
psychiatric institution. This was done at his own request for help and upon the
advice of Doctors and with the help and influence of Helen Marot. For a few
months after his release he showed improvement. But it didn’t last and we had
to get help again. He has been seeing a Doctor more or less steadily ever since.
He needs help and 1s getting it. He is afflicted with a definite neurosis. Whether
he comes through to normalcy and self-dependency depends on many subtle
factors and some obvious ones. Since part of his trouble (perhaps a large part)
lies in his childhood relationships with his Mother in particular and family m
general, it would be extremely trying and might be disastrous for him to see her
at this time. No one could predict accurately his reaction but there 1s reason to
feel it might be unfavorable. | won’t go into details or attempt an analysis of
his case for the reason that it is infinitely too complex and though I compre-
hend it in part I am not equipped to write clearly of the subject. To mention
some of the symptoms will give you an idea of the nature of the problem, ir-
responsibility, depressive mania (Dad), overintensity and alcohol are some of
the more obvious ones. Self-destruction, too. On the credit side we have his art
which, if he allows it to grow, will, | am convinced, come to great importance.
As I have inferred in other letters, he has thrown off the yoke of Benton com-
pletely and is doing work which is creative in the most genuine sense of the
word. Here again, although I “feel” its meaning and implication, I am not
qualified to present it in terms of words. His thinking 1s, I think, related to that
of men like Beckmann, <rozco and Picasso. We are sure that if he is able to
hold himself together his work will become of real significance. His painting
15 abstract, intense, evocative in quality....

Sandy's description of Jackson’s latest work suggests his assimilation

of the Cubist tradition (particularly the recognition of a flat picture
plane) and that of Expressionistic distortion. Though Beckmann’s work
was not nearly as well known as Picasso’s, Pollock would surely have seen
it in art publications and probably also at Curt Valentin’s Bucholz Gallery
and at the Museum of Modern Art. As with Picasso, Pollock would have
been moved by Beckmann’s intensely personal response to public events.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

48

Neither Beckmann nor Picasso is at all literal or topical in presenting his

subject matter. Each uses timeless images. For example, in Beckmann’s
Departure triptych, the trussed and mutilated figures, the man in a garbage
can (whom we see now as Beckett-like), the blindfolded messenger (bell-
boy), the executioner, the drummer—all in modern dress—are as eternal
as the fisher-king, oarsman, and mother and child who appear in the
bright. center panel. With Beckmann, just as Sandy said about Jackson’s
own work, we “feel” it. We cannot “read” it and paraphrase its meaning,
but we can get a general sense from the entire painting of hope within
the flanking context of dark horror and despair. Similarly, with Guernica
it would be impossible to state the exact meaning of the decapitated
warrior still holding a broken sword or of the flower growing beside it,
or the speared horse, or the bird with beak upturned as though feeding,
or the dispassionate bull, or the shrieking women, one holding a dead
child, another a kerosene lamp toward the center of the action where an
electric light already shines without casting much light. However, again
from the entire painting, from its style, its fragmentation, raw living
line, lack of color (only black, white, and gray), as well as its subject
matter, we get a sense of animalism gone wild, of horses and humans
brutalized while the bull (usually associated with brute force) remains
calm and aloof, a presence as mysterious as the eye-shaped glow from the
electric bulb which sheds as little light on all of this as the more primitive
kerosene lamp thrust into the picture (or, in earlier studies, the candle or
the match).
There is no doubt that the widely reproduced images in Guernica,
with their strong despairing blacks—probably the most powerful and
best known of the twentieth century, if we exclude photographic images
—influenced Pollock’s paintings of the late thirties, early forties, and later.
But there again the point is not so much the specific influence of Cubism
and Expressionism but rather the movement away from literal realism
toward more universal, mythic, archetypal symbolism: a plunge into the
depths of the unconscious.
 Chapter Three

Surrealists Come to New York

(1941-1946)
I make one image—though “make” is not the word, I let, perhaps, an image be
“made” emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual and critical
forces I possess—let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make
of the third image bred out of the other two together a fourth contradictory
image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits conflict.*
DYLAN THOMAS

In November 1941 John Graham began arranging a show for the Mc-
Millen Gallery** called “American and French Painting.” Several then-
unknown Americans were to be in it, including Jackson Pollock, Lee
Krasner, and Willem de Kooning.
Graham was already an underground legend. Born Ivan Dabrowsky
in Kiev, he studied law, served as a cavalry officer during World War I
on the Rumanian front, was imprisoned and then released after the
Russian Revolution, fled to Warsaw, joined the counterrevolutionaries in
the Crimea, and, when their resistance fell, came to the Art Students
League where he remained until 1924. For the next two decades or so he
painted in a Cubist style. But even by 1937, when his System and Dia-
lectics of Art was published, he was beginning to move through Cubism
(and a devotion particularly to the earlier work of Picasso) to something
like Surrealism. More than in his paintings, this was evidenced by his
interest in occult and mystical systems—yoga, astrology, numerology, and
later alchemy, cabalism, and black magic—a body of thought which
interested Jung as well as the antecedents and living practitioners of
Surrealism.
Here is a quotation from Graham’s book (roman emphasis is his):

*In connection with Pollock, this quotation was used first by Thomas B. Hess. See
Bibliography No. 259.
** Actually McMillen, Inc. was an imterior decorating firm which showed art.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

so

| Art is the authentic reaction of the artist to a phenomenon observed, set

authoritatively to the operating plane. No technical perfection or elegance can
produce a work of art. A work of art is neither the faithful nor distorted repre-
sentation, it is the immediate, unadorned record of an authentic intellecto-
emotional REACTION of the artist set in space. Artist's reaction to a breast
differs from his reaction to an iron rail or to hair or to a brick wall. This au-
thentic reaction recorded within the measurable space immediately and auto-
matically in terms of brush pressure, saturation, velocity, caress or repulsion,
anger or desire which changes and varies in unison with the flow of feeling at
the moment, constitutes a work of art....
The difficulty in producing a work of art lies in the fact that artist has to
unite at one and the same time three elements: thought, feeling, and automatic
ase
écriture.”

Probably Pollock read or at least looked at System and Dialectics of

Art almost as soon as it was published, since he had read an article of
Graham’s—‘Primitive Art and Picasso,” which appeared in Magazine of
Art the same year—and admired it sufficiently to write Graham. This led
to friendship and mutual admiration. Graham intended to add Pollock’s
name to his list of promising young American artists, had his book gone
into a second edition.* Besides Pollock, Krasner, and de Kooning, Graham
knew, encouraged, and influenced the thinking of Gorky and David Smith
—all of whom were beginning to feel stifled by European Cubism.
What, then, was the Surrealist alternative to Cubism? Surrealism is
difficult to define. Many books have been written about it, and even its
foremost exponents disagree about its meaning. To complicate matters
more, as the term became popular, it was used so all-inclusively that by
World War II it was almost synonymous with “modern art.”
The word was invented in 1917 by the French avant-garde poet
Guillaume Apollinaire. Close to the Cubists, about whom he wrote a
major appreciation, he needed a word to describe the related but more
fantastic art of such painters as Chagall and de Chirico, as well as certain
* Ie was finally republished by Johns Hopkins Press in 1971, thirty-four years after its
initial publication by Delphic Studios in New York, ten years after Graham's death in London.
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

Si

of his own writings. He used the word surréaliste to indicate something

above or beyond realism. However, after his death at the end of World
War I, Dada was the term applied to the most avant-garde work being
done by such artists as Duchamp, Arp, Schwitters, and the expatriate
American Man Ray, all of whom, in the spirit of disillusionment following
the war, were practicing a sort of anti-art or, for them, anti-Cubism,
which was in fact much closer to a love-hate relationship. Like the Cubists,
the Dadaists used a layout that was typically flat and they expropriated
and expanded the use of collage incorporating printed, photographic, and
other “real” or “found” material, including three-dimensional objects.
Unlike the Cubists, who believed in analysis, synthesis, and other rational
processes, the Dadaists put their faith—or lack of it—in “gratuitous
acts,” arbitrary gestures, chance, and other manifestations of the irrational,
based mostly on the will of the subconscious.
The poet André Breton, who had been a medical student primarily
interested in mental diseases, was attracted to Dadaism, with its emphasis
on the importance of the irrational. However, unlike the Dadaists them-
selves, who were becoming more and more negative in their work, he be-
came convinced that subconscious irrationality might become the basis
for a positive program, a philosophy of life. No propagandist for any art
movement has ever been more articulate or more aware of the politics of
art. In 1924, at the age of twenty-eight, with his first Surrealist Manifesto
he gathered most of the Dadaists around him by defining the movement
in this way:

Surrealism. n. masc. pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to

express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true process of
thought. Thought’s dictation, in the absence of all control by the reason and
every esthetic or moral preoccupation being absent.
Philos. Encycl. Surrealism rests on the belief in the higher reality of certain
hitherto neglected forms of association, in the omnipotence of the dream, in the
disinterested play of thought. It tends to destroy the other physical mechanisms
and to substitute itself for them in the solution of life’s principal problems....
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

52

Except for its emphasis upon the verbal and written, this 1924
“definition” was one to which Pollock might well have subscribed by the
late thirties. But why the time lag? Why the slow filtering of the message
through Picasso and even John Graham? After all, Pollock and other
artists of his generation had been generally exposed to Surrealism by the
middle thirties. Two explanations seem pertinent. First, much of the best
Surrealist material was literary (written in French by such poets as Eluard,
Aragon, and Breton himself—and difficult to translate). Second, the
activities of the Surrealists must have seemed frivolous and irresponsible
in the context of the Depression and political upheaval here and abroad.
Though Picasso supported Republican Spain, Surrealism’s first ‘“ambas-
sador” to the United States was the much less serious Salvador Dali. He
lectured at the Museum of Modern Art in 1935 and was by 1939 the
best known of all the Surrealists, enjoying a broad public reputation
gained less by his brilliant draftsmanship and haunting images than by
window displays for Bonwit Teller and his Dream of Venus exhibit at the
New York World’s Fair. In fact Dali became so commercial, such a chic
commodity, that in 1941 Breton, as “the Pope of Surrealism,” excom-
municated him and dubbed him Avida Dollars (an anagram). By then, a
year after the fall of France, Breton himself was in New York, as well as
Ernst, Masson, Tanguy, and Matta—almost everyone except such less
doctrinaire sometimes-Surrealists as Picasso, Miré, and Arp.
With the more readily labeled Surrealists came Peggy Guggenheim,
a wealthy American whose family had made its money chiefly in copper.
The niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, founder of the museum now bear-
ing his name, she had been collecting (mostly abroad) since 1938, with
the help of the Dadaist Duchamp; the Surrealists Breton and Ernst; and
the critics Herbert Read, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and James Johnson Sweeney
(the last two of whom were associated with the Museum of Modern Art).
She knew virtually all the major Surrealists and had bought work by
many of them. Soon after her return to the States she married Max
Ernst and in 1942 opened a museum-gallery called Art of This Cen-
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

s3

tury where she could both show her acquisitions and encourage younger
artists. Art of This Century would, she said, “serve its purpose only if it
succeeds in serving the future instead of recording the past.” It did serve the
future, though probably not in the way Miss Guggenheim, with her com-
mitment to Surrealism, expected it to. For just as, in a sense, Benton did
much to destroy the validity of the American realistic tradition, the young
American Surrealists discovered by her, her advisers, and her perceptive
assistant Howard Putzel did much to destroy the validity of European
Surrealism and to shift the art center of the world from Paris to New
York.

Pollock’s Birth was exhibited at the McMillen Gallery in early 1942,

along with works by very well-known School of Paris painters (e.g.,
Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Bonnard, Modigliani) and by those Americans
then as anonymous as himself (Lee Krasner and Willem de Kooning)
and others who were comparatively established (Stuart Davis and Walt
Kuhn). The show received some attention—particularly from American
artists who were pleased to see their countrymen treated..on the same
basis as the famous Europeans—and Pollock was for the first time re-
viewed in the art press, by James Lane, writing for Art News: “... re-
sembles Hayter in general whirling figures, while Purdy is more restful.
But a tight-rope walker, Virginia. Diaz, walks off with the show in a
brace of thoughtful little canvasses.” Where, we wonder, did she walk?
True, Pollock’s Birth is not a “restful” work; nor is it a “thoughtful little
canvas”; it fairly bursts from its roughly two-by-four frame and is very
different in feeling from the elegantly contained and finished work of
Hayter. Though an indebtedness to Picasso (and Surrealism) is still here,
at this time Pollock has already moved farther from Picasso than Graham
himself, Krasner, or de Kooning.
For Pollock the show was particularly important. Not only had he
for the first time exhibited a painting that was, even if somewhat deriva-
tive of Picasso, still largely his own, but because of the show, he was
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

54

looked up by Lee Krasner. She lived around the corner from 46 East 8th
Street and could hardly believe that there was an artist powerful enough
to have painted Birth whom she had not seen somewhere, sometime in
the comparatively small New York art world. It turned out they had met
briefly at an Artists’ Union lost party some five years before. He was that
tall, ruggedly handsome Western fellow, at once shy and aggressive, per-
haps drunk, whose dancing she remembered as impossible to follow. (“He
stepped all over me.”) However, she was to fall in love with Pollock
through his work, to equate the man with the work which she immediately
respected. As for Pollock’s reaction to her, Clement Greenberg wrote
years later:* “...even before their marriage her eye and judgment had
become important in his art, and continued to remain so.” No doubt, as
Pollock responded to Lee Krasner as a woman and an artist, he had also
a profound need for her response to him. She must have felt that need—
she began looking after him in various concrete ways. In May, follow-
ing the McMillen show, they signed a petition to President Roosevelt
protesting the decline of the easel project. In the summer she had Pollock
assigned to a War Services window display project which she supervised.
And throughout this period, she introduced Pollock to people in the art
world with whom he was not yet acquainted.
Besides Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning first met Pollock and saw his
work at the time of the McMillen show. When asked if Graham discovered
Pollock, de Kooning said: “Of course he did. Who the hell picked him out?
The other critics came later—much later. Graham was a painter as well as a
critic. It was hard for other artists to see what Pollock was doing—their
work was so different from his. It’s hard to see something that’s different
from your work. But Graham could see it.”**
Much bigger shows that season were those of Miré and Dali, which
closed at the Museum of Modern Art just before the opening of the
McMillen “American and French Painting”; then, in March, “Artists in
* See Bibliography No. 109.
* * See Bibliography No. 218a.
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

55

Exile” at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, including work by Breton, Chagall,

Ernst, Léger, Masson, Matta, Mondrian, and Tanguy; and finally, in
October, the most elaborate and fashionable exhibition of Surrealism ever
put on in America, ‘First Papers of Surrealism,” a title intended to suggest
first citizenship papers. This show, installed in the vacant Whitelaw Reid
mansion on Madison Avenue, sponsored by French Relief Societies, hung
by Breton, decorated by Duchamp with a maze of twine, received enor-
mous publicity. It included some Americans—Alexander Calder, Robert
Motherwell, David Hare, William Baziotes—along with their European
colleagues. Indeed, Motherwell (who had met Pollock through Pollock’s
fellow-worker on the Project, Baziotes) had asked him to exhibit some-
thing, but Pollock refused because he was a “loner” who did not like
“group activity.” And Matta has described Pollock as, even more egre-
giously, “.. . fermé. A closed man.” However, though Pollock was certainly
not a joiner, he and Lee Krasner did at about this time collaborate with
the Baziotes and the Motherwells in writing automatic Surrealist poetry
as an after-dinner game, and Pollock did soon after join Peggy Guggen-
heim’s Surrealist-oriented Art of This Century gallery.
For part of 1942, through Lee Krasner’s influence, Jackson had been
assisting her in the special program of window displays showing available
war-training courses. When that program was completed, he became a
“Vocation Trainee in Aviation Sheet Metal” in Brooklyn. And after the
Project itself ended in January of 1943, he took any job he could get.
One was painting neckties; another, decorating lipsticks. In the spring
he got a job at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting on East 54th
Street (now the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, at 89th and Fifth).
There he helped with installing and dismantling shows, making frames
and bases, cleaning up. He was doing these various custodial and janitorial
jobs when, through Baziotes and Motherwell, he met Peggy Guggenheim.
She asked all three young artists to participate in an exhibition of collages
she was planning for her gallery in mid-April. Neither Pollock nor
Motherwell had previously made collages. They worked together at Pol-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

56

lock’s studio, where Motherwell remembers Pollock’s intense concentra-

tion and the physicality of his attack on the medium (savagely ripping
paper and once burning the edges of a piece).
Art of This Century had opened in October 1942, the same month
as “First Papers of Surrealism.” Located at 30 West 57th Street, it be-
came the most important link between the European Surrealists in exile
and the avant-garde younger American painters. The physical gallery
itself was a Surrealistic environment. Frederick Kiesler had designed an
illusionistic womblike space, with curved outer walls from which paintings
(some perpendicular, some not) extended from brackets, and in which
equally ambiguous free-form furniture functioned as chairs, pedestals, and
easels. The gallery was the last word in chic, or what at the time was also
being called “modernistic.” To Pollock, the gallery, the wealthy lady who
ran it, the coterie of cosmopolitan artists and advisers who surrounded her,
the elegant customers and glib critics who visited there... all must have
seemed strange, surreal, perhaps altogether unreal, another manifestation
of the larger world out there insanely blowing itself apart in war.
As to his private world, that too was coming apart. Arloie and Sandy
had had their first child and would be moving that fall to Deep River,
Conn. There, at a salary way beyond that paid by the Project—where,
for the past two and a half years, Sandy had been working with James
Brooks on Brooks’ mural, Flight, for the Marine Terminal of La Guardia
Airport—Sandy had gotten a defense job in a piano factory converted to
the manufacture of gliders. There, in Connecticut, he—with Arloie and
(soon) his mother and then a second child—would remain until his
death in 1963.
Before the move to Connecticut Stella Pollock made a visit to New
York. Jackson prepared for it in a revealing and typical manner; he drank
for several days. Lee Krasner Pollock recalls: “One morning, before
Jackson and I were married, Sandy knocked on my door and asked, “Did
Jackson spend the night here, last night?’ I answered, ‘No, why?’ ‘Because
he’s in Bellevue Hospital and our mother has arrived in New York. Will
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

57

you go with me and get him?’ We went and there he was in the Bellevue
ward. He looked awful. He had been drinking for days. I said to him, ‘Is
this the best hotel you can find?’ At Sandy’s suggestion I took him back
to my place and fed him milk and eggs to be in shape for dinner that
night with Mother. We went together. It was my first meeting with
Mother. I was overpowered by her cooking. I had never seen such a spread
as she put on. She had cooked all the dinner, baked the bread—the
abundance of it was fabulous. . . .”* ‘
Pollock’s collages for Art of This Century are seemingly lost, but
whatever he and Motherwell did must have had merit. Both of them, as
well as Baziotes, were asked to exhibit paintings in the next show, a
“Spring Salon for Young Artists.” For this Pollock contributed Steno-
graphic Figure, an oil painting of the previous year, in which, super-
imposed on a Matissean ground and a Picassoesque headlike image at the
left and an armlike one at the right, is freely scrawled calligraphy con-
taining letters, numbers, ticktacktoe: a sort of private shorthand, once
again intended not to be read, symbol by symbol, but felt in more general
terms as a presentation (rather than a re-presentation) of life and energy
as, act by act and gesture by gesture, they are being experienced by the
artist. In this—as, even more successfully, in later work—the question
“What is Pollock abstracting?” can be answered: He is abstracting
creativity itself; the painting és that process.
In The Nation (May 1, 1943), Jean Connolly—a friend of Peggy
Guggenheim’s, who would later marry Peggy's first husband, Lawrence
Vail—had called attention to Vail’s, Ernst’s, and Picasso’s collages as
well as those of “Baziotes, Pollack, and Reinhard” (thus misspelling the
last two of three unknown names). At the end of the month, she wrote
in the same publication regarding the Spring Salon, “This is a show of
artists under thirty-five years old. [Pollock was thirty-one.] It is a good
one, and for once the future reveals a gleam of hope... there is a large
painting 40” X 5534” by Jackson Pollack [misspelled again now—and
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

so many times over the years} which, I am told, made the jury starry-
eyed.” The jury consisted of Barr, Duchamp, Jimmy and Max Ernst,
Mondrian, Soby, Sweeney, with Peggy Guggenheim and Howard Putzel
representing the gallery. This jury, with the exception of Mondrian, was
looking for “Surrealism” and “automatic writing,” and Jean Connolly
must have been influenced by her closeness to Peggy Guggenheim. How-
ever, Robert Coates, writing more objectively for The New Yorker (May
29), was at least as enthusiastic. The show was the first he had “known
to devote itself strictly to those twin branches of advanced modern paint-
ing, abstractionism and surrealism, and as such it has attracted a lot of
new talent ....in Jackson Pollock’s abstract ‘Painting’ [later titled Steno-
graphic Figure}, with its curious reminiscenses of Matisse and Mird, we
have a real discovery.”
Despite Connolly and Coates singling out Pollock’s Stenographic
Figure, it was still for sale the following fall. However, Howard Putzel
and Matta urged Peggy Guggenheim to give Pollock a one-man show and
a year’s contract. She agreed to do both. The contract was for $150 a
month against sales, after a one-third commission to the gallery. If $2,700
(gross) worth of work was not sold, she was to get paintings to make up
the difference.
In July, Jackson wrote Charles:
Things really broke with the showing of that painting. 1 had a pretty good men-
tion in the Nation—I have a year's contract with The Art of This Century and
a large painting to do for Peggy Guggenheim’s house, 81142” x 199". With
no strings as to what or how | paint it. | am going to paint it in oil on canvas.
They are giving me a show Nov. 16 and I want to have the painting finished
for the show. I’ve had to tear out the partition between the front and middle
room fi.e., between his own studio and the one which had been Sandy's} to get
the damned thing up. 1 have it stretched now, It looks pretty big, but exciting
as all hell.

As soon as the contract was set, Jackson quit his job at the museum
and began concentrating on the November show. Except for thinking
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

s9

about the mural and feeling its size, the space it would fill, Jackson did
no work on it until after the show (actually one week earlier than the
date mentioned in his letter). By then, besides the unsold Stenographic
Figure, there were fourteen other new paintings, plus gouaches and draw-
ings. Typically the paintings were very much in the spirit and style of
Stenographic Figure, all containing some figurative elements increasingly
obliterated by his improvised “doodling,” as he himself called it.
In Male and Female (1942) there are already passages of the
dripping and splattering that were to become Pollock’s trademark. In the
related Stenographic Figure he was both dictating and taking dictation,
and now, too, he is both acting on and reacting to paint, saying with the
medium, “I am male and female. My psyche contains elements of both.
See these active and passive principles at play.” Surely this is closer to his
statement than any reference to parents or another specific man and
woman. Indeed the totemic “figures” (still somewhat reminiscent of
Picasso) function principally to divide the canvas into three vertical
panels. Within these “panels” Pollock is most original—i.e., most himself
—just as in Guardians of the Secret (1943), even more obliterated
totemic and animalistic images frame a central horizontal panel which is
entirely nonfigurative; there “the secret” is again Pollock himself.
James Johnson Sweeney’s introduction to the catalogue for the show
is the first extended critical appreciation of Pollock:
“Talent, will, genius,” as George Sand wrote Flaubert, “are natural phenomena
like the lake, the volcano, the mountain, the wind, the star, the cloud.” Pol-
lock’s talent is volcanic. It has fire. It is unpredictable. It is undisciplined. It
spills itself out in a mineral prodigality not yet crystalized. It is lavish, ex-
plosive, untidy.
But young painters, particularly Americans, tend to be too careful of opin-
ion. Too often the dish ts allowed to chill in the serving. What we need 1s more
young men who paint from inner impulsion without an ear to what the critic
or spectator may feel—painters who will risk spoiling a canvas to say something
in their own way. Pollock is one.
It is true that Pollock needs self-discipline. But to profit from pruning, a |
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

60

plant must have vitality. In art we are only too familiar with the application
of self-discipline where liberation would have been more profitable. Pollock can
stand it. In his early work as a student of Thomas Benton he showed a conven-
tional academic competence. Today his creed is evidently that of Hugo, “Ballast
yourself with reality and throw yourself into the sea. The sea is inspiration.”
Among young painters, Jackson Pollock offers unusual promise in his
exuberance, independence, and native sensibility. If he continues to exploit
these qualities with the courage and conscience he has shown so far, he will
fulfill that promise.

Pollock replied in a note postmarked November 3, 1943:

Dear Sweeney—
I have read your forward to the catalogue, and 1 am excited. 1 am happy—
The self-discipline you speak of will come, 1 think, as a natural growth of a
deeper, more integrated, experience. Many thanks—he will fulfill that promise—
Sinecerely
Pollock

Though Pollock wrote this polite note, the word “undisciplined” in

the introduction had actually made him furious, smolderingly mad. In time
to add it to the show, Pollock painted Male and Female in Search for a
Symbol (later called simply Search for a Symbol). He brought the wet
painting to Sweeney at the gallery and said, “I want you to see a really
disciplined painting.”
Robert Coates of The New Yorker was sympathetic again, and fair
in describing Pollock’s style as “a curious mixture of the abstract and
symbolic... almost wholly individual... the effect of his one noticeable
influence, Picasso, is a healthy one, for it imposes a certain symmetry on
his work without detracting from its force and vigor.”
The Times critic Edward Alden Jewell found Pollock’s abstractions
“not without precipitate violence ... extravagantly, not to say savagely,
romantic. Here is obscurantism indeed, though it may become resolved
and classified as the artist proceeds.” Not to say is always to say.
Maude Riley’s review in Art Digest began enthusiastically: “We like
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

61

all this. Pollock is out a-questing and he goes hell-bent at each canvas,
mostly big surfaces, not two sizes the same. Youthfully confident, he does
not even title some of these painted puzzles. ...”
An unsigned review in Art News was basically biographical. More
significant, through the show Pollock established a relationship with
Thomas B. Hess which was to be important to his later career. Hess, the
future editor of Art News, saw the show while on furlough and kept
thinking about Wounded Animal. (The title suggests the central image
of a wolf or coyote with an arrow in its neck. The lower portion of the
painting is dominated by the number 64, perhaps an inversion of and/or
improvisation on 46, his address on East 8th St., as well as on Carmine
Street in the early thirties.) More than a year later, when Hess was dis-
charged from the army, the painting was still for sale. Hess bought it for
around $100 and established a mutually respectful relationship with
Pollock. He and Pollock would meet and talk seriously—often over
drinks at the Ritz Towers—about “art and what was happening.”
But most important to Pollock’s career was the review by Clement
Greenberg in The Nation (November 27). We will quote substantially
from it and Greenberg’s other reviews for, despite ambivalence and mis-
understandings (particularly in regard to Pollock’s use of color and scale),
Greenberg became Pollock’s greatest champion:

There are both surprise and fulfillment in Jackson Pollock's not so abstract ab-
stractions. He is the first painter 1 know of to have got something positive from
the muddiness of color that so profoundly characterizes a great deal of Ameri-
can painting. It is the equivalent, even if in a negative, helpless way, of that
American chiaroscuro which dominated Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, and has been
best translated into painting by Blakelock and Ryder. The mud abounds in Pol-
-lock’s larger works, and these, though the least consummated, are his most orig-
inal and ambitious. Being young and full of energy, he takes orders he can't fill.
In the large, audacious “Guardians of the Secret” he struggles between two slabs
of inscribed mud (Pollock almost always inscribes his purer colors); and space
tautens but does not burst into a picture; nor is the mud quite transmuted. Both
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

62

this painting and “Male and Female’ (Pollock’s titles are pretentious) zigzags
between the intensity of the easel picture and the blandness of the mural. The
smaller works are much more conclusive: the smallest one of all, “Conflict,” and
“Wounded Animal,” with its chalky incrustation, are among the strongest ab-
stract paintings I have yet seen by an American. Here Pollock’s force has just
the right amount of space to expand in; whereas in larger format he spends
himself in too many directions at once. Pollock has gone through the influences
of Miré, Picasso, Mexican painting, and what not, and has come out on the
other side at the age of thirty-one, painting mostly with his own brush. In his
search for style he ts liable to relapse into an influence, but if the times are
propitious, it won't be for long. |

Finally, in the Winter 1944 Partisan Review, Robert Motherwell

wrote that Pollock “represents one of the younger generation’s chances.
There are not three other painters of whom this could be said. In his
exhibit, Pollock reveals extraordinary gifts: his color sense is remarkably
fine, never exploited beyond its proper role; and his sense of surface is
equally good. His principal problem is to discover what his true subject
is. And since painting is his thought’s medium, the resolution must grow
out of the process of his painting itself.”
It is interesting that in none of these reviews was the word “Surre-
alism” used or the connection with the movement established, even
though Pollock himself was aware of his debt. In the Arts & Architecture
questionnaire (prepared at about this time and published, with reproduc-
tions of his work, in February 1944), he stated: “...the fact that good
European moderns are now here is very important, for they bring with
them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am partic-
ularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the un-
conscious. This idea interests me more than these specific painters, for the
two artists I admire most, Picasso and Miré, are still abroad.”
After looking at the approximately nine-by-twenty-foot canvas for
about six months, Pollock finally, at the turn of the year, painted Peggy
Guggenheim’s mural in a single session, activating the entire surface with
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

63

his bold calligraphy. Though this painting (done on a vertical surface

with conventional paint) is cruder, less lyrically free than his later mural-
size works and though it contains vestigial anthropomorphism, the in-
fluence of Picasso is no longer visible; the “handwriting” is entirely
Pollock’s own—as in the most exciting portions of paintings in his first
show, a sort of abstract Surrealism. Motherwell has said, “Probably the
catalytic moment in [Pollock’s} art was the day he painted the mural....
Dancing around the room, he finally found a way of ,painting that fitted
him, and from then on he developed that technique and that scale.”
Greenberg, who saw the mural in January 1944, says it convinced him,
more than any of Pollock’s previous work, of the young painter’s great-
ness. He remembers that another painter, Jean Helion, Peggy Guggen-
heim’s son-in-law, criticized it for going on and on indiscriminately, while
Greenberg thought it was just right for its length. However, most im-
portant to Pollock, Peggy herself liked it.
In April, a color reproduction of The She-Wolf (1943), another of
the strong paintings from Pollock’s first show, appeared in Sweeney’s
Harper’s Bazaar article “Five American Painters.” The other four artists
illustrated and discussed were Graves, Gorky, Avery, and Matta. About
Pollock, Sweeney wrote:
And if Matta may be considered as a painter of internal nature, Pollock is cer-
tainly his perfect foil—as explosive as Matta is smoldering—as coarse in his
strength as Avery is delicate—as physical as Graves is mystical. Pollock would
be one of the most interesting younger painters for nothing more than his cour-
age to express himself freely. He has a fine intuitive ability to organize strongly
contrasting colors. Harmony would never be a virtue in his work. An attempt to
achieve it would necessitate toning down all his expression and lead to its final
emasculation. He is a fine natural draftsman. He has power and curious animal
imagination. He needs still to discipline his work considerably. Yet this disci-
pline must not be bought at the sacrifice of boldness in color oppositions or
force of brushwork. From his “She-Wolf” it is clear that he can achieve a com-
pletely satisfactory compositional unity without the sacrifice of either. Pollock's
emphasis on the fury of animal nature is his personal poetry and his strength.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

64

In May, after this additional publicity and after many months of

deliberation and attempts at negotiation, The She-Wolf was bought
by the Museum of Modern Art. To Sidney Janis—then collecting ma-
terial for his Abstract & Surrealist Art in America—Pollock stated, “She-
Wolf came into existence because I had to paint it. Any attempt on
my part to say something about it, to attempt explanation of the inexplica-
ble, could only destroy it.” This “words kill” stance may well have been
the model for later statements by Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and other
artists of Pollock’s generation who were to be neutralizingly lumped
together under the label “Abstract Expressionists.”

Peggy Guggenheim, in Confessions of an Art Addict (the revised

1960 version of her autobiography, in which she devotes much more
space to Pollock than in her 1946 Out of This Century) states that
Pollock was the best new painter she showed, “the greatest painter since
Picasso.” She goes on:

From... 1943 until I left America in 1947, I dedicated myself to Pollock.

He was very fortunate because...Lee Krasner...did the same, and even gave
up painting at one period, as he required her complete devotion. 1 welcomed a
new protege, as I had lost Max [Ernst]. My relationship with Pollock was
purely that of an artist and patron, and Lee was the intermediary. Pollock him-
self was rather difficult; he drank too much and became so unpleasant, one might
say devilish, on these occasions. But as Lee pointed out when I complained, “He
also has an angelic side,” and that was true. To me, he was like a trapped animal
who never should have left the prairies of Wyoming...

During this period of first public encouragement, starting with the

McMillen exhibition, Lee Krasner had been with Pollock more and more.
She spent a great deal of time introducing him and his work to those
who might be helpful. For example, she had her former teacher, Hans
Hofmann, over to see Pollock’s paintings. During that visit Hofmann
asked about the importance of nature in Pollock’s work. Pollock replied
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

65

aggressively, “I am nature.” Though he meant by this that he was part

of nature, connected with all its elements, Hofmann was shocked by the
younger painter’s seeming arrogance, which contrasted with Hofmann’s
comparative humility, as expressed on another occasion in Hofmann’s own
statement “I bring the landscape home in me.” But now, at their first
meeting, Pollock looked for pedantry in every question and statement of
Hofmann’s, and he finally said, “Your theories don’t interest me. Put up
or shut up. Let’s see your work.” Of this meeting, embarrassing to Lee as
Hofmann’s student, she says Jackson “had a fanatical conviction that the
work would do it, not any outside periphery like ta/z.’”"*
She also invited John Little, then a successful textile designer and
thus one of the few serious young painters with money, and the photog-
rapher Wilfred Zogbaum, who shared studio space with Hofmann and
later established a reputation as a sculptor. At about the same time she
brought Pollock to the 42nd Street studio-apartment of her old friend
Mercedes Matter (for whom she had sometimes modeled) and Mercedes’
husband, Herbert, the photographer. Jackson and Herbert went to the
lower floor and were so silent that the women became worried about
their not having hit it off. Actually the two men were very comfortable
with each other’s shyness. Jackson, referring to various things happening
in art, had said something like, “It’s a terrific time to be living, isn’t it?”
Herbert remembers, “Jackson’s statement gave us enough to think about.
... We never had to talk much. With my best friends I never really had
to talk.”
Through the Matters, the Pollocks had met James Johnson Sweeney,
“the first,” as Lee Krasner says, “to go into print for Pollock.” Through
them too, the Pollocks met Alexander Calder. When the Matters brought
Calder to Pollock’s studio, Calder studied the paintings and said, “They’re
all so dense.” Jackson replied, “Oh, you want to see one less dense, one
with open space?” He brought out the densest painting he had.

* See Bibliography No. 172.

 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

Finally, Lee introduced Jackson to Sidney Janis, who was working

on his book Abstract & Surrealist Art in America, At Hofmann’s sugges-
tion Janis had come to see Lee’s work for possible inclusion in the book.
He liked it and selected a 1943 composition to be reproduced ultimately
in black-and-white in the Abstract section. However, he had hardly seen
Lee’s work before she took him to see Pollock’s. Jackson was absolutely
silent while he showed Janis some recent paintings, two of which Janis
considered for the book. It wasn’t until a subsequent visit, after the com-
pletion of She-Wolf (1943), that Janis became enthusiastic. That paint-
ing, ultimately in the Surrealist section, was one of the few reproduced
in color.
The list of people Pollock met through Lee Krasner and her friends
could be expanded. However, those mentioned are the more important.
Pollock’s meetings with some illustrate his defensiveness (generally pre-
sented as aggressiveness) in the face of power and/or established reputa-
tion. On the other hand, his meeting with Matter was typical of the way
he met those he didn’t feel threatened by. Like Matter, John Little
and Wilfred Zogbaum were to remain Pollock’s life-long friends.
By now Lee Krasner was devoting more time to Pollock than to her
own work, which she did, if at all, at the other end of his apartment on
8th Street. In addition to the introductions and everything else, she had
folded, addressed, and stamped announcements at Art of This Century
and had stood by at the gallery when Peggy Guggenheim went for long
lunches. In short, her identity was becoming lost. She was “Pollock’s
girl”—just that, which was no better than being known as “a woman
painter” (possibly the reason she had long ago taken the sexually
anonymous name “Lee’’).
She was born Lenore, in Brooklyn just before World War I. Her
father, Joseph Krasner, had followed her mother’s brother from a smali
village near Odessa, hoping to establish his family in America. He set
himself up in a food shop and then had his wife and children (a son and
three daughters) come to the United States. Lenore (“Lee”) was born
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

67

almost nine months to the day after her parents’ reunion. She grew up
among women: her mother and sisters. Anna was a truly matriarchal
figure. She ran the household; held things together; observed the Jewish
holidays and dietary laws; remained close to her family, which was more
orthodox than Joseph’s; and, later, with her brother, invested in real
estate.
There was no time in Anna’s life for monsectarian culture. Lee
remembers her brother, Irving, bringing home some Garuso records. She
remembers a print in the parlor, of Columbus receiving jewels from
Queen Isabella. But what serious art she was exposed to as a young girl
came mostly from the library: fairy tales, Maeterlinck, and then the
Russian classics.
At home Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, and English were all spoken.
Of Lee’s three closest friends one was German, one was French, and one
was an American mulatto. It was in their homes, and in the Russian
novels, that she saw the possibility of broader cultural horizons. How-
ever, it was not until she was ready to go to high school and had to
express a “career preference” that she chose “art.” Though she had been
an independent girl, she herself was no less surprised by the choice than
her family—she had simply never before thought about a career and
never before expressed any particular interest in art. It sounded more
alive than secretarial work—that was about all.
She chafed for a term at Girls High in Brooklyn, where she flunked
everything, while waiting to get into Washington Irving High School in
Manhattan (“the only girls’ public high school at that time where I
could major in art”*). It was a short subway ride from her home, but
seemingly as remote and exotic as Turgenev’s Paris. When she was
transferred she did well in everything bw¢ art. That, she discovered, took
more time than history and geography. Because she had done well in her
other subjects, the school gave her a passing grade of 65 so she could
go on to the Woman’s Art School of Cooper Union. There, in 1927, her
* See Bibliography No. 23 for this and immediately subsequent autobiographical quotations.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

68

career as an artist really began. No longer was there any doubt about
what she wanted to do.
Cooper Union was at that time set up in a series of “alcoves.” First
alcove: casts of hands and feet. Second: casts of torsos. Third: casts of
the full figure. Finally one was “promoted to life... working from live
models and plants.” A Mr. Hinton who “taught torsos” did not like her
work. To get rid of her, he pushed her on to Victor Perard in the third
alcove. He did like the work and had her do plates for a textbook which
he was preparing. That was the first time she received payment for art.
Otherwise, to get through school, she, like many of the students, de-
pended on a little money from home and from modeling. From photo-
graphs, we know her figure was stunning.
The National Academy of Design was next. A step forward: Leon
Kroll was there—well known then, even considered avant-garde—and
other teachers whom we now think of as rather academic or provincial.
She submitted her work. It was received with none of Perard’s enthusiasm.
She was put back in “antiques,” and, what was worse, Mr. Hinton, who
had transferred to the Academy, was teaching that subject. This time he
couldn’t quickly kick Lee Krasner upstairs. At the Academy promotion
depended upon the vote of a full committee. For that, she submitted a
self-portrait.
By then her family had moved to Huntington, Long Island, and in
order to continue at school she had remained in Brooklyn with her sister
Ruth, who had married very young. The self-portrait was done in the
woods behind the Huntington house, where Lee had nailed a mirror on
one tree and a stretched canvas on another. There she stands, in a smock
with brushes and a rag in her right hand, her left hand raised toward the
canvas. The portrait is strong, if not particularly original. It is influenced
by Impressionism (Monet, perhaps, in the close-valued treatment of trees
and leaves) and Post-Impressionism (Cézanne, in the flattened angularity
of the canvas in the composition). But this is a painting by a girl in her
early twenties. Forgetting the props, there is remarkable honesty, even
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

toughness, in her view of herself. It’s all there in her face: the deepset
intelligent blue-gray eyes; the full sensuous mouth, between proud promi-
nent nose and jaw; the luxuriant red hair; the independence of the figure
from its environment—a dozen aspects of emotion and intelligence, pride
and vulnerability, all there, if not as yet fully resolved.
The committee members studied the canvas. The chairman said,
“When you paint a picture indoors, don’t pretend it’s done outdoors.”
She assured him it had been done outside. She was promoted to life—on
probation.
She remained at the Academy for about three years. During that
period she went to the newly opened (1929) Museum of Modern Art.
She was “hit very hard by this first live contact with the Paris School...
Picasso, Matisse . . . mostly Matisse.” She began doing bright paintings, and
Kroll told her she “should go home and take a mental bath.” However,
by then, the Depression had hit as hard as. Matisse, and harder than
anything at the Academy; she was living in Greenwich Village, in an
ambience of social realism and leftist politics; and, once out of the Academy,
in order to continue painting she had to support herself.
She worked nights at the Sam Johnson, a restaurant—night club on
Third Street owned by the poet Eli Siegel (Hot Afternoons Have Been in
Montana) and “a defrocked rabbi,” Morton. Deutsch. It was a gathering
place for such Village intellectuals and bohemians as Joe Gould, Maxwell
Bodenheim, Lionel Abel, Parker Tyler, and. the brothers David and
Harold Rosenberg. There, in silk hostess pajamas, working for tips, Lee
Krasner watched them nurse their beers. To this day she cannot use the
word “intellectuals” without ‘a. somewhat angry or ironic tone, and (as
did Pollock) she distrusts abstract language and tends to separate the
talkers and writers from the doers. Yet these intellectuals did get work
done. The talking, the exchange of ideas was part of the process. As
Harold Rosenberg says, “The thirties were years of hanging around—in
bars, in cafeterias. You could hang around on a nickel beer or cup of
coffee.” Yes, Rosenberg, like the rest of them, hung around. Like them
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

70

too, he was placing poems, short stories, and criticism in such magazines
as transition and Symposium. And like most of them, he was interested
in all cultural manifestations, not just literature but painting, music,
philosophy.
While working at the Sam Johnson, Lee Krasner considered becom-
ing an art teacher. By attending classes once or twice a week for several
years, she completed the necessary pedagogical credits at C.C.N.Y. How-
ever, just then—after what is sometimes described as “the terrible winter
of 1934-35,” the very heart of the Depression—the government created
the W.P.A. Federal Art Project. It sounded better to Lee than teaching
and a lot better than continuing at the Sam Johnson. She became an
assistant to the muralist Max Spivak, as did Harold Rosenberg, who
devoted some of his time to Art Front, the Project’s magazine, until he
could transfer to the Writers’ Project in 1937.
For a while Lee Krasner painted cityscapes and factory scenes and
forgot about Matisse. The creation of art was no longer only a joyful
end in itself, but the propagandistic means to political and social ends.
She was put on the executive committee of the Artists Union. Where
once talk in the art world had been about the power of painting, it was
now about political and economic power. By contrast—perhaps for relief
—during the late thirties and early forties, she studied with Hans Hof-
mann and sat in on his lectures. These were attended sometimes by
Clement Greenberg, whom she met through Harold Rosenberg and his
wife and to whom she suggested attending the lectures. Thus, by the late
thirties, Lee Krasner knew the two men who would become the most
influential American art critics of their generation.
It is clear from Lee Krasner’s work of this period and that of others
who studied with Hofmann that he was then teaching a sort of loosened-
up Cubism—particularly emphasizing a respect for the flatness of the
picture plane, but also a Fauvist pleasure in bright color. From Germany,
by way of France, he brought the School of Paris—at least both of these
major aspects of it—to New York. That was no small thing. However,
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

71

even more important than bringing New York esthetically up-to-date was
his role as a responsive human being. The mental baths he prescribed
were warm, as warm as Rimbaud’s poetry. Lee Krasner scrawled these
lines from A Season in Hell on her studio wall:

To whom shall I hire myself out? What beast must I adore?

What holy image is attacked: What hearts shall I break?
What lie must I maintain? In what blood tread?

Throughout the late thirties and early forties, when she remet
Pollock, the words were all there, in black, on a white wall of her studio,
except for these in blue: What lie must I maintain? Like every serious
artist, like Rimbaud himself, she had come to the conclusion that there
was no lie that could be maintained, that there was only the truth as
one (she) felt it. Fritz Buleman, another Hofmann student, brought a
writer to her studio, a young man named Tennessee Williams. Williams
“pulled apart” the Rimbaud quotation. She asked him to leave. No one
could tamper with those lines, particularly the one in blue.

By mid-1944, as we have seen, Pollock’s career was off to a good

“start”: a first one-man show in probably the most chic gallery in town,
a contract with that gallery, a mural commission from its owner, gener-
ally good notices, the questionnaire in a prestigious West Coast magazine,
the color reproduction in Bazaar, the Modern Art purchase, and at least
one bite and some nibbles by other institutional and private collectors,
not including small purchases by Herbert Matter and the artist Jeanne
Reynal. But remember that by now Pollock had been painting seriously
for sixteen years, fourteen of them in New York. His good start can
hardly be characterized as a fast one.
Lee and Jackson were, however, sufficiently encouraged to spend a
long summer in Provincetown, then the most famous American art
colony (Pollock would later be a major factor in shifting the center of
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

72

gtavity to East Hampton). There were in Provincetown many of the

realists and social realists who had made their reputations during the
twenties and thirties, as well as a few of the avant-garde—for example,
Hans Hofmann and his students John Little and Fritz Bultman. Lee and
Jackson were able to rent a studio cheaply off Bradford, the “Back Street”
of this two-street town, the one without an unobstructed view of the
water. They worked very little—mainly on small watercolors and pen
and ink drawings—walked the flats when the tide was out, sometimes
hiked across the dunes to the ocean, but mostly sunned themselves. “It
was not what you would call a productive summer,” Lee Krasner remem-
bers. “We had shipped up some rolls of canvas. In September they were
still unpacked—all we had to do was change the FROM to TO. However,
we got some rest. That was productive—these people who think paintings
are made only at the moment paint goes on canvas!—and Howard
Putzel came up for a couple of weeks, and Jackson’s mother visited, and
Tennessee (we'd patched things up) used to ride to our place on his
bicycle. It was a good summer.”
The relaxation was necessary. The open space and sky were exhila-
rating. When they returned to the city in the fall, Pollock was feeling
good. He decided to experiment with graphics, willing by then, after a
summer of smaller-scale work, to deal with confinement, and perhaps
wanting again to test the “discipline” which Sweeney and others had said
he lacked. Between the fall of 1944 and the spring of 1945 he made a
series of engravings at Atelier 17, a studio school of graphics run by the
British-born Stanley William Hayter, the artist to whom Pollock had
been compared at the time of the McMillen show. Since the late thirties
Pollock had known Hayter through his work and through reports from
their mutual friend John Graham, but Pollock did not actually meet
Hayter until 1943 when Reuben Kadish, who was close to him, returned
from Mexico. From then on Pollock and Hayter met frequently by chance
and saw each other at fairly regular intervals by appointment (as they
would continue to do until Hayter’s temporary departure from the States
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

73

in 1950). During 1944—45 (and, to a lesser extent, during the following

five years) Pollock often visited Hayter at his house on Waverly Place
and, often also, they would go together to nightclubs and bars. From the
outset Hayter thought highly of Pollock’s painting but recognized him
as “a man with tremendous psychological difficulties.”*
As to the work Pollock did at Atelier 17, it must be understood
that the usual teacher—student relationship did not exist there. Hayter
was available to answer technical questions and to criticize—again, from
a technical standpoint. However, each “student” pursued his own work
while sharing physical chores with the others, which is exactly what
Pollock did.
Pollock could not have been happy working with the burin, which
makes straight cuts more easily than curved ones. He must have felt
frustrated by the ease with which Hayter made his own cursive plates as
against the angular rigidity into which engraving seemed to drive
Pollock himself. Even if by heavy cross-hatching Pollock did introduce a
freer, softer, more flowing movement than might be expected from a
novice in this medium, it is nevertheless unlikely he was satisfied with the
results. Except for trial proofs, the plates remained unprinted until 1967
when seven editions were made under the supervision of William S.
Lieberman of the Museum of Modern Art. Regardless of the degree of
their success, these engravings at least attempt a swirling personal imagery
that Pollock could handle much more comfortably in his ink drawings
of the same period and would handle best in his black-and-white paintings
of the early fifties.
Though Pollock did not take to engraving, finding it both insufh-
ciently immediate and too resistant, he acknowledged “Bill” Hayter’s
technical skill and articulate pedagogy (however implicit). We can
imagine how completely Pollock would have agreed with the following
from Hayter’s New Ways of Gravure, published just a few years later:
* Letter to the author, dated Mar. 11, 1971.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

74

Particularly in engraving, which is essentially the art of the line, of the line in
three-dimensional space, it became necessary to exploit the enormous possibili-
ties of indicating the properties of matter, force, motion, and space. In the
methods of etching, the arrangement of transparent webs to define planes other
than the picture plane, often no longer parallel to it, of surfaces having tension
or torsion, and the interpenetration of transparent surfaces, could more easily
be realized than in the usual techniques of painting.

Pollock himself could not so precisely have explained what attracted him
to Atelier 17 in the first place and was finally driving him from it to
search beyond “the usual techniques of painting” in painting itself.
Pollock would also have agreed with Hayter’s theory, if not neces-
sarily his practice, concerning “... objects, things in the phenomenal
world, [having] an order of reality which is less concrete than the reality
of a human reaction to them. And I want to distinguish the pursuit of
reality (the reality of the first order) from the pursuit of objects, and
to combine the immediate experience with the experience of the imagina-
tion, which I should like to consider as the trace or record of assimilated
previous experience, not necessarily restricted to the immediate lifetime
of the individual.”
Hayter was a remarkable “teacher.” By the time Pollock left his
atelier, he was convinced—possibly to a greater degree than by other
Surrealists whom he trusted less 45 people—of what the curator Bernice
Rose calls Hayter’s “autonomy of line as a self-expressive force,” and he
had discovered for himself “the all-over linear configuration—the philos-
ophy of risk underlying it...” Though Pollock could not handle the
burin “automatically,” he had reached the stage—visible in this same
period’s work done directly on paper—where with ink and paint he was
dazzlingly free and “automatic.”
During this winter of print-making, besides Hayter and the Surrealist
André Masson, who was working at the Atelier and whose work was
close in spirit to Pollock’s, Jackson saw a lot of his old friend Reuben
Kadish. Rube worked with him pulling proofs at night when it was
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

75

quiet. Afterwards, sometimes with Hayter and others, they would drink
—usually beer—at neighborhood bars including the Cedar Street Tavern
and the Hotel Albert. Another favorite beer-drinking companion was
John Little who now lived nearby in Hofmann’s studio. Jackson fre-
quently waited on John’s stoop until he returned from designing textiles.
Then they, too, would go to local bars to discuss art. Little recalls that
“Jackson could get high on three beers.” One afternoon, after having a
few, Jackson began laughing satanically at the punched-in nose of the
man next to him at the bar. The guy turned out to be a professional
fighter and John was afraid Jackson would be killed, but Jackson
charmed the boxer as easily as he had antagonized him. He could charm
most bartenders too—especially at the Cedar where, despite various trou-
blesome incidents, they kept letting him come back. Even Hofmann, to
whom Pollock had been initially so aggressive, was forgiving, if not.com-
pletely charmed. He recognized Jackson’s significance as a man and an
artist and spoke sympathetically of the emotional problems which had led
to alcoholism. On one occasion that winter he and his wife invited the
Pollocks and John Little to dinner and Jackson passed out, perhaps from
the strain, this time, of trying to behave properly. Some years later Hof-
mann obtained a narrow horizontal painting of Pollock’s; by that time he
considered him the best painter of the younger generation.
In early 1945, Pollock was included in several traveling group
shows—for example, “Abstract and Surrealist Art,” selected by Janis for
the Cincinnati Art Museum and “Twelve Contemporary Painters,” organ-
ized by the Museum of Modern Art—but mostly he was making the
drawings, gouaches, and thirteen paintings that would be in his second
one-man show at Art of This Century. It opened March 19 and was very
much a continuation and development of the work of the previous year.
There Were Seven in Eight, about half the size in each dimension of
the mural he had done for Peggy Guggenheim, is a richer, denser, more
concentrated work on a similar theme, as is Gothic. The totemic imagery of
Totem I and Totem II and Night Sounds is freer and less Picassoesque
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

76

than previously. Portrait of H.M. (probably named for his old friend
Helen Marot) is totally nonfigurative, though somewhat tight.
Greenberg, in The Nation (April 7), was far less pe than
he had been before:

Jackson Pollock’s second one-man show... establishes him, in my opinion, as

the strongest painter of his generation and perhaps the greatest one to appear
since Miré, The only optimism in his smoky, turbulent painting comes from
his own manifest faith in the efficacy, for him personally, of art. There has been
a certain amount of self-deception in School of Paris art since the exit of cub-
ism. In Pollock there is absolutely none, and he is not afraid to look ugly—all
profoundly original art looks ugly at first. Those who find his oils overpowering
are advised:to approach him through his gouaches, which in trying less to wring
every possible ounce of intensity from every square inch of surface achieve
greater clarity and are less suffocatingly packed than the oils. Among the latter,
however, are two—both called Totem Lessons—for which I cannot find strong
enough words of praise. Pollock’s single fault is not that he crowds his can-
vases too evenly but that he sometimes juxtaposes colors and values so abruptly
that gaping holes are created.

A corollary of Greenberg’s perception that “all profoundly original art

looks ugly at first” was his later observation that “the real thing is always
controversial.” Both apply to Pollock throughout the mature years of his
career and even after his-death.
Howard Devree of The New York Times was as unenthusiastic as
Greenberg, allowing for his reservations concerning Pollock’s color, was
enthusiastic. Devree wrote that “These big, sprawling coloramas impress
me as being surcharged with violent emotional reaction which never is
clarified enough in the expression to establish true communication with
the observer.” Parker Tyler, writing in the Surrealist magazine View
(“Nature and Madness..among the Younger Painters”), dubs Pollock a
“neo-expressionist,” describes “the nervous, if rough, calligraphy” as
having “an air of baked-macaroni,” and finally concedes that “on occasion
{Pollock] is an interesting colorist.” Manny Farber in New Republic
(June 25) finds some of Pollock’s work as “violent” as Devree does, but
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

77

comes to the opposite conclusion: that it is “masterful and miraculous.”

Farber’s review, in fact, offers considerable insight concerning the direc-
tion in which the work is moving:
... The dominant effects in Pollock’s work arise from the expressionistic paint-
ing of emotion and from the uninhibited, two-dimensional composing of the
surface, in which the artist seems to have started at one point with a color and
continued over the painting without stopping, until tt has been composed with
that color. In the process great sections of the previous design may be painted
out, or the design changed completely. The painting is laced with relaxed, grace-
ful, swirling lines or violent ones, until the surface is patterned in whirling
movement. In the best compositions these movements collide and repeat to pro-
ject a continuing effect of virile, hectic action. The paint is jabbed on, splat-
tered, painted in lava-like thicknesses and textures, scrabbled, made to look like
smoke, bleeding, fire, and painted in great sweeping continuous lines. The paint-
ing ts generally heavily detailed, and tries a great number of emphatic contrasts
and horizontal movements in which a shape or a line will be improvised on and
repeated in level, rhythmic steps and generally in a circular movement. One of
the most characteristic notes is the way a shape is built out from the surface in
great detail. The style is a rich, decorative kind that uses heavy, opaque color,
extreme texturing and a broad, rounded list of colors. An extraordinary quality
of Pollock’s composing is the way he can continue a feeling with little devia-
tion or loss of purity from one edge to the other of the most detailed design.
... The surface is no longer considered as something to be designed into an
approximation of a naturalistic, three-dimensional world, but, more realistically,
is considered simply as flat, opaque and bounded. Pollock's work explores the
possibilities and the character of horizontal design. He shows that each point of
the surface in flat painting is capable of being made a major one and played
for maximum effect, and that when the conflicting elements in three-dimen-
sional painting are removed, the two-dimensional relationships are liberated and
made more powerful and clear. His manner of building form and surface out
rather than in has produced original, dramatic and decorative effects, and the
painting as a whole demonstrates again that abstract art can be as voluptuous as
Renaissance painting.

Farber is a painter in his own right and one of our important, though
comparatively neglected, film critics. No wonder he understood the lively
movement of Pollock’s paintings.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

78

Though the critics could not agree on whether Pollock’s “violence”

was an asset or liability or on whether he was a good colorist or bad one,
they were unanimous at least in responding to the work, in not remaining
indifferent to it. Their reactions, like those of the small general public,
were visceral.
Two months after Pollock’s second one-man show, Howard Putzel,
who had by then left Peggy Guggenheim to establish his own 67 Gallery,
organized an exhibition appropriately called “A Problem for Critics.” By
then Sam Kootz’s book New Frontiers in American Painting had been
out for two years and Sidney Janis’s Abstract & Surrealist Art in America
for one. In each book, as the art historian Irving Sandler has pointed
out, the author-collector- (ultimately) dealer asks, respectively, where the
“merging,” the “potential” of Abstraction and Expressionism will lead.
Then Sandler quotes Coates (The New Yorker, December 23, 1944):

There's a style of painting gaining ground in this country which is neither Ab-
stract nor Surrealist, though it has suggestions of both, while the way the paint
is applied—usually in a pretty free-swinging, spattery fashion, with only vague
hints at subject matter—is suggestive of the methods of Expressionism. I feel
that some new name will have to be coined for it, but at the moment I can’t
think of any. Jackson Pollock...and William Baziotes are of this school.

Evidently Putzel took his cue from Coates’s inability as yet to find
a term for the new style. (Not much more than a year later Coates
would discover or rediscover—in any case, popularize—the term Abstract
Expressionism.) Putzel now showed Pollock, Krasner, Gorky, Gottlieb,
Hofmann, Pousette-Dart, and Rothko, all to become important figures of
“the new American painting,” within the context of work by such Euro-
pean artists as Arp, Masson, Mirdé, and Picasso. The Americans stood up
well even in this company. In a statement accompanying the exhibition,
Putzel wrote that the new unnamed “-ism” was particularly indebted to
Arp, Mird, and Picasso. “I believe we see real American painting, begin-
ning now.” In The New Yorker (May 26, 1945) Coates substantially
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

79

agreed as to the particular debts and the recognition of an emergent

American art. In The Nation (June 9, 1945), Greenberg commented:

...1 disagree with Mr. Putzel that the inspiration of the new tendency came
from Arp and Miré—both of whom, despite their desire to restore “poetry”
to modern painting, continue the flattening-out, abstracting, “purifying” proc-
ess of cubism. And their influence, moreover, was strong in abstract painting
long before the new turn came. No, that owes its impulse to surrealist “bio-
morphism” ... {which] restoring the third dimension, gave the elements of
abstract painting the look of organic substances.
...One or two, however, have accepted just enough of surrealist cross-
fertilization to free themselves from the strangling personal influence of the
cubist and post-cubist masters. Yet they have not abandoned the direction these
masters charted. They advance their art by painterly means without relaxing the
concentration and high impassiveness of true modern style.

Though the art scene in the city was not nearly as hectic as it was
to become during the next two decades, for a man of Pollock’s sensibility
and shyness (or insecurity, masked often by bravado), there were already
too many openings, parties, dealings with galleries and the art press,
distractions of all kinds. During the previous year when Arts and Archi-
tecture had asked ‘““Why do you prefer living in New York to your native
West?” he answered, “Living is keener, more demanding, more intense
and expansive in New York than in the West; the stimulating influences
are more numerous and rewarding. At the same time, I have a definite
feeling for the West; the vast horizontality of the land, for instance; here
only the Atlantic Ocean gives you that.” Though New York’s advantages
for an artist are. put quite positively, we suspect that behind this public
statement is a longing not only for the freedom of open space, but for
the roots he had never had while moving from place to place in the West
during his youth, or restlessly driving from coast to coast in the thirties,
or even now shuttling between his studio in the Village and the gallery
on 57th Street. The pressures, tensions, and interruptions were getting
to him. He was drinking heavily.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

80

Peggy Guggenheim describes his behavior at the time he completed

her mural: “He not only telephoned me at the gallery every few minutes
to come home at once and help place the painting, but he got so drunk
that he undressed and walked quite naked into a party that Jean Connolly,
who was living with me, was giving in the sitting room. Then he peed in
the fireplace.” The incident might easily be one of Gulley Jimson’s ad-
ventures in Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth—we hardly know whether
to laugh, cry, or be shocked. Though this happened during a period of
unusual tension for Pollock, we know from other reports that incidents
occurred—and continued to occur—similarly symptomatic of his unrest,
aggravated by the art world’s pressure on him, as well as by his own need,
to exhibit, to show himself. In one incident, about eight years later, again
he peed in a fireplace—this time at a party in the studio of Jan Muller.
But by then any humor in the situation had worn off with repetition;
besides, before anyone could have laughed he put his fist through a
window. Perhaps a fireplace had become too small, too confining a target.
A friend remembers Jackson urinating in the snow, spraying the stream
from side to side, and saying, “I can piss on the whole world.”
During the summer of 1945 for the first time Pollock and Lee
Krasner visited Eastern Long Island. There Barbara and Reuben Kadish
had taken over Bill Hayter’s lease on a house in Amagansett which Hayter
had found unsuitable. Hayter got another place nearby. Also not far away
May and Harold Rosenberg had a house where Rube and Jackson spent
some time shingling a portion of the roof while balancing a case of beer
on it. But beyond attractions of their immediate social circle, looking past
the summer to the fall and years to come, East Hampton looked like a
calmer place to live than New York, more conducive to work, and yet
close enough to the city (about a hundred miles) so that Pollock could
remain in touch with his gallery and the then-few other galleries and
museums showing contemporary art. Lee Krasner urged him to rent there
for the winter, but he was not willing to consider this until they returned
to the city. Then in the early fall they went house-hunting.
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

81

A typical nineteenth-century farmhouse was for sale on about five

acres of land on Fireplace Road in Springs, some six or seven miles
beyond the fashionable East Hampton town center. The house was in bad
repair, but spacious and potentially comfortable. Directly behind it was
the large barn which would become Pollock’s studio. Off to one side were
a garage and toolshed, and beyond all these a beautiful uninterrupted
view of Accabonac Creek, marshland, and Gardner’s Bay: a sense of space,
in total contrast to the city. The place seemed—and was, in retrospect—
a bargain for $5,000 ($2,000 cash, $3,000 mortgage), if one had the
money. Neither Pollock nor Lee Krasner did. However, with the help of
their friend William N. M. Davis, an early collector of Pollock’s work,
they persuaded Peggy Guggenheim to lend them the $2,000. At the same
time a new contract with Pollock was arranged, under which for two
years he was to get $300 per month (part to go to the repayment of the
loan) and she was to receive his total output, except for one painting a
year.
To digress, this is the contract (to be slightly modified and ex-
tended) upon which Peggy Guggenheim, some fifteen years later when
Pollock was dead and internationally famous, based a lawsuit which
dragged on for four years; in the spring of 1965, it was finally dropped
and all charges retracted. Although Miss Guggenheim had received
dozens of Pollock’s paintings, she alleged she had not gotten all she was
entitled to. The suit raised questions—philosophical, moral, and legal—as
fascinating as anything in Whistler vs. Ruskin. When does a work of art
begin? When is it completed? Is it ever, or is it merely abandoned, as
Valéry says? Are sketches, studies, and notes works of art? What is a
finished sketch as opposed to one that is unfinished? Do canvases which
are being worked on at the time of contract fall within the contract period?
If so, do those being worked on at the end of the contract fall outside
it? Can critics date works of art with legal accuracy? Dozens of questions,
including perhaps, once again, the definition of a pound of flesh.
Pollock and Lee Krasner married before leaving the city and having
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

82

to face the more provincial values of Springs. Despite his lack of formal
religious affiliation—but also perhaps because of this lack and his con-
tinuing need for roots—he wanted a church wedding. After much dis-
cussion, Lee Krasner, who had also drifted far from the religion into
which she had been born, was persuaded to go along with his wish. They
made arrangements to be married on October 25, two days before her
birthday, at the Marble Collegiate Church—quite neutrally Dutch
Reformed, simply a church. There, at Fifth Avenue and 29th Street, May
Rosenberg and Peggy Guggenheim would be witnesses—two women,
since the wedding was planned for midday and the time and location
might be inconvenient for men with jobs or studio routines. That was the
plan. May Rosenberg said she’d be there. Peggy Guggenheim may have
incorrectly connected May Rosenberg’s name with that of the editor with
whom she was working tensely on her memoirs. She said she had a
previous lunch date she intended to keep. “You’re married enough,” she
told Lee. “Why do you have to get more married?” The church furnished
a witness to take her place.

Before the move to Springs Pollock brought what recent work he

had to Art of This Century. The rest—early notebooks, and rough
sketches in various media, and work still uncompleted—he packed along
with his art supplies and Lee’s and some of her paintings, mostly early
work. (Much of her later work, particularly that of the early forties, was
scraped down to salvage canvas for herself and Jackson.) That was most
of the packing.
The front space at 46 East 8th Street was taken over by James
Brooks, who after three years of service had received his discharge from
the army and needed a studio. Jackson’s brother (Marvin) Jay, then
lithography foreman of a printing plant in New Jersey, used the rear
apartment. Though Jim had met Jackson during the thirties and played
the ocarina at some of the Bentons’ musical evenings, he had at that time
known the older Pollock brothers much better than he knew Jackson.
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

83

Only during the coming year, when Jackson would stay at 46 East 8th
Street while visiting New York, and a few years later, when Jim and his
wife would get a summer place in nearby Montauk, did they become
close friends.
By the end of 1945 Pollock was working, in the smallest of the
three upstairs bedrooms of the Springs house, on paintings for his third
one-man show. In between these periods of painting, he began planning
the conversion of the barn to a permanent studio. Although he helped
Lee fix up the house, she did most of this work, beginning even then to
turn it into a bright white space decorated with a few pieces of Victorian
furniture, some paintings of their own, and such natural objects as plants,
shells, gourds, stones, baskets of fruit and vegetables.
Of the paintings in Pollock’s third show, it is impossible to say just
which were done in New York and which during the first few months in
Springs. This show of nineteen paintings, eleven of them oils, contains
nothing “major,” nothing that is an advance from the work in his 1945
show. In such typical paintings as Circumcision (1945) and The Little
King (1946) the underlying totemic configuration is somewhat more
obscured than in the previous show, and the surfaces more agitated, more
densely and violently ‘“doodled” upon. However, in these paintings, and
even more in those on paper, there is a sense of the artist being confined
and trapped, a sense of his struggle to get out of the maze—all possibly
a carry-over of New York claustrophobia or a reaction to the small
temporary studio in which he was now working.
The book jacket Pollock designed at this time for Peggy Guggen-
heim’s Out of This Century, the original volume of her memoirs, is
similarly split and unresolved. Both covers are vaguely totemic, the front
suggestive of a single piece of Cubist sculpture and the rear of Pollock’s
more overall “automatic writing.”
Clement Greenberg recognized that what seemed to be a moment
of standstill frustration in Pollock’s career was actually one of transition.
He wrote in the April 13 Nation:
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

84

...Pollock’s superiority to his contemporaries in this country lies in his ability

to create a genuinely violent and extravagant art without losing stylistic con-
trol. His emotion starts out pictorially; it does not have to be castrated and
translated in order to be put into a picture.
Pollock’s third show in as many years... contains nothing to equal the two
large canvases, “Totem I’ and “Totem II,” that he exhibited last year. But it is
stall sufficient—for all its divagations and weaknesses, especially in the gouaches
—to show him as the most original contemporary easel-painter under forty.
What may at first sight seem crowded and repetitious reveals on second sight
an infinity of dramatic movement and variety. One has to learn Pollock’s idiom
to realize its flexibility. And it is precisely because | am, in general, still learn-
ing from Pollock that I hesitate to attempt a more thorough analysis of his art.

Greenberg's invidious comparisons here are mild compared with

those in the December 28 Nation concerning Pollock’s first painting in a
Whitney Annual:

The best painting at the present show is Jackson Pollock's “Two.” Those who
think that I exaggerate Pollock's merit are invited to compare this large vertical
canvas with everything else in the Annual. Mark Tobey, too, is represented by
a strong picture, but in the presence of the Pollock the minor quality of his
achievement, original as it is, becomes even more pronounced than before.

The painting, sent to the Whitney before the April show and now singled
out by Greenberg is, of this period, one of Pollock’s most conservative—
that is, most Cubistic and Picassoesque. It paraphrases Pollock’s own
Male and Female of three years before, which is roughly the same size
and identically organized, though less literal. As to the other artists in
the show, they included not only contemporaries of Pollock (Baziotes,
Gorky, Gottlieb, Guston, Motherwell, Rothko, Stamos, Tomlin—typi-
cally all trying, also, to synthesize the carefully organized flat picture
plane of Cubism and the more automatic and improvised imagery of
Surrealism); but many of the official Surrealists themselves (Dali, Ernst,
Matta, Tanguy); and established painters of the earlier American van-
guard (Davis, Dove, Hopper, Kuniyoshi, O'Keeffe, Weber); and even
 Surrealists Come to New York: 1941-1946

Pollock’s second teacher, John Sloan; and his last, in a looser sense,
Stanley William Hayter. It is pointless to argue about whether or not
Pollock’s painting was the best. It was strong, but not nearly so much his
own as was the work of more mature artists their own in that 1946 Annual.
If Pollock must be judged by Two and other paintings of 1945 and
those of early 1946, the verdict is clear: he is a minor Surrealist; histor-
ically, late; academically, particularly as a draftsman, not in the same
class with Dali, Ernst, Masson, Matta, Tanguy, Gorky (the American
culmination of the tradition); inventively, still far behind Picasso and
Miré. Up to this point he has shown emotional intensity, expressed
primarily in the visual vocabulary of Cubism, freed by Surrealism. Like
Picasso and Miré and such younger artists as Giacometti and Dubuffet,
he has indicated the possibility—in his case thus far, only the possibility
—of moving past both Cubism and Surrealism. If Pollock had died then,
in mid-’46, instead of ten years later, he would not have his “place in
history.” It is during the next ten years, and mostly during the first five
of them, that he painted that place, struggled for it as an act of willful
necessity.
 Chapter Four

Roots in East Hampton

(1946-1947)
Sculpture and painting are not, it is true, capable of actual movement, but they
Suggest movement. Every statue, every picture, is a series of ordered relations,
controlled, as the body is controlled in the dance, by the will to express a single
idea. A study of the most rudimentary abstract design will show that the units
of line or mass are in reality energies capable of acting on each other; and, if
we discover a way to put these energies into rhythmical relation, the design at
once becomes animated, our imagination enters into it; our minds also are
brought into rhythmical relation with the design, which has become charged
with the capability of movement and of life. In a bad painting the units of
form, mass, color, are robbed of their potential energy, isolated, because brought
into no organic relation; they do not work together, and therefore none of them
has a tithe even of its own effect. It is just so with the muscular movements of
a bad player at a game, a bad dancer.
When the rhythm is found we feel that we are put into touch with life,
not only our own life, but the life of the whole world. It is as if we moved to
a music which set the stars in motion.
LAURENCE BINYON
The Flight of the Dragon

So I had actually found a way of painting nature! | naturally repeated the

experiment several times. The strange part was that I had actually endowed the
colors with movement.
ITALO SVEVO
The Confessions of Zeno

Lee Krasner Pollock reminisces:*

... 1 think that living in Springs allowed Jackson to work. He needed the peace
and quiet of country life. It enabled him to work.
The first two years we lived in Springs we had no car. You know, before
I met him, there was an existence of dire poverty, about as bad as it can be.
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

87

This was sometime between the time he arrived in New York and when he got
on W.P.A. In the deep Depression he used to get a meal for five cents. I know
that when he lived with Sandy he had to work as a janitor in the {City and
Country School} in the Village. Later Jackson got a Model A Ford, but in the
beginning we had to bicycle to do all the errands; that would take a good part
of the day.
He always slept very late. Drinking or not, he never got up in the morning.
He could sleep twelve, fourteen hours, around the clock. We'd always talk about
his insane guilt about sleeping late. Morning was my best time for work, so I
would be in my studio when | heard him stirring around. 1 would go back, and
while he had his breakfast | had my lunch. His breakfast would not set him up
and make him bolt from the table like most people. He would sit over that
damn cup of coffee for two hours. By that time it was afternoon. He'd get off and
work until it was dark. There were no lights in his studio. When the days were
Short he could only work for a few hours, but what he managed to do in those
few hours was incredible. We had an agreement that neither of us would go
into the other's studio without being asked. Occasionally, it was something like
once a week, he would say, “I have something to show you.” I would always be
astonished by the amount of work that he had accomplished. In discussing the
paintings, he would ask, “Does it work?” Or in looking at mine, he would com-
ment, “It works” or “It doesn’t work.” He may have been the first artist to have
used the word “work” in that sense. There was no heat in his studio either, but
he would manage in winter if he wanted to; he would get dressed up in an out-
fit the like of which you've never seen....
In the afternoon, if he wasn’t working, we might bicycle to town. Or when
we had a car, he would drive me to town and wait in the car for me while 1
shopped. When he was working, he would go to town when the light gave out
and get a few cartons of beer to bring home. Of course, during those two years...
he was on the wagon, he didn’t touch beer either. We would often drive out in
the old Model A and get out and walk. Or we would sit on the stoop for hours
gazing into the landscape without exchanging a word. We rarely had art talk,
sometimes shop talk, like who's going to what gallery.
One thing I will say about Pollock; the one time I saw temperament in him
was when he baked an apple pie. Or when he tried to take a photograph. He
never showed any artistic temperament, He loved to bake. I did the cooking but
he did the baking when he felt like it. He was very fastidious about his baking
—marvelous bread and pies. He also made a great spaghetti sauce.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

88

He loved machinery, so he got a lawn mower. We made an agreement

about the garden when he said, “I'll dig it and set it out if you'll water and
weed.” He took great pride in the house. One of the reasons for our move to
Springs was that Jackson wanted to do sculpture. You know, it was his original
interest in high school and art school. He often said, “One of these days I'll
get back to sculpture.” There was a large junk pile of iron in the backyard he
expected to use.
He would get into grooves of listening to his jazz records—not just for
days—day and night, day and night for three days running until you thought
you would climb the roof! The house would shake. Jazz? He thought it was the
only other really creative thing happening in this country. He had a passion for
music. He had trouble carrying a tune, and although he loved to dance he was an
awkward dancer. He told me that when he was a boy he bought himself a violin
expecting to play it immediately. When he couldn’t get the sound he wanted out
of it, he smashed it in a rage.
...1 can’t say he was a happy man. There were times when he was happy,
of course; he loved his house, he loved to fool in his garden, he loved to go out
and look at the dunes, the gulls. He would talk for hours to Dan Miller, the
grocery store owner. He would drink with the plumber, Dick Talmadge, or the
electrician, Elwyn Harris. Once they came into New York to see one of his
exhibitions.
It is a myth that he wasn’t verbal. He could be hideously verbal when he
wanted to be. Ask the people he really talked to: Tony Smith and me. He was
lucid, intelligent; it was simply that he didn’t want to talk art. If he was quiet,
it was because he didn’t believe in talking, he believed in doing.

Tony Smith, who was born the same year as Pollock and attended
the Art Students League just after him, did not meet Pollock until the
early forties. The meeting was at Fritz Bultman’s apartment on 11th
Street. Besides Bultman himself and Smith and Pollock, there were
Tennessee Williams, and the painter Jerome Kamrowski, and the architect
Ted van Fossen. For Smith the meeting was “a disaster.” Pollock was “so
sullen and intense, so miserable” that Smith was actually frightened and
said to himself, “I’ve got to get out of here. J can’t stand that guy.”
Despite this bad beginning and despite a lack of sympathy for
Pollock’s Expressionistic work of the late thirties and early forties, Smith
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

89

became interested in the paintings of the middle forties. By 1948, when

Pollock moved to Betty Parsons, he and Pollock were friendly, and
Smith thought of him on that same level of leadership as Rothko and
Still, who had had shows at that gallery in 1947, and Newman, who
had not yet shown there but had organized an exhibition of Northwest
Coast Indian Art. However, Pollock and Smith became really close at
the time of Jerome Kamrowski’s show in 1948. Then “Kamrowski had
done about a dozen small paintings on both sides of some panels, and
{Smith} had made a couple of supports for them in the middle of the
gallery.” Jackson asked Betty Parsons if Smith could design some floating
panels for him. She was willing. However, when she and Smith visited
the Pollocks in Springs and saw Jackson’s new work it was obvious that
the proposed method of installation “wouldn’t have worked for Jackson’s
paintings because of their size.” With that settled Smith and Pollock had
plenty of time to talk.
Tony does not agree with Lee about Jackson being “verbal”:
“Jackson was detached and analytical. This led him to compartmentalize
things. He had relatively few interests, but they were intense. He saw
them as having no real connection with one another; the only way he
could connect them was through some kind of action. I don’t know if
booze helped him in this. Anyhow, the way he looked at the physical
world was characteristic of how he saw things—separately. He had a
distinct posture for looking at the ground, another for looking at the
horizon, and a third for looking at the sky. You might say that’s just the
way it is, but for him these seemed to be totally different modes of
perception.
“Another example of what I mean: Jackson was puritanical. I’ve
never known anyone who was more so—I mean stern. On the other hand,
I have heard that he was fascinated by all sorts of things which he
considered perverse. He seemed to be pretty familiar with Krafft-Ebing,
and, although he didn’t advertise it, he thought it important. The subject
was a factor in his art, in the forms in his painting, animal and human,
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

90

male and female, in the metamorphoses of his shapes, in his conception

of the links between things. There were real conflicts, partly due to the
manner in which he kept things apart in his mind.”*
The painter and teacher Julian Levi, who bought a house in Springs
in 1947, also describes Pollock as anything but “verbal.” He recalls
Jackson’s silences as much as his words and remembers that Jackson’s
talk had more to do with day-to-day problems than with an exchange of
sophisticated ideas. His ideas were often expressed existentially. Once
when Jackson was drunk he came into Levi's studio shouting against the
use of frames, before proceeding to rip the frame off a painting. Another
time, when Levi was on his way to teach in New York, Jackson shouted
at him: “Painters should paint, not teach.” However, as against these
aggressive incidents there were the warm hospitality of the Pollock
kitchen where a pot of coffee was always on the stove, and Jackson’s pride
in the Springs Fair for which he baked pies. In at least one connection
Pollock was both hostile and sympathetic: he expressed contempt for the
bird decoys Levi collected, but later when Pollock bought a neighbor’s
barn, he took great delight in negotiating for hours on Levi’s behalf for
some decoys he found there. Like so many others, Levi put up with the
blatantly aggressive side of Pollock’s personality because of the more
gentle and innocently playful side. There was also the need for neighborly
cooperation as when, after a blizzard, Julian and Jackson went for provi-
sions in the Levi car (the East Hampton Bank had refused to lend
Pollock $100 to buy a jalopy).
During winter nights when there were no movies in East Hampton
and when, even if there had been, the Pollocks could not easily have
afforded them, they made and ate dinner—sometimes with neighboring
friends, more often alone. They might cook clams they had dug and
serve them with spaghetti and Jackson’s sauce, or Lee might fix that day’s
“special” from the market, or if it was “an occasion” Jackson might make
an apple pie.

* See Bibliography No. 172.

 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

91

Some nights they read, but critics have made too much of this, as if
offering credentials for the Pollocks’ culture. Neither was a great reader.
The East Hampton Star, the Sunday Times, popular and art magazines
(frequently given to them by friends weeks or months after publication)
—these were more than enough to read; and even with these the reading
was exceptionally physical, a matter of turning pages, recording images,
tracing them with the hands, as one “reads” art books. Yes, Lee had long
ago gone through some of the nineteenth-century Russian classics; and
Jackson had read Moby-Dick, had taken titles for some paintings from it,
and would name one of his dogs Ahab. But neither Lee nor Jackson re-
membered these books in detail; they had rather felt their spirit and
absorbed the books in that more general way.
Charles Pollock has written to the critic William Rubin:

I have the Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington,

Government Printing Office, 1891). Among other things, it contains 12 chromo-
lithographic plates. Four of these are sand paintings, the others ritualistic para-
phernalia—blankets, feathers, paints, etc.
Jack had several volumes of this kind. As I remember, we bought them
together in one of the then innumerable secondhand bookstores on 4th Avenue
—sometime between 1930 and 1935.

Pollock’s friend Alfonso Ossorio has stated*:

He had an enormously catholic appreciation of the art of the past: Indian sand
painting, Eskimo art, or the baroque. 1 think at one stage, when he was younger,
he went to museums. He certainly knew the anthropological collection at the
Museum of Natural History very well. And he knew the art of the American
Indian because he had lived part of his life in the Southwest. He had the fifteen
volumes published by the Smithsonian on American anthropology—he once
pulled it out from under his bed to show me—I remember being surprised that
someone so poor could have such a publication.

It is difficult to imagine Pollock wading through all the material his

brother and his friend describe, easier to imagine him studying the plates
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

92

and dipping only here and there within the text. The same is true of
D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form, a gift from Tony Smith, and
always listed as one of Pollock’s favorite books. In this case it is possible
he never read past the introductory chapter. Thompson’s accomplishments
as a classicist and mathematician as well as a naturalist—with all three
of these disciplines so brilliantly balanced in this particular book, his
masterpiece—may well have gone over Pollock’s head. Surely Pollock
would have been put off by all the quotations, not only from classical
literature but from modern European. And the mathematical equations,
beginning in the second chapter, would have been trying, despite some
knowledge, from surveying days, of geometry and trigonometry. However,
this is not to say that Pollock didn’t love On Growth and Form. The
words in that first chapter (along with the many beautiful illustrations
which follow) may well have been enough for him. We can imagine the
excitement with which he would have read:

... But the physicist proclaims aloud that the physical phenomena which meet
us by the way have their forms not less beautiful and scarce less varied than
those which move us to admiration among living things. The waves of the
sea, the little ripples on the shore, the sweeping curve of the sandy bay between
the headlands, the outline of the hills, the shape of the clouds, all these are so
many riddles of form, so many problems of morphology, and all of them the
physicist can more or less easily read and adequately solve: solving them by
reference to their antecedent phenomena, in the material system of mechanical
forces to which they belong, and to which we interpret them as being due.
They have also, doubtless, their immanent teleological significance; but it ts on
another plane of thought from the physicist’s that we contemplate their in-
trinsic harmony and perfection, and “see that they are good.”
Nor is it otherwise with the material forms of living things. Cell and
tissue, shell and bone, leaf and flower, are so many portions of matter, and it
is in obedience to the laws of physics that their particles have been moved,
moulded and conformed....
While the protoplasm of the Amoeba reacts to the slightest pressure, and
tends to “flow,” and while we therefore speak of it as fluid, it is evidently far
less mobile than such a fluid (for instance) as water, but is rather like treacle
in its slow creeping movements as it changes its shape in response to force.
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

93

We can imagine, too, the excitement with which Pollock would have
studied the many plates of cells... shells... skulls... scales... snow-
flakes .. . worlds of growth and form from seeming chaos... .

Fixing up the studio is a common way for artists to relax, a way of

stopping one’s real work without having to suffer the guilt of not working
at all. However, in Pollock’s case the need to fix up the barn as a per-
manent studio was far more than a distraction from the pressures of the
past year—particularly, the interruption of moving while preparing his
show and then lack of progress in the show itself. Working on the barn
would have been a relief but also a necessity. For half a year now Pollock
had felt cramped painting in the bedroom; and, worse than cramped, had
felt like a tourist on his own property. Every time he looked out the
window he saw the barn, stark and strong against the flat space stretching
to Gardner’s Bay. He was unhappy up in the farmhouse bedroom. He
wanted to be down there—settled, rooted—in his barn.
That summer of 1946, before beginning work on the barn, he
moved it farther north. Thus, their home had a better, more open view
and his studio more privacy. After he relocated the barn and began to
paint in it, Lee Pollock took over the bedroom studio. There, in the late
forties, she would make her “hieroglyphs.” It is no accident that these
abstract works of hers, heavily painted mostly in black and white and
typically not exceeding two feet in either dimension, are quite secretive
paintings which twist in upon themselves and speak in whispers. Nor is it
an accident that once Jackson painted in the barn his work began to open
up, to shout and sing.
Pollock worked furiously, demonically during the rest of 1946—
partly in reaction to having “rested” in the early summer, partly in re-
sponse to the large space in his new studio and its natural surroundings,
and partly because Peggy Guggenheim announced her intention to close
her gallery the following spring and return to Europe. Jackson asked her
to give him one more show at Art of This Century. If only she could sell
enough paintings for him to get a little more money than what was
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

94

guaranteed by their contract, he could make ends meet, maybe put a

decent heating system in the house and a stove in the studio, maybe make
some necessary repairs, maybe get a better car than the Model A Ford. ...
Peggy Guggenheim did what she could. Despite his last show having
closed only April 20 and despite the gallery’s tight schedule for its final
season, she managed to squeeze him in from January 14 to February 1, a
period generally considered a difficult one in which to sell, being still too
close to Christmas and too far from the spring return of the wealthy from
sunny resorts. Nevertheless, Jackson was appreciative. He worked en-
thusiastically and by the end of 1946 had completed fifteen new paint-
ings. In the exhibition catalogue these were divided into two series:
Sounds in the Grass, seven paintings; and Accabonac Creek, eight. In ad-
dition Peggy Guggenheim’s Mural was shown for the first time in the
gallery (listed under the Accabonac series).
In titling the two series, Pollock wanted no doubt to express a debt
to and an appreciation of his new environment. However, these designa-
tions were applied after the fact, that is, after the work had been com-
pleted. And this titling procedure was followed also with the individual
paintings. Never very articulate himself, but responsive to the articulate-
ness of others, Pollock had—at least since his first one-man show—fre-
quently encouraged the people close to him, those whose sensitivity he
trusted, to free-associate verbally around the completed work. From their
responses, from key words and phrases, he often, though not always, chose
his titles—typically vague, metaphorical, or “poetic.” He thought of each
title as a convenience in identifying his work rather than in any sense a
verbal equivalent of its subject matter. To Pollock the meaninglessness of
titles (as compared with the importance of the work itself) is evident not
only in his having included the Guggenheim mural in his Accabonac
Creek series but in his having a few years earlier retitled Moby-Dick of
1943 Pasiphaé at the suggestion of Sweeney.
Before the 1947 show some of the people who visited Pollock’s
studio, from whom he would have extracted titles or with whom he might
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

95

in effect have collaborated on them, included his wife; Peggy Guggen-

heim; his friend and collector W. N. M. “Bill” Davis, who bought both
Shimmering Substance and The Tea Cup from the show before it opened
and who also wrote a brief catalogue note, describing Pollock as
“,.. working in perhaps a somewhat gayer mood”; and Clement Green-
berg whose review appeared in the February 1 Nation:

Jackson Pollock’s fourth one-man show in so many years is his best since his
first one and signals what may be a major step in his ¢evelopment—which I
regard as the most important so far of the younger generation of American
painters. He has now largely abandoned his customary heavy black-and-whitish
or gun-metal chiaroscuro for the higher scales, for alizarins, cream-whites,
cerulean blues, pinks, and sharp greens. Like Dubuffet, however, whose art goes
in a similar if less abstract direction, Pollock remains essentially a draftsman in
black and white who must as a rule rely on these colors to maintain the con-
sistency and power of surface of his pictures. As is the case with almost all
post-cubist painting of any real originality, it is the tension inherent in the
constructed, re-created flatness of the surface that produces the strength of his art.

Up to this point Greenberg, concentrating on such high-keyed paint-

ings as The Blue Unconscious and The Key, seems to be saying that their
Post-Cubist originality is in their use of Cubist disciplines. However, in
the last paragraphs of the review, his attention shifts to more totally ab-
stract and radically Post-Cubist paintings (e.g., Eyes in the Heat, Shim-
mering Substance) :

Pollock, again like Dubuffet, tends to handle his canvas with an over-all even-
ness; but at this moment he seems capable of more variety than the French
artist, and able to work with riskier elements—silhouettes and invented orna-
mental motifs—which he integrates in the plane surface with astounding force.
Dubuffet’s sophistication enables him to “package” his canvases more skilfully
and pleasingly and achieve greater instantaneous unity, but Pollock, 1 feel, has
more to say in the end and is, fundamentally, and almost because he lacks equal
charm, the more original.
Pollock has gone beyond the stage where he needs to make his poetry ex-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

96

plicit in ideographs. What he invents instead has perhaps, in its very abstract-
ness and absence of assignable definition, a more reverberating meaning. He is
American and rougher and more brutal, but he is also completer. In any case
he is certainly less conservative, less of an easel-painter in the traditional sense
than Dubuffet, whose most important historical achievement may be in the end
to have preserved the easel picture of the post-Picasso generation of painters.
Pollock points a way beyond the easel, beyond the mobile, framed picture, to the
| mural, perhaps—or perhaps not. I cannot tell.

“Over-all” and the later variation “all-over” are key critical descriptions
of Pollock’s work from now on (as also of Dubuffet’s and that of many
other avant-garde painters).
In their total abstraction and in their gyrating repetitive rhythm,
Shimmering Substance and Eyes in the Heat, both done in late 1946, are
related to some of the untitled gouaches of the previous year. However,
the newer paintings have considerably greater freedom and luminosity
and a more relaxed rhythm than the earlier work. By using the palette
knife as well as the brush in heavy oil paint (squeezed directly from the
tube onto the canvas) Pollock now came closer to communicating an
“over-all” immediacy and spontaneity. Though there are passages of drip-
ping and splattering in this work, as there have been since the early for-
ties, it remains for Pollock to create his new abstract images still more
freely—and seemingly effortlessly—by using only dripped paint. That is,
he must learn to draw with spilled paint and to control this as a total
technique rather than to incorporate accidents within finished work done
using conventional techniques.
But this presentation of problem and solution is much too program-
matic. We will never know exactly how Pollock developed his totally
dripped image. We can only know that the new technique was fully
developed—full-grown—in 1947 and that by then Pollock had recog-
nized that accidents (spillings, splatterings, puddlings, drippings) in-
corporated in his work came closest to the look and feel he wanted. At
the same time he was experiencing a mounting frustration because even
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

97

such paintings as Shimmering Substance and Eyes in the Heat retained a

certain tightness, and a textural quality too reminiscent of Impressionism
in general and of the juiciest Expressionism (say, that of Soutine).
So, without being programmatic, without making exclusively intel-
lectual decisions, but rather intuitively, by responding to his own needs,
one day perhaps Pollock thins his paint a little more than usual, perhaps
even more than he intended, and spills some on a canvas. Or perhaps he
kicks over a can of industrial enamel that is standing in the studio and
likes what he sees. Or in anger or frustration he throws some paint at a
canvas. Or notices that it distributes itself more evenly and more control-
lably when canvas is on the floor rather than tacked to a wall. ...
Perhaps all these things happened in early 1947. Perhaps they have
happened in the past, but are only now digested as experience. Either way,
what look like accidents, what might be accidents for someone else, are
now necessities for Pollock, the last lesson of Surrealist automatism and
of Siqueiros’s “experimental workshop,” the inevitable end of a search
begun by himself almost twenty years earlier in Los Angeles at Manual
Arts High School and by the Impressionists almost a hundred years earlier
in Paris. ... .
Perhaps soon after his final show at Art of This Century, Pollock is
watching snow melt outside his studio and the ground itself begin to
thaw. There in the sun, he sees a stain of moisture spread and mud form.
Or, on another sunny day, he and his wife go for a walk on the beach.
There, too, the snow is melting, melting on the dunes, and the sand soaks
up this shimmering wetness and that of the surf pounding farther down
at the shore.... Walking back to the house Jackson and Lee are struck
once again by the look of bare trees traced against winter sky... .
Perhaps Pollock has been drinking heavily, drinking in that pecul-
iarly cyclical pattern of his, in bouts that follow or precede (who can say
which?) periods of hard work. Shaken, depressed, hung-over, guilt-ridden,
he is alone now in his studio, as at some point he was alone in his drunk-
enness. As he looks at past work—some of it stretched and in racks along-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

98

side the entrance to the studio, some of it still tacked to the white-painted
barn walls, some of it in large cardboard portfolios—he feels once again
that even paint is intractable, that somehow as it hardens it loses the ooz-
ing vitality ic has when coming fresh out of the tube or can.... Perhaps,
in his mind, he draws, following a line that reads like a continuous en-
cephalograph, a linear proliferation, a flow of energy, wishing that this
line could exist by itself, independent of canvas or paper, self-supporting,
as strong as sculpture (the medium in which, after words, he feels least
adequate and yet one for which he still feels a nostalgic fascination) ...
sculpture, perhaps forged out of steel, like that of David Smith. .. .
Perhaps initially Pollock was expressing, acting out, the tension be-
tween his frustrations and his rebelliousness by spilling paint. Perhaps he
wanted to destroy the entire history of painting and to start fresh, scream-
ing now, as during much of his life, “Fuck you,” screaming this at the
world, at history, with the most intensely positive and negative meaning,
simultaneously loving and angry.... Like a naughty boy, Pollock may
have wanted to make a mess, to disturb everything neat and orderly and
faceless about the canvas, its clean surface, its regular texture, its rec-
tangular shape, all reminiscent of dining tables he’d cleared and cleaned
as a child and at the League, of dishes he’d washed and wiped until spar-
kling, of laundry on the line, of shirts he’d been told to tuck in, of rules
of cleanliness, rules of composition, rules of the road, white stripes down
the center of highways, speed limits, limits of all kinds, rigidities, Cubistic
organization. ... Yes, the gesture of spilling paint is an attack on art his-
tory as well as personal history, personal destiny. It is an act connecting
past and future, the affirmative side of cracking up cars, picking fights,
pissing in fireplaces, overturning tables, kicking out windshields, crushing
hats, and all the rest, past and future; it is ultimately the conversion of
negative energy into positive paintings, some among the most alive ever
made.
Perhaps... There are so many possibilities, endless possibilities,
possibilities within possibilities... all valid.... Whatever actually hap-
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

99

pened, remember that although Pollock was not the first to incorporate
spilled paint in a finished work, he was the first to use this technique to
present a total image, destructive and creative, the very pulse and rhythm
of his own life, once again that pounding statement, “I am nature.”

During 1947 Pollock made two of his rare public statements—that

is, verbal statements. The first, somewhat echoing Greenberg, was in his
application for a Guggenheim Fellowship (never granted) :

I intend to paint large moveable pictures which will function between the easel
and mural. I have set a precedent in this genre in a large painting for Miss
Peggy Guggenheim which was installed in her house and was later shown in
the “Large Scale Paintings” show at the Museum of Modern Art. It is at present
on loan at Yale University.
I believe the easel picture to be a dying form, and the tendency of
modern feeling is towards the wall picture or mural. I believe the time is not yet
ripe for a full transition from easel to mural. The pictures I contemplate paint-
ing would constitute a halfway state, and an attempt to point out the direction
of the future, without arriving there completely.

His more famous statement—and more public, too, though at the

time it reached only a special art audience—was made in possibilities 1,
“an occasional review” which unfortunately appeared on just this single
occasion (Winter 1947-48). First, the statement—Pollock’s voice—
then a few words about the context in which it appeared:

MY PAINTING does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas
before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the
floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor | 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 the painting. This is akin to the
method of the Indian sand painters of the West.
I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel,
palette, brushes, etc. 1 prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a
heavy impasto with sand, broken glass and other foreign matter added.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

100

When I am in my painting, 1 am 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. 1 have
no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting
has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact
with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an
easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

possibilities was edited by Robert Motherwell (art), Harold Rosen-

berg (writing), Pierre Chareau (architecture), and John Cage (music).
Except for Chareau who was a generation older, the editors were con-
temporaries of Pollock’s and, like him, members of the avant garde. Yet
even to glance at most of the illustrations in possibilities is to recognize
immediately the continuing dominance of Cubism and Surrealism. This is
apparent in reproductions of six recent paintings by Baziotes, a collage
and a wood relief by Arp, nine sculptures by David Smith, three photo-
graphs of a new Brazilian church by Niemeyer (and particularly the
mosaic mural by Portinari), an ink drawing by Motherwell, two “auto-
matic drawings” by Hayter, eight paintings by Mark Rothko. Of the six
photographs “illustrating” Pollock’s statement, five can properly be la-
beled Surreal Cubism or Abstract Surrealism (The Key, Yellow Triangle,
The Tea Cup, all of 1946; and Totem Lesson I and Totem Lesson II,
both of 1944); only the later 1946 painting Eyes in the Heat begins to
suggest the kind of work Pollock is referring to in his statement. It is
unfortunate that the first great dripped paintings of 1947 had not yet
been photographed. Had they been, Pollock’s statement—and the “possi-
bilities” of a Post-Cubist/Post-Surrealist esthetic—would have been more
comprehensible. Without the proper illustrations, the statement can only
have been meaningful to his wife and Clement Greenberg and a few
others who had seen Pollock’s recent work (presumably Motherwell,
living in East Hampton and building a house there designed by Chareau;
Harold Rosenberg, also there; and perhaps the composer John Cage,
whose use of chance-in his work has some affinity to Pollock’s approach,
though more to that of the Dadaists).
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

101

If, at the time, the few hundred art-oriented readers of possibilities

had understandable difficulty with Pollock’s statement on himself (those
stark words unsupported by up-to-date visual material), this difficulty. was
both quantitatively and qualitatively minor compared with that of the ten
thousand or so less specialized, but equally highbrow, readers of Green-
berg on Pollock in “The Present Prospects of American Painting and
Sculpture,” written for a special American double number (October
1947) of the prestigious British publication Horizoy::

... the most powerful painter in contemporary America and the only one
who promises to be a major one is a Gothic, morbid and extreme disciple of
Picasso’s Cubism and Miro’s post-Cubism, tinctured also with Kandinsky and
Surrealist inspiration. His name is Jackson Pollock, and if the aspect of his art
is not as originally and uniquely local as that of Graves’ and Tobey’s, the feeling
it contains is perhaps even more radically American. Faulkner and Melville can
be called in as witnesses to the nativeness of such violence, exasperation and
stridency. 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 Cubism. Of no
profound originality as a colourist, Pollock draws massively, laying on paint
directly from the tube, and handles black, white and grey as they have not been
handled since Gris’ middle period. No other abstract painter since Cubism has
been so well able to retain classical chiaroscuro.
For all its Gothic quality, Pollock’s art is still an attempt to cope with
urban life; it.dwells entirely in the lonely jungle of immediate sensations, tm-
pulses and notions, therefore is positivist, concrete. Yet its Gothic-ness, tts
paranoia and resentment narrow it; large though it may be in ambition—large
enough to contain inconsistencies, ugliness, blind spots and monotonous pas-
sages—1t nevertheless lacks breadth.

How confused this larger group of readers must have felt after deal-
ing with Greenberg’s aggressive assertions (unsupported by any visual
material). And what, anyway, could his superlatives have meant—those
concerning Pollock and, elsewhere, Hofmann and David Smith—in an
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

102

article which in other sections dismisses Matisse for not being as “hard-
headed” as “Cézanne, his paranoia notwithstanding; Bonnard; Picasso, as
long as he was a Cubist; Gris; Léger; Miro; Brancusi; Kandinsky, before
he discovered the Spiritual; Lipchitz, before he re-discovered the Mytho-
logical’? Now, not in Pollock’s paintings, we are in the presence of
brutality—the crude catalogue based too often on ratings and competitive
comparisons. And what did these superlatives mean if Greenberg could
characterize Morris Graves and Mark Tobey as “the two most original
American painters today, in the sense of being the most uniquely and dif-
ferentiatedly American” and at the same time “so narrow as to cease even
being interesting” and go on to compare these painters with the poets
Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore, whose art “does not show us
enough of ourselves and of the kind of life we live in our cities, and there-
fore does not release enough of our feeling.” And what, finally, could all
this mean a few pages from James Thrall Soby’s well-illustrated article on
Graves, the Representational Mystic, and Ben Shahn, the Social Realist—
and, further on in the magazine, a portfolio of more objectively Realistic
Chicago photographs by Walkers Evans?
Perhaps it means something about Greenberg’s own mythology, his
continuing search for The Great American Painter (with his particular
emphases). Beyond the Greenberg in print—beyond, on the one hand, his
superlatives and invidious comparisons and, on the other, his inconsis-
tencies and hesitations—or perhaps not beyond but between the lines,
there is a nonprofessional extracritical dialogue with Pollock. Green-
berg’s reservations about Pollock have intensified, but so has his identifi-
cation with him and with “the genuinely violent and extravagant art,”
the Gothic American roughness and brutality for which Greenberg thinks
Pollock stands. It is as though Greenberg was using Pollock to act out
Greenberg’s own fantasies—two peculiarly compatible ones in particular,
that of the frontier (the Wild West) and that of the revolutionary artist.
How American a Scotch-Irish family from Cody must have seemed to
Greenberg who was born in the Bronx and whose parents, he states in
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947

103

Twentieth-Century Authors, “had come, in their separate ways, from the

Lithuanian Jewish cultural enclave in northeastern Poland.... I spoke
Yiddish as soon as I did English.” How romantic was Pollock’s boyhood
compared with Greenberg’s own, watching his father progress “from
storekeeper (clothing) to manufacturer (metal goods).”
There was that identification—with Pollock as a sort of frontier
American—and there was the other, the identification with him as the
artist Greenberg may have wanted to be: “As a child I had been a pre-
cocious draughtsman, and I had drawn and sketched obsessively until col-
lege; but gradually I became much more interested in literature than in
art (which I still find it hard to read about), and so when I began to
write it was mainly on literature.” His translations, book reviews, and
other critical articles were published mostly in Partisan Review, The
Nation, and Contemporary Jewish Record (later Commentary). “In the
meantime my interest in art had reawakened and become a good deal
more self-conscious than before; that is, I no longer took my opinions in
the matter of painting and sculpture as much for granted, and began to
feel responsible for them. By the end of 1941 I was writing an occasional
piece on art for the Nation, for which I had been doing book reviews, and
in 1944 I became its regular art critic.” And from the mid-forties on he
was “painting more and more seriously,” though privately. That brings us
just about to the beginning of what became Greenberg’s increasingly pro-
found involvement with Pollock. However, in addition, perhaps Pollock
was for Greenberg a compounding, of Younger Brother and Surrogate or
Prodigal Son—just as for Jackson, Greenberg may have been yet another
surrogate father or even a fifth older brother, replacing the four who had
scattered, particularly Sandy to whom Jackson had always been so close
and from whom he was now quite removed; a father or older brother
more proficient than Jackson’s own in the intricacies of urban life and
communication, a world now of critics, dealers, collectors, lawyers, ac-
countants ... a world in which Jackson felt inadequate, as expressed some-
times in his regrets at not having gone to college. As with Lee, there was
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

104

also the fact of Clem’s response to Jackson’s work and, in his case the
articulateness in expressing that response, the willingness of this East
Coast intellectual to attempt the impossible and try to put Jacksons S paint-
ings into words.

Pollock makes his paintings in the privacy and silence of his studio.
At first the work is seen and responded to only by other artists; later, by
critics (some of them painters manqués), dealers (existential critics),
private collectors (frequently friends), public collectors (curators) ..
From the small inner circle words begin to move out throughaseries of
larger concentric rings. From The Nation and Horizon with their audi-
ences of thousands Greenberg will be picked up by publications with cir-
culations in the millions. And initially Greenberg, the interpreter, will
receive more attention than Pollock, the maker.
Of the mass-circulation magazines Time responded first (December
1, 1947) with a one-column lead article on its art page (typically only a
page then) called “The Best?” In ic Greenberg’s superlatives regarding
Pollock as painter, David Smith as sculptor (“an art capable of with-
standing the test of international scrutiny and which, like Pollock’s, might
justify the term major”), and Hofmann as teacher (“the most important
figure in American art of the period since 1935 and one of the most influ-
ential forces in its entire history, not for his own work, but for the influ-
ence, enlightening and uncompromising, he exerts”) are partially quoted
above tiny black-and-white reproductions of an abstract work by each
(Pollock’s The Key upside down). Though the article is brief, sloppy, and
scornful, it is important to Pollock’s career and relationship to Greenberg.
It will lead directly, in less than a year, to “A Life Round Table on Mod-
ern Art” in which Greenberg will again tout Pollock and, in less than
two years, to a large color spread in Life on Pollock himself. Yes, as the
quiet work done in the studio begins to move out into the world, the
world begins to invade the studio.
At about the same time as Pollock was perfecting his totally dripped
 Roots in East Hampton: 1946-1947
105

image, the French poet Francis Ponge was in North Africa, where he
made the following journal entry:

Sidi-Madani, Sunday 14 December 1947. Morning

This morning 1 want to begin to arrange the succession of thoughts sug-
gested by the false marble of our bathroom here:
Title: “Of a new genre of art: the spot, the suggestive splatter.”
Plan: I. Certain modern works of art considered as spots, suggestive
splatters. :
Il. What need do these predicate, as their psychic or metaphysical bias? A
desire to experience (acquire) startling feelings, suggestive forms and com-
plexes of feeling unknown till then; that the work of art be considered as a way
of modifying, of renewing one’s sensual world, of forcing the imagination in
new, unexplored directions,
III. Description of a work in this genre.
IV. How was this work made? It’s exactly as if, having chosen his target
and projectile, the “artist” proceeded thus: he throws, he examines the results, he
uses them, corrects, modifies... (or not).
Everything is significant, all is form. We choose, as phenomena to be ex-
ploited, our splatters, our creations ex nihilo, rather than words that have al-
ready been created (not by us), rather than the objects of the external world
(already there).
For what advantage? Because the creation involves the material, because
there is, here, a unity of material and meaning.
We create the external world. We express our internal complex already in
the projection, the throw, the release.
To what extent is it art? in 1) the choice of the wall, the page, the base
| to be decorated; 2) the choice of the material to be thrown; 3) the preparation
| of the base and the material so that adhesion is achieved, and many happy
posstbilities of expression....

There will be many such correspondences between Pollock and con-

temporary writers (as well as actors, dancers, composers, musicians). The
rapport with Ponge is particularly interesting because at this time there is
no possibility that either knew the other’s work. None of Pollock’s recent
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visthle

106

drip paintings had yet gone abroad or been reproduced anywhere. Ponge’s
journal had not yet been published. What they shared was not an im-
mediate milieu but—with exceptional awareness—a larger environment,
a consciousness of the postwar world: Ponge, admired by Breton and Elu-
ard, and later (especially after Sartre’s 1944 essay on him) by the Exis-
tentialists; and Pollock, freed also by Surrealism, to become the most
Existential painter of his epoch.
 Chapter Five

The Club: An Interchapter

(1948-1962)
... The Club is a phenomenon—lI was at first timid in admitting that 1 liked it.
Talking has been suspect. There was the prospect that the Club would be re-
garded either as bohemian or as a self-aggrandizing clique. But now I’m con-
sciously happy when I'm there. 1 enjoy the talk, the enthusiasm, the laughter,
the dancing after the discussion. There is a strong sense of identification. I say to
myself these are the people I love, that I love to be with. Here 1 understand
everybody, however inarticulate they are. Here I forgive everyone their vices,
and I’m learning to admire their virtues.
JACK TWORKOV
Journal Excerpt April 26, 1952

If there was an affinity between Pollock’s ideas and those of someone as

far away as Ponge, what of the artists close to Pollock? How much of his
consciousness did they share? And if, as we have seen, New York critics
and dealers were beginning to feel something happening, something in
the air, an as-yet-unnamed ferment within the art community, then again
what of the artists themselves? What were they feeling and thinking?
The history of The Club partly answers these questions. Though Pollock
had nothing to do with its formation and little to do with its activities
(records show him only as “occasionally on mailing list” and members
recall his visits as infrequent and brief), the formative years of The Club
concur with those during which Pollock’s awareness was developing and
taking shape in what we call his “style,” in many ways both the most dar-
ing and most representative of the emerging School of New York. The
Club is, then, both communal background and support for the lonely
activity of Pollock in his Springs studio and, of course, for that of other
artists in their various studios across the country but mostly in New York
City lofts.
Many of those who formed The Club had met while on the Federal
Art Project and at meetings of the Artists’ Union and the American Ab-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

108

stract Artists. Some had gone to the Art Students League or Hofmann’s
school or Hayter’s atelier. Some had spent time at such restaurants and
bars as the Sam Johnson, Romany Marie, and the San Remo. Even the
poorest had “hung around” Stewart’s Cafeteria at 23rd Street and Seventh
Avenue and the one on Sheridan Square and at Riker’s on 8th Street near
University Place and, most important, at the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth
Avenue off 8th Street. By 1948 these scattered roots and others joined to
form a school whose twisting and turning trunk would, however indi-
rectly and independently, branch out and blossom into The Club.
A school called Subjects of the Artist (“in order to emphasize that
abstract art, too, has a subject”) was founded in 1948 by four alumni of
Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century, William Baziotes, Robert
Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and David Hare, who were joined a little
later by Barnett Newman. In a loft at 35 East 8th Street this faculty
talked to students and invited other advanced artists to speak on Friday
evenings, which were open to the general public and usually attracted a
capacity audience of 150. After a year three teachers from New York Uni-
versity’s School of Art Education, Robert Iglehart, Hale Woodruff, and
Tony Smith, took over the loft and for another year continued the Friday
evenings but not the school, calling the program “Studio 35.” Smith was
undoubtedly the principal link between Subjects of the Artist and Studio
35. He believed that the main reason for architecture was to make a place
for art. For him the images of the four painters to whom he was closest
—Pollock, Newman, Rothko, and Clyfford Still, the last having helped
with the planning of the school though he didn’t teach there—were the
crucial ones of the period. He understood their new large scale at a time
when it just looked big to almost everyone else, and he wanted the work
to be seen in an undomesticated context—unframed and uncrowded in
uncarpeted space—so that others could experience it by “getting into it.”
This dream of the proper context for those he considered the four most
visionary artists of his generation would later be expressed in several
abortive projects.
Jackson Pollock at the age of sixteen, when his family moved from Riverside to Los Angeles, California.
There he enrolled at Manual Arts High School. His classmates included the painters Philip Guston and
Manuel! Tolegian. His most influential teacher was Frederick Schwankovsky, who introduced him to
mysticism.
(Top) The Pollock family, 1917. Front row, left to right: Sanford, LeRoy, Frank, Jackson. Back row
Charles, Stella, and Jay. (Bottom) Jackson, about 1928, in the Western gear he wore while surveying th
north rim of Grand Canyon with his father and his brother Sandy. This experience contributed to Jack
son’s lifelong love of endless space.
(Bottom, right) Jackson looking elegant in front of the Los Angeles home, while still enrolled at Manual
Arts. (At left) A studious snapshot taken about 1930, the year he left home for New York City. (Top,
right) In New York, 1936, with David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the major Mexican muralists who in-
fluenced him.
 Pencil sketch of Jackson, 1934, by his teacher Thomas Hart Benton: a study for Benton’s The Ballad o,
the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, completed the same year and reproduced on the next page
Jackson was not much of a harmonica player, but “country” music was very much apart of Benton’:
regionalism, and Jackson attended many of his “musical Monday evenings.’ Ten years after, Jackson said

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS MUSEUM OF ART

 “My work with Benton was important as something against which to react very strongly, later on...
better to have worked with him than with a less resistant personality who would have provided a much
less strong opposition?

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS MUSEUM GE ART

 Jackson, shirtless, on the steps of the Bentons’ summer home in Martha’s Vineyard, about 1937. Behind
him, wearing a hat, is Mrs. Benton. The writer Coburn Gilman is in the doorway. Elsewhere on the
property the Bentons provided Jackson with his own small house, known as “Jack’s shack”

ALFRED EISENSTAEDT
A page from Pollock’s notebook, probably done in the late thirties after his studies with Benton, but still
influenced by his teacher’s emphasis on the Renaissance. The upper and lower right studies are based on
three paintings by El Greco. Lower left is a partial self-portrait, an inclusion which occurs occasionally
throughout his work.

TATE GY JACKSOM POLLOCK

(Top) Self-portrait of Lee Krasner, about 1930, long before she met and married Pollock. She used «
mirror for this work, which accounts for the use of her left hand, though she is right-handed. (Bottom)
Front and back jacket covers designed by Pollock for Peggy Guggenheim’s 1946 autobiography.
Pollock, photographed in the late forties by Wilfred Zogbaum, a friend and neighbor, firs
on Eighth Street and later in East Hampton, where Zogbaum concentrated on sculpture
rather than photography and was one of a distinguished group of artists in the Pollocks
circle.
 Pollock in front of the approximately eight-by-twenty-foot mural commissioned in 1943 by Peggy Gug-
genheim for the hallway of her home and shown—as in this photograph by Pollock's friend, the photog-
rapher Herbert Matter—at Miss Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery in February, 1947. Pollock
studied the large blank canvas for six months before painting it in a single session. Pollock's gallery

HIERBERT MATTER
mate Robert Motherwell said this was “probably the catalytic moment in (Pollock’s) art....Dancin
around the room, he finally found a way of painting that fitted him, and from then on he developed thz
technique and that scale” Clement Greenberg, Pollock’s critical champion, says it convinced him, eve
more than previous work, of the young painter's greatness.
 Four Arnold Newman portraits made in Pollock’s studio barn for Life early in 1949, in anticipation ot a
“big story.’ Ultimately none was used. Besides showing him at work and with paintings of the period,
there are the cans of enamel from which he “dripped? using sticks and hardened brushes.

eS

AB ILTS MEW MAN

 (Top) Another Newman portrait, one silhouetted in Life, August 8. 1949, where the article “Jackson
Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” made the artist famous. The painting
in the background is Summertime. (Bottom) Pollock with Caw-Caw. a pet crow he trained.

ERRERT MAT YER

Jackson playing with a bone “mask” behind his house in Springs. Like his wife, he was fascinated by all
sorts of natural objects—rocks, shells, gourds, driftwood, etc. These and their own paintings decorated
their home, and natural forms appear frequently in Pollock's work.
 (Top) Lee, Jackson, and their dog “Gyp” (short for Gypsophila) walking on the flat marshland extendins
to Accabonac Creek, behind their house in Springs, just outside East Hampton, Long Island. (Bottom
The front of the Pollocks’ old farmhouse as seen from Fireplace Road on which Pollock ultimately me:
his death.

MARTHA HOLMES, LIFE MAGAZINE STIME INC.

 the sculptural remains of a dead tree—again, the sort of
The back of the Springs house as se en through
found object Pollock loved, along wit h the
boulders he later collected on this part of his property.

HERBERT MATTER
 The Club: An Interchapter: 1948-1962

109

During the seasons 1948-49 and 1949-50, in addition to faculty,

Friday night “lecturers” included the artists Arp, Ferber, Glarner, Gott-
lieb, Holtzman, Kees, Jimmy Ernst, de Kooning, Reinhardt . . . Joseph
Cornell showing early films... John Cage on experimental music... the
critics Nicolas Calas and Harold Rosenberg... the Dadaist, become psy-
choanalyst, Richard Hulsenbeck.... But by the end, according to the
painter Robert Goodnough’s account,* the “meetings . . . tended to become
repetitious ... partly because of the public asking the same questions at
each meeting ... it was decided to have a closed, three-day session among
the advanced artists themselves. . . ..” Goodnough, then a graduate student
at N.Y.U., suggested and arranged the meetings. Among the dozens of
artists asked to participate (including Pollock), the following actually
attended one or more sessions: Baziotes, Biala, Bourgeois, Brooks, de
Kooning, Jimmy Ernst, Ferber, Gottlieb, Grippe, Hare, Hofmann, Kees,
Lassaw, Norman Lewis, Lippold, Motherwell, Newman, Pousette-Dart,
Reinhardt, Rosenborg, Stamos, Sterne, David Smith, Tomlin.
Alfred H. Barr, Jr., of the Museum of Modern Art moderated the
second day and part of the final day, when he asked: “What is the most
acceptable name for our direction or movement? It has been called Ab-
stract Expressionist, Abstract Symbolist, Intra-subjectivist, etc.”
David Smith: “I don’t think we do have unity on the name.”
Ralph Rosenborg: “We should have a name through the years.”
Smith: “Names are usually given to groups by people who don’t
understand them or don’t like them.”
Barr: “We should have a name for which we can blame the artists
—for once in history!”
Motherwell: “Even if there is any way of giving ourselves a name,
we will still all be called abstract artists... .” But at the end of the ses-
sion: “In relation to the question of a name, here are three names: Ab-
stract Expressionist; Abstract Symbolist; Abstract Objectionist.”
* See Bibliography No. 38.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

110

Brooks: “A more accurate name would be ‘direct’ art. It doesn’t

sound very good, but in terms of meaning, abstraction is involved in it.”
Tomlin: “Brooks also remarked that the word ‘concrete’ is meaning-
ful; it must be pointed out that people have argued very strongly for that
word. ‘Nonobjective’ is a vile translation.”
Newman: “I would offer ‘self-evident’ because the image is con-
crete.”
De Kooning: “It is disastrous to name ourselves.”
And there, as edited by Goodnough, the final session ended. A lot of
words had been spoken by a lot of artists. And, judging by photographs, a
lot of pretzels and Ballantine’s beer had been consumed. But, after three
days, the group was still nameless, anonymous as a group, no matter how
strongly identifiable as individuals, one at a time, artist by artist.
No wonder when The Club was formed, by many of these same
people, it, too, took such an anonymous name, never to be made more
specific. And no wonder that through the years of its existence it sought
anonymous lofts for its activities, spaces in which no paintings were hung
for fear of siding with a particular school or viewpoint. And no wonder
that the Cedar Tavern, the bar that was to continue The Club’s activities
afterhours, would be equally anonymous, without contemporary paintings,
without character, without personality, a “no-environment” as de Koon-
ing called it.
The need for a more private place to meet, one in which the public
would not be “asking the same questions at each meeting,” existed at least
six months before the demise of Studio 35. Late in the fall of 1949 a
group of artists, all of whom had probably attended Friday nights at Sub-
jects of the Artist and Studio 35, met at Ibram Lassaw’s, organized The
Club, and then rented a loft at 39 East 8th Street, only one building re-
moved from Studio 35. The twenty charter members were Lewin Alcop-
ley, Giorgio Cavallon, the dealer Charles Egan, Gus Falk, Peter Grippe,
Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Lassaw himself, Landes Lewitin, Con-
rad Marca-Relli, the patron and friend of artists E. A. Navaretta, Phillip
 The Club: An Interchapter: 1948-1962

111

Pavia, Milton Resnick, Ad Reinhardt, Jan Roelants, James Rosati, Lud-

wig Sander, Joop Sanders, Aaron Ben-Shmuel, and Jack Tworkov. Soon
others joined, including the dealer (then without portfolio) Leo Castelli,
Herman Cherry, John Ferren, Philip Guston, Harry Holtzman, Elaine de
Kooning, Al Kotin, Nicholas Marsicano, Mercedes Matter, Joseph Pollet,
Robert Richenburg, the critic Harold Rosenberg, and Esteban Vicente.
Though the club would continue to grow rapidly (by 1955 the member-
ship would have to be limited to 150), its character was formed. Already
it was truly an artists’ club, which permitted an occasional critic or dealer
or collector to join and attend meetings. Later Club membership lists
overlapped previous ones and those of Subjects of the Artist and Studio 35
to form an almost inclusive list—Pollock, as indicated, was a primary
exception—of the best American artists of one generation and then a
second.
From 1949 until the spring of 1955 the sculptor Phillip Pavia, a
contemporary of Pollock’s at the League, pretty much ran The Club’s
affairs. His notebooks (now in the Archives of American Art)—supple-
mented by records of the now deceased painter John Ferren for 1955-56
and of the art historian Irving Sandler for 1956 until the spring of 1962,
when The Club was discontinued—offer considerable documentation of
membership, attendance, dues payment, and programs. Again, these lists
read like a Who’s Who of two generations of American painters and
sculptors but also indicate the broader cultural interests of the artists in-
volved. Not only did they give a party honoring the established American
sculptor Alexander Calder but gave others honoring the visiting Italian
sculptor Marino Marini and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. .. . Not only
did they listen to Harold Rosenberg and Tom Hess and Robert Gold-
water and James Johnson Sweeney—primarily art critics per se—but to
William Barrett, Hannah Arendt, Heinrich Bluecher, Paul Goodman,
Joseph Campbell, Lionel Abel, Edwin Denby, Ruthven Todd. ... Edgar
Varese and John Cage spoke on music; Frederick Kiesler and Peter Blake
on architecture; Dr. Frederick Perls on “Creativeness in Art and Neu-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

112

rosis”.... There was “An Evening with Max Ernst,” introduced by Moth-
erwell.... There were symposia which included Baziotes, Busa, Elaine
and Willem de Kooning, Diller, Ferren, Gottlieb, Guston, Holtzman,
Kline, Mercedes Matter, McNeil, Reinhardt, Tworkov.... And the next
generation of artists began to be heard from as well: Paul Brach, Jane
Freilicher, Grace Hartigan, Alfred Leslie, Joan Mitchell, Larry Rivers. ...
And the next generation of poets: John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Frank
O'Hara, James Schuyler, all of whom would write on contemporary art
... Lists, lists, endless lists, at first overlapping but now moving forward,
extending into the present where some of those then fighting for recog-
nition are established, and some are still struggling, and too many are
dead...
The general style of The Club was from the start a nonstyle in the
same sense that it existed in a no- (or non-) environment. However,
surely from the beginning years—and to a lesser extent until the last—
the majority of Club members belonged to the school (or nonschool)
which came to be called most commonly Abstract Expressionism. Indeed
one of the main reasons for The Club was that this “school,” nameless
and homeless, had existed as so many separate talents in need of mutual
support. No wonder then that these artists who wanted to avoid the pub-
lic and have more privacy than that afforded by Studio 35 moved from
initial informality back to something like the more structured world of a
school, a sort of nonacademic academy.
“At first, every member had a key and came when he pleased,” Sand-
ler writes. “Meetings were generally pre-arranged by phone calls on the
spur of the moment. However, The Club soon took on a more public and
formal character, first by inviting speakers (prompted by the Studio 35
sessions), and then by arranging panels. (This move was strongly, but
unsuccessfully, resisted.) In keeping with its dual purpose, free-wheeling
Round Table Discussions, limited to members, were held on Wednesdays
(until 1954); on Fridays, lectures, symposiums and concerts were pre-
sented which were open to guests who were mainly critics, historians,
 The Club: An Interchapter: 1948-1962

113

curators, collectors, dealers, and avant-garde allies in the other arts.” At

first, too, “only coffee was served. Drinking liquor was not the thing to
do; besides, most members could not afford it. Subsequently, a bottle was
bought to oil up the speakers, and still later, liquor was provided after the
panels, the cost defrayed by passing a basket.”
Much of the talking that went on at The Club seemed aimed at a
definition of the newly emerging art. However, such a definition was as
much resisted as sought. There was never agreement,as to the rightness of
any label but more as to the wrongness of all; Pavia called Abstract Ex-
pressionism “The Unwanted Title.” There was never a manifesto or an
official program or exhibition. What there was has been well summarized
by Robert Goldwater: “The consciousness of being on the frontier, of
being ahead rather than behind, of having absolutely no models however
immediate or illustrious, of being entirely and completely on one’s own—
this was a new and heady atmosphere.”
The new heady atmosphere existing for the first time in the history
of American art, though emanating from The Club (and its predecessor
groups of New York artists), could hardly be contained within it. Much
talk, many unofficial activities—protests, letters to editors, exhibitions
(none under the direct auspices of The Club)—spilled over into the
Cedar Street Tavern, that appealingly misnamed bar where one was no
longer a club member but rather an individual protester, signator, or
exhibitor; that anonymous neighborhood bar to which, by geographical
coincidence, Pollock had been coming since the thirties. There, at the
Cedar, was an atmosphere closer to that of an ideal club—smaller, more
informal, more “direct’’ (to use Jim Brook’s word—and a favorite of Pol-
lock’s) than nearby 39 East 8th Street and other addresses to which The
Club would move. There, in small groups, paying for their own drinks in-
stead of depending on a communal bottle, the artists enjoyed more pri-
vacy. There—at first on Wednesdays and Fridays, but soon on any night
—one could find congenial company. There, Pollock (in for a show or,
later, for a session with a therapist) could find Bill de Kooning, Franz
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

114

Kline, and the rest. There, like the ongoing movement of one of his own
paintings, Jackson could connect with the New York Art World and per-
mit it to connect with him. There, at the Cedar, as perhaps nowhere else,
he painted with words. His words, and those of the other artists, and those
of critics and dealers and collectors will flow on through the balance of
this book as a sort of chorus spoken quietly behind the action in the
studio.
 Chapter Six

Fame
(1948-1949)
Give me the ease with figures that satlors have with’ ropes—to coil them
through space, to make them fast, to join them together. Sometimes if I have
dreamt well, 1 have it.
JOHN BERGER
A Painter of Our Time

The flow of energy through a system acts to organize that system.

HAROLD MOROWITZ
Energy Flow in Biology

Besides having given Pollock his final show at her own gallery, Peggy
Guggenheim wanted, before returning to Europe that spring, to place him
with another dealer and to arrange for his 1948 show. Virtually all of the
young Americans who had exhibited at Art of This Century were already
set at either the gallery of Betty Parsons or that of Sam Kootz, the only
ones then truly committed to avant-garde American art. It was clear that
Pollock belonged in one of these, but his case was special: there was that
contract Peggy Guggenheim wanted taken over by his future dealer; and
there was his drinking.
Sam Kootz was blunt: He liked Jackson’s work, had even offered to
take him on when he needed money to buy the house in Springs, wanted
again (as he had with other artists) to go along with Peggy, trusted
Clem’s judgment, but no longer cared if Jackson was or was not the best
painter in America, or the best in the world—Sam laughed, because he,
like everyone else, knew Picasso was that; everyone except maybe Clem
when he was being perverse—bwt, no matter what, didn’t want to have to
deal with a drunk in his gallery. So that was that, as blunt as business.
Betty Parsons liked Jackson’s work too, liked the work of so many
artists Peggy had shown, really wanted Jackson in her gallery, bvt—the
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

116

emphasis’ was not as pounding as Sam’s, not so bluntly businesslike—but

(she said in her small truthful girlish voice) she couldn’t handle that
contract, couldn’t commit herself to $300 a month.
Peggy called other dealers. First, those showing already established
American artists of the previous generation’s vanguard, such as Marin,
Davis, Calder, Dove... They weren't interested in Pollock. He wasn’t
sufficiently controlled or disciplined; his art—like his life, they heard—
was a mess. ... She tried some of the galleries which handled Realists and
quasi-Realists, ranging from Hopper to Benton. These dealers reacted
even more negatively. Finally she went back to Betty Parsons and worked
out an agreement: Betty would take over Peggy’s obligations to Jackson
until early 1948 when his contract expired. Till then Peggy would receive
any money from the sale of paintings still owned by her, would continue
to pay Pollock his “monthly allowance,” and would continue to
receive Pollock’s new work, except for the one painting per year which
Jackson was permitted to retain (and had been giving to Lee). Beyond
Peggy's $300 per month, Betty was entitled to all commissions during the
remainder of the contract period, and she was obligated to give Jackson a
show in the winter of 1948.
The question of excess commissions became academic. The show
(January 5-23, 1948) didn’t sell well. Not only was this the first public
viewing of what we now think of as “classic” Pollocks, those totally
dripped paintings begun in 1947, but once again the show’s timing was
bad. Even those few who came—painters mostly, some critics and dealers
and museum people, but not enough collectors—found the work shock-
ingly original.
At the opening—surrounded by a few close friends and relatives—
Jackson was tense. As soon as the group left the gallery and went to the
Hotel Albert for a small dinner party, John Little bought him a double
bourbon, hoping it would relax him. It didn’t. Jackson had a second stiff
drink and then a third. Before anyone could stop him, he grabbed the new
hat of Alma Pollock, the wife of his brother Jay, and destroyed it.
 Fame: 1948-1949

117

There were three major reviews of the seventeen paintings in his

first show at Betty Parsons. These reviews happen to fall conveniently
into categories of general reaction. The first, in Arts Digest (January 15),
was antagonistic. There, Alonzo Lansford—like so many others, including
the staff of Tzme—seems to have been at least partly reacting to Green-
berg. Lansford begins, “At least two foremost critics here and in England
have recently included Pollock in their lists of the half-dozen most im-
portant of America’s ‘advanced’ painters....” The: broad “half-dozen”
must have come from England, surely not from Greenberg whose con-
noisseurship was razor fine. Lansford continues to do his homework in
public, studying statements about Pollock’s painting, if not the painting
itself:

Pollock has said that Thomas Benton was a good teacher because he taught
him how not to paint like Benton; that he doesn’t is startlingly patent. Pollock’s
current method seems to be a sort of automatism; apparently, while staring
steadily up into the sky, he lets go a loaded brush on the canvas, rapidly swirling
and looping and wriggling till the paint runs out. Then he repeats the procedure
with another color, and another, till the canvas is covered. This, with much use
of aluminum paint, results in a colorful and exciting panel. Probably it also
results in the severest pain in the neck since Michaelangelo painted the Sistine
Ceiling.

Robert Coates, in The New Yorker (January 17), was once again
more moderate, more middle-of-the-road:

Pollock is much harder to understand than most of his confreres. The main
thing one gets from his work is an impression of tremendous energy, expressed
in huge blobs of color alternating with lacings and interlacings of fine lines.
Recognizable symbols are almost nonexistent, and he attempts to create by
sheer color and movement the mood or atmosphere he wants to convey. Such a
style has its dangers, for the threads of communication between artist and
Spectator are so very tenuous that the utmost attention is required to get the
message through. There are times when communications break down entirely... .
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

118

Greenberg (Nation, January 24) went further still:

Jackson Pollock’s most recent show...signals another step forward on hts part.
As before, his new work offers a puzzle to all those not sincerely in touch with
contemporary painting. 1 already hear: “wallpaper patterns,’ “the picture does
not finish inside the canvas,’ “raw, uncultivated emotion,’ and so on, and so on.
Since Mondrian no one has driven the easel picture quite so far away from itself;
but this is not altogether Pollock’s own doing. In this day and age the art of
painting increasingly rejects the easel and yearns for the wall. It is Pollock’s culture
as a painter that has made him so sensitive and receptive to a tendency that has
brought with it, in his case, a greater concentration on surface texture and tactile
qualities, to balance the danger of monotony that arises from the even, all-over
design which has become Pollock's consistent practice.
In order to evolve, his art has necessarily had to abandon certain of its former
virtues, but these are more than compensated for. Strong as it is, the large canvas
“Gothic,” executed three years ago and shown here for the first time in New York,
is inferior to the best of his recent work in style, harmony, and the inevitability
of its logic. The combination of all three of these latter qualities, to be seen
eminently in the strongest picture of the present show, “Cathedral’—a matter of
much white, less black, and some aluminum paint—reminds one of Picasso's and
Braque’s masterpieces of the 1912-15 phase of cubism. There is something of
the same encasement in a style that, so to speak, feels for the painter and relieves
him of the anguish and awkwardness of invention, leaving his gift free to function
almost automatically,
Pollock’s mood has become more cheerful these past two years, if the general
| higher key of his color can be taken as a criterion in this respect. Another very
successful canvas, “Enchanted Forest’—which resembles “Cathedral,” though
inferior in strength—is mostly whitish in tone and is distinguished by being the
only picture in the show, aside from “Gothic,” without an infusion of aluminum
paint. In many of the weaker canvases here, especially the smallest, and at the
same time in two or three of the most successful—such as “Shooting Star” and
“Magic Lantern’ —the use of aluminum runs the picture startlingly close to pretti-
ness, in the two last producing an oily over-ripeness that begins to be disturbing.
The aluminum can also be felt as an unwarranted dissimulation of the artist’s
weakness as a colorist....
It is indeed a mark of Pollock’s powerful originality that he should present
problems in judgment that must await the digestion of each new phase of his
 Fame: 1948-1949

119

development before they can be solved. Since Marin—with whom Pollock will in
time be able to compete for recognition as the greatest American painter of the
twentieth century—no other American artist has presented such a case. And this
is not the only point of similarity between these two superb painters.

In retrospect it is easy to see weaknesses in Greenberg's criticism of

Pollock, but at the time what registered was his commitment to the young
painter. Yes, he misunderstood Pollock’s originality as a colorist, misread
his use of aluminum (as “dissimulation”), and failed to respond to its
molten-metal near-alchemical magic. Yes, Mondrian’s work implied some-
thing beyond easel painting, but, except for a few works, he remained an
easel painter throughout his career. Yes, there is “the danger of monotony
that arises from...even, all-over design,” but of all art critics on the
American scene, no one more than Greenberg has embraced and con-
tinues to embrace such design (which later developed into Color Field
Painting). Yes, all of these objections and many others can be raised, but
still there was Greenberg’s commitment. It is not surprising that his
defensive-aggressive stance and passionate-propagandistic assertions irri-
tated, provoked, and impressed other critics and journalists. Some un-
doubtedly paid more attention to Pollock’s work than they might have
without Greenberg; others were prejudiced against the work; and still
others, like Lansford, were affected in both ways. In any case, Lansford’s,
Coates’s, and Greenberg’s views of the show were, in small, those of the
world—at least that sliver known as “the art world.” There were those
who considered Pollock’s work “the severest pain in the neck” (even if
the phrase was intended as a pun), and those who liked some paintings
and not others, but probably no one except Greenberg—surely not Pol-
lock himself—who thought in terms of Pollock competing with Marin
to be recognized “‘as the greatest American painter of the twentieth cen-
tury.” If anything, Pollock’s ambitions were grander, less provincial—
competitive, but less narrowly so.
The titles for this group of paintings shown at Betty Parsons—al-
most all given by the translator Ralph Manheim and his wife, neighbors
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

120

in Springs—were surely approved by Pollock himself. They reveal very

nakedly Pollock’s sense of a magical, god- and/or devil-like role as cre-
ator. Most of the titles group easily around the classic elements:

EARTH: Enchanted Forest, The Nest

AIR (and SKY): Shooting Star, Comet, Reflections of the Big Dipper, and, less
literally, Unfounded
FIRE (and LIGHT): Lucifer, Phosphorescence, Magic Lantern, Prism
WATER: Sea Change, Full Fathom Five, Watery Paths

The remaining titles—Alchemy, Vortex, Cathedral, Gothic—encompass

all of these elements. Pollock’s aspiration is indeed huge. Again, he is
abstracting the creative process itself. And yet, though he now has his
method and though this is his “breakthrough” show, there is still a degree
of tightness in his dripping. Not until after this show will he begin to feel
completely at ease with his new technique.
From February 1948 on he continued to experiment with the pref-
erences, expressed in his possibilities statement, for “‘sticks, trowels, knives,
and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass and
other foreign matter added.” As the year went on he became increasingly
confident of his ability to control these techniques and of his ability, also,
to respond quickly, intuitively, almost by reflex to the accidents which
occurred in the course of making a painting. More and more consistently
he was achieving that “pure harmony, an easy give and take” of which he
speaks at the end of his statement.
Number 1, 1948, the 5’8” by 8’8”, predominantly aluminum, black,
and white oil on canvas purchased two years later by the Museum of Mod-
ern Art, was among the best paintings Pollock made in 1948. Its arching
movement suggests two great Gothic vaults seen in section and begs com-
parison with Cathedral, a typically tighter composition of the previous
year. However, not only are the gestures which Pollock has now placed on
canvas freer and stronger—a more natural, less forced record of arm and
body movements rather than wrist and finger—but in leaving more of
 Fame: 1948-1949 |

121

himself, his activity, his energy on canvas, he has even permitted his ciga-
rette butts to be swallowed by the paint and he has consciously made his
handprints part of the composition, all as if to emphasize the extent to
which he zs his painting or at least literally zm it.
At the same time as he was moving forward in the studio, there
were encouraging signs of progress outside those walls. From the end of
January through most of March, again a work of Pollock’s—Dancing
Forms, a watercolor—was hanging at a Whitney Annual. In June he was
notified of a $1,500 grant from the Eben Demarest Trust Fund—con-
nected with James Johnson Sweeney's family—and at the beginning of
July he received the first of four very welcome quarterly payments. Also
in the summer—from the end of May to the end of September—Peggy
Guggenheim showed her collection, including six paintings by Pollock, at
the Venice Biennale. Though none of his work was from later than 1946
(Eyes in the Heat and one gouache), it was a representative selection
from the years during which he had shown at Art of This Century and
included also The Moon-W oman, Two, and Circumcision.

Mercedes and Herbert Matter had been in California for about three
years. When they returned, in 1947, they spent the summer in Springs
and now, in 1948, they were spending a second summer there and seeing
quite a lot of the Pollocks. Matter was making a film on Alexander Cal-
der in which he wanted to relate the shapes and, even more, the move-
ment in Calder’s mobiles to natural phenomena. Several times, in the area
of both East Hampton and Montauk, Jackson carried Herbert’s equip-
ment along the quiet shore of Long Island Sound and the more active
Atlantic beaches. Sometimes Jackson asked questions about photographic
procedures—he was always interested in how things worked—but mostly
he and Herbert were silent, simply enjoying being outdoors as the pho-
tographer shot mature sequences for his film. Also they clammed and
musseled together, and Herbert watched Jackson train a crow he called
Caw-Caw, teaching the bird to return to him and to repeat a few words.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

122

Later in the summer he clipped the crow’s wings, which the Matters
found cruel. As against this and episodes in which Jackson teased their
dog, there was his more typical tenderness in regard to animals and chil-
dren. When the pet goat of the Matters’ six-year-old son died, Jackson
saw the need to bury it immediately and dug the grave himself.
That summer, the Matters also remember seeing Number 1, 1 948
and other dripped paintings in Pollock’s studio, and one night Lee Pol-
lock, Mercedes Matter, and their friends the Petersens watched Pollock,
in a spirit of drunken bravado, spread a piece of canvas on the living room
floor and proceed to paint for them. Herbert who wasn’t there heard
about this, of course, and began to think about doing a film on Pollock
similar in concept to the one he was completing on Calder. However, he
says, “I was shy, as self-conscious about photographing Jackson as he
was then about being photographed. I took very few pictures of him, no
motion pictures.”
John Little had just married, and he and his wife Josephine also saw
a lot of the Pollocks during the summer of 1948. They had visited Lee
and Jackson the previous year and bought an old house on Three Mile
Harbor Road in East Hampton. Now they were fixing it up. Sometimes
Jackson helped John with the repairs. Then their wives would join the
men at the bedroom fireplace for John’s steak or Jackson’s pancakes.
Later, when the kitchen was functioning, Jackson taught Josephine how
to bake apple pie.
Another couple just getting settled on property near the Littles was
Penny and Jeffrey Potter. They were strikingly handsome, both of them
tall, dark, aristocratic in look and manner. Penny had been interested in
theater, Jeff in writing, but now they were talking about a more outdoor
life, investing in land and its development in the East Hampton area. The
Potters, too, became close friends of the Pollocks as well as the Littles, and
Jackson particularly liked looking at property with Jeff and, later, climb-
ing up with him on a tractor or bulldozer or other piece of heavy equip-
ment.
Though Jackson had become skilled at clamming and musseling, he
 Fame: 1948-1949

123

didn’t know as much yet about fishing. One evening in the early fall John
Little suggested going after some whiting. Jackson laughed at the idea of
fishing at dusk; he had always heard that sunrise was when fish bite. In
the next two hours they caught all the whiting they could carry, more
than they could eat, and Jackson knew another source of food for when
times were tough.

Life (October 11, 1948) ran a “Round Table on Modern Art.”

Though the table in the Museum of Modern Art penthouse, where the
discussion took place, was not round, the conversation of the experts
seated there did move circularly about it, as apparently no one was per-
suaded by anyone else and each returned to his original position. Life de-
voted twenty-four pages to the meeting, and illustrated it, mostly in color,
with reproductions of works by Picasso (two), Braque, Matisse, Mird,
and Rouault among modern European masters; Stuempfig, representing
contemporary American Romanticism; Graves, Mysticism; Tanguy and
Dali, Surrealism; and Baziotes, de Kooning, Gottlieb, Pollock, and
Stamos, the “Young American Extremists.” All this (along with small
cuts of a Rembrandt and a Poussin, and photographs of the panelists)
was sandwiched between a full-page ad for the Bendix automatic washer
and a double-page spread for Ritz crackers and interlarded with ads for
Bayer aspirin, Black & White scotch, Pall Mall cigarettes, Hughes hair
brushes, Prestone antifreeze, Gaines Meal dog food, Pacific towels, Good-
year tires, Keystone cameras and projectors, Mojud hosiery, Venida hair
nets, Peter Pan Merry-Go-Round bras, Woodbury soap, Warren’s Feather-
tex baby pants, Eagle Knitting Mills, and Coty Pastel-Tint makeup base.
With the help of Marshall McLuhan, we have come to understand that
the medium is the message. No medium should more powerfully have
pulled the “Young American Extremists” into the world of consumption.
Perhaps, with the right critics doing their promotional copy, someday
these artists too might rate the double-spread of Picasso (and Ritz
crackers, and Goodyear tires).
The panelists were Clement Greenberg, “avant-garde critic’; James
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

124

W. Fosburgh, “Life adviser”; Russell W. Davenport, “moderator”; Meyer

Schapiro, “professor of fine arts, Columbia University”; Georges Duthuit,
“editor of Transition Forty-Eight, Paris’; Aldous Huxley, “noted author”;
Francis Henry Taylor, “director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of
Art”; Sir Leigh Ashton, “director of Victoria and Albert Museum, Lon-
don”; Raymond Mortimer, “British critic and author”; Alfred Frankfurter,
“editor and publisher, Art News”; Theodore Greene, “professor of phi-
losophy, Yale”; James J. Sweeney, “author and lecturer”; Charles Sawyer,
“dean of School of Fine Arts, Yale”; H. W. Janson, “professor of art and
archaeology, Washington University, St. Louis”; A. Hyatt Mayor, “curator
of prints, Metropolitan Museum”; and James Thrall Soby, “chairman,
Department of Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art.” Within
this high-powered cross-section of the art world, Pollock knew only
Greenberg and Sweeney, and, besides these two, very few of the others
knew Pollock (even through his work). Except for the one painting purchased
at Sweeney’s urging by the Museum of Modern Art, Pollock’s only other
formal contact with this institution had been his participation in May at a
protest meeting there against a recent statement of James S. Plaut justify-
ing the decision of Boston’s Institute of Modern Art to change the word
“Modern” in its name to “Contemporary.” (Plaut found advanced art
obscure, negative, and dishonest. In Boston, the Modern Artist’s Group
had met in March to protest Plaut’s characterizations. In New York,
Bradley Walker Tomlin, Pollock’s friend and gallery-mate, suggested that
local artists support the Boston group, and a meeting was called by Paul
Burlin in Stuart Davis’s studio which led to the one at the Modern.) As
to the men from institutions other than the Modern represented on Léfe’s
panel, Pollock had had no contact with them and had yet to receive more
than brief mention in Art News.
Long before the symposium got to Pollock, there was discussion of
Picasso’s Ma Jolie. Typically, Greenberg rated it “one of the greatest
masterpieces ever put on canvas.” Later he argued with Francis Henry
Taylor about Taylor’s belief that the subject matter of art should be fa-
 Fame; 1948-1949

125

miliar. Meyer Schapiro eloquently supported Greenberg, and made some

negative comments concerning Dali which have positive implications in
regard to Pollock: “We are suspicious of the paintings of Dali, for exam-
ple, because we recognize the symbols. We are able to say, “This came out
of a book; this does not represent a real experience.’ In the privacy of the
symbolism there is a guarantee of its validity. We ourselves have experi-
enced, within our own dreams and thoughts, unexplained things which
surprise us. We therefore say when we encounter such things in a paint-
ing, “This artist is genuine; he has really been able to utilize those experi-
ences for painting.’ ”
Here, in their entirety, are the two paragraphs on the painting by
Pollock which was at the symposium and reproduced in color by Life:
Pollock's Cathedral was championed by Mr. Greenberg who thought it a first-
class example of Pollock’s work, and one of the best paintings recently produced
in this country. Mr. Duthuit said, “I find it quite lovely. It is new to me. I
would never think of Beethoven, rather of a contemporary composer playing on
his sensations.” Sir Leigh Ashton said, “It seems to me exquisite in tone and
quality. It would make a most enchanting printed silk. But | cannot see why it
is called the Cathedral. It is exquisitely painted and the color is ravishing, but
I do not think it has structural design.”
Mr. Taylor found it “very lovely.” Mr. Huxley was less impressed. Said he,
“It raises a question of why it stops when it does. The artist could go on for-
ever, {Laughter} I don’t know, It seems to me like a panel for a wallpaper
which is repeated indefinitely around the wall.” Mr. Frankfurter said he was no
admirer of Pollock but thought this work remarkably good if compared with a
lot of abstract painting that is being turned out nowadays. Mr. Sweeney
thought it had “spontaneity,” “freedom,” “expression,” “sense of textured sur-
face” and “linear organization.” Mr. Mayor remarked, “I suspect any picture |
think I could have made myself.” Dr. Greene said it left him completely cold
and seemed “a pleasant design for a necktie.”

Having served its purpose at “the round table,” Cathedral went to

San Francisco where it was included in the Third Annual Exhibition of
Contemporary Painting at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

126

And yet with all that was happening in the studio—and beginning
to happen outside it—for Pollock, the single most important event of
1948 was the most internal and secret. With the help of Dr. Edwin H.
Heller, an East Hampton general practitioner who during the previous
year had helped to found the medical clinic there, Pollock was able, late
in the fall, to stop drinking, to stop altogether for what would be two full
years. During that period he went to Heller at the clinic every week or
two to talk to him and sometimes to renew a prescription for pills. Lee
Pollock asked her husband several times what Heller had done to start
Jackson on his only successful alcoholism therapy. He never told her.
“Once when I asked... Jackson said to me, ‘He is an honest man, I can
believe him.’ Do you realize what that means? ‘He is an honest man, I
can believe him.’”* All she knew was that early in 1948 she had seen
Heller for a minor ailment and had at the time discussed Jackson’s drink-
ing with him. When the doctor suggested that she tell Jackson to come
in and see him, she explained that one didn’t tell Jackson to do these
things but that a moment would come, and she just wanted Heller to be
aware of the situation. Inevitably during the year Jackson too developed
some minor complaint. In the course of getting it taken care of he must
have told Heller about his sporadic pattern of drinking and working, per-
haps explaining that, although he didn’t use alcohol while painting, it
seemed to make painting possible, to make all those opposites float into
an easier, more peaceful, less tense relationship. Perhaps, too, Pollock told
Heller something of his medical history at Bloomingdale’s and with Jo-
seph Henderson and Violet de Laszlo and others. As far back as Jackson
could remember, he had felt tension. A cycle of tension that built up and
then got released in making drawings and paintings. Or in drinking. Or
maybe sometimes it happened the other way around. Maybe the tension
built when he worked and got released when he drank. Either way it was
building all the time. The deeper he went into himself, the more it was
there. Like the shorter tighter twists at the center of a watchspring.
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 Fame: 1948-1949

127

Heller told Pollock about tranquilizers, explained that these com-

paratively new drugs would do much of what alcohol had been doing for
him without the physical or psychological damage, but that under no
circumstances was he to combine alcohol with tranquilizers. Dosages were
experimented with. Quite quickly Pollock learned to handle the new drug
with none of the difficulty given by alcohol. He took the capsules on an
irregular basis, as needed, and felt calmer than he had in many years.
Before one of his subsequent openings he was able to say, “I didn’t even
have to take one.” And during the next two years we can watch as his
paintings become, if less violently lyrical, both more relaxed and calm,
even sublime in such masterpieces as One, Autumn Rhythm, and Laven-
der Mist. However, it is a while yet before he reaches that point, that
series of peaks. ...

Lee and Jackson spent the Christmas holiday in Deep River visiting
the McCoys and Stella Pollock, who was living with Sandy and his family.
This was a test for Jackson, who had gone on some of his worst binges at
the time of previous reunions with his mother. However, she didn’t
recognize this but, rather, saw his next show, coming near the end of
January, as the real test: “...a hard one for Jack if he can go through
that without drinking will be something I hope he can and will. Will be
glad when the show is over and he is home again,” she wrote to Charles.
As it turned out neither the show nor being in New York for it made
Jackson drink. He had been convinced by “the Dr,” as his mother also
wrote, that “... everything wine to beer... were poison to him.” Beyond
this, undoubtedly his wife’s supportive love and the public recognition
(the public love) he was now beginning to get freed him, at least tempo-
rarily, from the need for his mother’s approval and that of his older
brothers.
The show—twenty-six numbered paintings (some with additional
descriptive titles, frequently just a listing of predominant colors), of
which fifteen were on canvas and eleven on paper—was his best to date.
Despite its timing (January 24—February 12), just a little better than the
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

128

last year’s, several works sold, including some from that previous year.
The work done in 1947 and exhibited in 1948 may have seemed con-
servative compared with the 1948 work just being exhibited. Even to New
York’s relatively sophisticated art viewers, such “mural friezes” as Sum-
mertime (33%4" X 18’ 2”), White Cockatoo (35” X 9 6”), and
Arabesque (37¥4” X 9’ 8Y4’’) were shocking in scale and shape as well
as image.
Once again the critics tell a story, if not necessarily the story. Time
(February 7) added a few words to what Sam Hunter had written in the
Times (January 30), and reproduced Number Eleven with the sub-
caption ‘“Cathartic disintegration”:
| A Jackson Pollock painting is apt to resemble a child’s contour map of
the Battle of Gettysburg (see cut). Nevertheless, he is the darling of a high-
brow cult which considers him “the most powerful painter in America’ (Time,
Dec. 1, 1947). So what was the cautious critic to write about Pollock’s latest show
in a Manhattan gallery last week? The New York Times’ Sam Hunter covered
it this way:
“{The] show... certainly reflects an advanced stage of the disintegration
of modern painting. But it is disintegration with a possibly liberating and
cathartic effect and informed by a highly individual rhythm.... At every point
of concentration of these high-tension moments of bravura phrasing ... there is
a disappointing absence of resolution in an image or pictorial incident, for all
their magical diffusion of power.... Certainly Pollock has carried the irrational
quality of picture making to one extremity.... And the danger for imitators in
such a directly physical expression of states of being rather than of thinking or
knowing is obvious.... What does emerge is the large scale of Pollock’s opera-
tons..."

Emily Genauer of The New York World-Telegram was equally

“cautious.” And Greenberg, reviewing himself and Pollock in The Nation,
can only be characterized as Greenbergian:
| Jackson Pollock's show this year...continued his astounding progress. Hits
confidence in his gift appears to be almost enough of itself to cancel out or sup-
press his limitations—which, especially in regard to color, are certainly there.
 Fame: 1948-1949

129

| One large picture, “Number One,’ which carries the idea of last year's brilliant
“Cathedral” more than a few steps farther, quieted any doubts this reviewer may
have felt—and he does not in all honesty remember having felt many—as to
the justness of the superlatives with which he has praised Pollock's art in the
past....

A different tone and view were evident in the painter Elaine de

Kooning’s brief mention of Pollock’s work in Art News, his first compara-
tively sympathetic appearance in that publication:

Jackson Pollock's new abstractions, violent in drawing and in application

of pigment, are paradoxically tranquil in expression. Here, complex, luminous
networks... give an impression of being frozen in position. His flying lines are
Spattered on in intense, unmixed colors to create wiry, sculptural constructions,
which stand immobil2 and apart, uninvolved with the backgrounds.

The French avant-garde painter Georges Mathieu responded to

Elaine de Kooning’s piece by writing to Betty Parsons. In this letter he
called Pollock “the greatest living American painter.”
And yet another painter, Alfonso Ossorio—who, since 1941, had
been exhibiting his own work with Betty Parsons—made the most im-
portant purchase from the show: Number Five, a particularly rich 8 xX 4
vertical panel. (The Museum of Modern Art did not acquire Number
One until the following year, after Pollock’s next show.) Ossorio has said
that until this time he did not like Pollock’s work but that this 1949
show was a revelation: “Here was a man who had pulled together, ex-
istentialized all the traditions of the past—contemplative and active—a
man who had gone beyond Picasso.” The purchase by Ossorio led to his
buying several more paintings by Pollock as well as some by Lee Krasner,
helping to give the Pollocks at least a degree of economic freedom during
the last half-dozen years of Jackson’s life. Ossorio established a relation-
ship with them which transcended economics and permitted an exchange
—cultural, surely in the broadest sense—between three exceptionally
disparate personalities: Pollock, the typically quiet, moody American
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

130

Westerner, the tough-tender WASP rebel; Krasner, the talkative and

gregarious lady from Brooklyn; and Ossorio, the Manila-born son of a
Spanish sugar processor and a Filipino-Spanish-Chinese mother, the
Eurasian product of Benedictine training and Oriental refinement. On
many levels theirs was a “meeting of East and West,” to use a phrase
which had then been popular for the few years since publication of
Northrop’s book.
By the time the show closed at Betty Parsons’, the Peggy Guggen-
heim collection had traveled to Florence and within a week went on ex-
hibition at the Strozzi Palace. There, all Pollock’s works which had been
seen during the previous summer at the Venice Biennale were shown
again, plus a 1942 drawing and Sounds in the Grass and Bird Effort. In
June the collection was shown in the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Also early
in the year, Pollock’s painting Galaxy was included in “Exhibition of
Contemporary American Painting” at the University of Illinois. And, in
July, East Hampton’s Guild Hall, which had previously been very con-
servative, exhibited paintings by both Pollock and his wife along with
those of fifteen other artists who lived in eastern Long Island. And during
August, September, and the beginning of October, a 1948 oil on paper
and a 1949 painted terra cotta piece were exhibited in “Sculpture by
Painters” at the Museum of Modern Art. And...
As through the spring and early summer these things happened,
they happened far enough outside Pollock’s studio so as not to distract
him. They were things that interested him and his wife; his scattered
family; and his close friends, including his dealer, a few critics, a few
museum people, a few collectors—in short, the—or more exactly, his—
art world. But one external event reached everyone: Pollock in his studio,
those close to him, those far away, and those in between, the gas station
attendant, the grocer, the butcher. .. . It was the August 8 edition of Léfe.
There Pollock got his two-page color spread (and an additional half-
page of black-and-white). There he became a celebrity. There, in public,
he was given fame and tormented by it.
 Fame: 1948-1949

131

Stretching, dancing across the top of the first two pages in the Life
article is Number Nine (later called Summertime). In front of it, to quote
the caption, Pollock “stands moodily next to his most extensive painting.
... The picture is only 3 feet high, but it is 18 feet long and sells for
$1800, or $100 a foot. Critics have wondered why Pollock happened to
stop this painting where he did. The answer: his studio is only 22 feet
long.” That’s for openers. But it’s too easy to cast Life in the role of
Philistine. The fact is that the world—the art world, in particular—
agreed with Life. In 1949, $1,800 seemed very expensive for a contempo-
rary American painting, even one so “extensive.” Though today this paint-
ing would easily bring $10,000 a foot, no one was willing to spend $100
then. And though today we don’t ask why a painting stops where it does,
that acceptance of infinite space and expandability is largely due to Pol-
lock’s own work and its impact on younger artists. Note: Summertime,
like most “classic” Pollocks, does not extend to the extreme ends of the
canvas but rather turns back upon itself so that its rhythm, having neither
visible start nor finish, is continuous and endless.
Before the open arabesques—some of them filled in with primary
colors—of his eighteen-foot dance, Pollock stands in paint-spattered
dungaree jacket and pants, wool scarf around his neck (the photograph
was taken in his studio during the previous winter), jaw thrust forward,
cigarette hanging from mouth, arms folded, legs crossed. The stance is
not so much “moody” as compact, self-protective, hermetic. As always,
since childhood, Pollock appears both tough and vulnerable.
The piece begins:

JACKSON POLLOCK.
Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?
Recently a formidably high-brow New York critic hailed the brooding,
puzzled-looking man shown above as a major artist of our time and a fine candi-
date to become “the greatest American painter of the 20th Century.” Others
believe that Jackson Pollock produces nothing more than interesting, if inex-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

132

plicable, decorations. Still others condemn his pictures as degenerate and find
them as unpalatable as yesterday's macaroni. Even so, Pollock, at the age of
37, has burst forth as the shining new phenomenon of American art.
Pollock was virtually unknown in 1944. Now his paintings hang in five
U.S. museums and 40 private collections. Exhibiting in New York last winter,
he sold 12 out of 18 pictures. Moreover his work has stirred up a fuss in Italy,
and this autumn he is slated for a one-man show in avant-garde Paris, where
he is fast becoming the most talked-of and controversial U.S. painter. He has
also won a following among his own neighbors in the village of Springs, N.Y.,
who amuse themselves by trying to decide what his paintings are about. His
grocer bought one which he identifies for bewildered visiting salesmen as an
aerial view of Siberia....

By summer, although Pollock’s paintings hung in five American

museums, in New York none but the Modern owned his work, and of
those outside New York none was comparable with the Modern in size
or prestige. Also, although his paintings hung in forty private collections,
many were gifts to those who had been kind to him, and others had been
bartered for goods and services, as had the one ownéd by his grocer, Dan
Miller. Once again, remember that although Life presents Pollock now as
a painter already sky-rocketing to success, his limited material success will
be more the result of Léfe’s story than that story is the result of then
existing success. Even the twelve out of eighteen pictures which had been
sold were not from last winter's show, but from the one of the winter
before. If we assume that these works averaged $300, then the twelve
would have amounted to a gross of $3,600, less one-third commission,
leaving Pollock $2,400 for the sold portion of a year’s work, typically
the smaller paintings.
The Life text is flanked by color reproductions of Number Twelve
(1948, 221/2” x 305/38”) and Number Seventeen (1948, 30” x 40”).
These two paintings, one on paper and one on canvas, are among Pollock’s
best small-scale works, and because they did not have to be reduced as
drastically as Summertime, their sensuous complexity is more faithfully
conveyed. Captions read: “Number Twelve reveals Pollock’s liking for
 Fame: 1948-1949

133

aluminum paint, which he applies freely straight out of the can. He feels
that by using it with ordinary oil paint he gets an exciting textural con-
trast’; and “Number Seventeen was painted a year ago in several sessions
of work which took place weeks apart so Pollock could appraise what he
was doing and ‘get acquainted with the picture.’ He numbers his paintings
instead of naming them, so his public will not look at them with any
preconceived notion of what they are.”
On the last page of the article there are black-and-white shots of
Pollock at the top and bottom and, sandwiched between them, a text
which includes quotes from his possibilities statement. In both photo-
graphs Pollock, in the spattered dungaree suit, is crouching over canvas
spread on the floor, with a can in his left hand. In the top picture, the can
contains black enamel which he is spilling onto the canvas with astick or
perhaps an old stiffened paintbrush as he “draws” with this elusive
medium. Pollock’s concentration is obviously intense. Again, a cigarette,
seemingly forgotten, hangs from his mouth. This photograph is captioned:
POLLOCK DROOLS ENAMEL PAINT ON CANVAS. In the lower photograph,
the cigarette is gone, the can contains sand which Pollock is carefully
spilling onto the wet enamel. The hand is large, steady, powerful, there in
space, cupped to hold the sand in a grip which is at once gentle and
strong and almost identical with that in the other photo, However, this
lower one is more neutrally captioned: HE APPLIES SAND TO GIVE
ENAMEL TEXTURE.
What stayed primarily with Lzfe’s readers were the photographic
images of Jackson himself, a new non-arty American-style painter, work-
ing in dungarees, with commercial materials; and his work, also new, and
as startling in its abstract imagery as anything since Mondrian. Indeed,
about now Pollock’s name began to enter the language (“That looks like
a Pollock”), though it did not appear in a general dictionary (The Amert-
can Heritage) until twenty years later.
The kind of pressure Pollock felt after the 1948 and 1949 Life
articles is poignantly documented more than a decade after Pollock's
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Vistble

134

death by Tony Smith.* Smith, after speaking of Pollock’s “feeling for the
land and, related to it, his sense of property,” continued:
“I don’t think that Jackson painted on the floor just for its hard
surface, or for the large area, or for the freedom of movement, or so that
the drips wouldn’t run. There was something else, a strong bond with
the elements. The earth was always there.
“If he had more money, Jackson wouldn’t have done anything really
different; only more of what he was already doing. He would never have
moved out of that little house of his. He would have fixed it up more,
and added to the property. A while after Clem Greenberg had been
quoted about Jackson in Life Magazine, we were in the kitchen, looking
out the window. The Model A was in the driveway. Jackson asked if I
had seen the article, and then he asked if I didn’t think he should have a
better car. I didn’t have any car, and I said, ‘The Model A’s a good car.
What the hell kind of car do you want?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe a
Cadillac or something. ...’ Well, he did get a Cadillac, a convertible, and
later he bought some land that was next to his... .
“In many ways Jackson was a straight American boy. He wanted
what most people want. Once, when he had been drinking and was pretty
wild, he said, ‘Let’s go to the Stork Club.’ ‘Come on, Jackson, we can’t
get in there.’ “Why not?’ ‘You don’t have a tie. They won’t let you in.’ ‘I
can get in.’ ‘On what basis?’ ‘On the basis of my reputation.’ ”
In another interview,** Ad Reinhardt said: “Pollock wanted to be-
come a celebrity and he did. He got kicked out of the 21 Club many
times...”
From mid-September to early October Sam Kootz put on an exhibi-
tion in his gallery called “The Intrasubjectives,” for which Kootz himself
and Harold Rosenberg wrote catalogue statements attempting to define
the new American painting. Besides Pollock the show included Baziotes,
Gorky, Gottlieb, Graves, Hofmann, de Kooning, Motherwell, Reinhardt,
* See Bibliography No. 172.
** See Bibliography No. 179.
 Fame: 1948-1949

135

Rothko, Tobey, and Tomlin: a remarkable list to have come up with in

1949.
The statement Kootz wrote for the catalogue began:

The past decade in America has been a period of great creative activity in
painting. Only now has there been a concerted effort to abandon the tyranny
of the object and the sickness of naturalism and to enter within consciousness.
We have had many fine artists who have been able to arrive at Abstraction
through Cubism: Marin, Stuart Davis, Demuth, among others. They have been
the pioneers in a revolt from the American tradition of Nationalism and of
subservience to the object. Theirs has, in the main, been an objective art, as
differentiated from the new painters’ inwardness.
The intrasubjective artist invents from personal experience, creates from
an internal world rather than an external one....

The balance of Kootz’s statement, while differentiating between the

emphases of the various artists (Pollock’s “lyricism,” Baziotes’ “poetry,”
Tobey’s and Graves’ “calligraphy,” de Kooning’s “love of paint,” etc.) at
the same time attempts to lump the artists into a “movement.” Only miss-
ing are the “right” labels, better than Intrasubjectivism, a term used by
Ortega y Gasset in the August 1949 Partisan Review and now by Kootz
as an epigraph in his catalogue:

The guiding law of the great variations in painting is one of disturbing sim-
plicity. First, things are painted; then sensations; finally, ideas. This means that
in the beginning the artist's attention was fixed on external reality; then on
the subjective; finally, on the intrasubjective. These three stages are three points
on a straight line.... After Cézanne, painting only paints ideas—which, cer-
tainly, are also objects, but ideal objects, immanent to the subject or intrasub-
jective.

However, one such label, though not yet popular, already existed: Ab-
stract Expressionism. It had been used by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., as early
as 1929 to describe Kandinsky’s early lyrical abstractions. More recently—
in the March 30, 1946, New Yorker—Robert M. Coates had applied the
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

136

term to Hans Hofmann (“... certainly one of the most uncompromising

representatives of what some people call the spatter-and-daub school of
painting and I, more politely, have christened abstract Expressionism”).
The other term—Action Painting—would be forthcoming within the next
three years from Harold Rosenberg himself. Meanwhile, in Kootz’s cata-
logue, Rosenberg improvises existentially:

... The modern painter... begins with nothingness. That is the only thing he
copies. The rest he invents.
... Instead of mountains, copses, nudes, etc., it is his space that speaks to
him, quivers, turns green or yellow with bile, gives him a sense of sport, of
sign language, of the absolute.
When the spectator recognizes the nothingness copied by the modern
painter, the latter's work becomes just as intelligible as the earlier painting.
Such recognition is not really very difficult. The spectator has the nothing
in himself, too. Sometimes it gets out of hand. That busy man does not go to
the psychiatrist for pleasure or to learn to cook. He wants his cavity filled and
| the herr doctor does it by stepping up his “functioning” and giving him a past
all his own. At any rate, it was knowing the nothing that made him ring that
fatal doorbell.
| Naturally, under the circumstances, there is no use looking for silos or
|madonnas. They have all melted into the void. But, as I said, the void itself,
| you have that, just as surely as your grandfather had a sun-speckled lawn. |

Even now, in 1949, Pollock would have felt the pressure of being
cast by Rosenberg in the role of existential hero, just as he was already
feeling the pressure of Greenberg’s superconnoisseurship. Pollock was
unhappy under both these pressures. He could not deal comfortably with
Rosenberg’s wit and must have felt engulfed by this critic’s words de-
scribing the composite contemporary painter and thus denying him his
individuality. Sometimes Rosenberg seemed more interested in the ideas
behind painting than in painting itself, more involved with the art world
—its sociology, its politics, even its metaphysics—than with “pure” art.
And always the words poured forth, the Surrealist- and now also Existen-
tialist-tinged words, clever and paradoxical (“Space is simple: it is merely
 Fame; 1948-1949

137

the canvas before it has been painted. Space is very complex: it is nothing
wrapped around every object in the world, soothing or strangling it. It
is the growing darkness ina coil of trees or the trunk of an elephant held
at eye level....”), words, like these, written for that Intrasubjectives
show, or words spoken in Rosenberg’s high nasal voice, punctuated by
shrill laughter, words, fancy nerve-racking words. . ..
Though Rosenberg and his wife had known Lee since 1932, he was
not really aware of Jackson until about a decade later, the time of the
McMillen exhibition. From then until the end of Pollock’s life, theirs was
not like relationships Rosenberg would have with such artists as Hof-
mann, Gorky, de Kooning, and Kline, artists with whom he talked. No,
Pollock’s style was different, not so much inarticulate as uncomfortable
with cultivated people. With Pollock, Rosenberg would eventually play
poker, fish, drive, “do boys’ things,” as his wife remarked.
And though Greenberg came from a background similar to Rosen-
berg’s, his style could not have been more different from Rosenberg’s.
Greenberg would manage to talk with Pollock about the implications of
his work, although often he was as halting and drawling in speech as
Pollock himself. He would stand in Jackson’s studio, as he did also in
galleries and museums, squinting, with brow furrowed, lips pursed, and
fingers pressed beneath his eyes to help them focus. Sometimes his look
was quick, sometimes long. Either way it was frequently followed by a
judgment. The painting was first-rate, or second-rate, or missed altogether.
(Just a few years later, Greenberg would occasionally bring with him the
ambitious young painter Helen Frankenthaler, who was used to his methods,
not only in relation to her own work but at exhibitions where she, with the
critic, often graded everything in their catalogues or announcements and
then compared notations.) In addition to the pressure of connoisseurship,
Greenberg may have exerted the additional pressure of goading Pollock
toward the theoretical limits implied by his work. Rosenberg has written*
* See Bibliography No. 12.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

138

that Greenberg’s part was greater than “merely ... promoting Pollock’s
reputation ... there is no doubt that, for better or worse, Greenberg af-
fected his work itself, shoring up the artist’s arbitrariness with his own
and pressing him onward.” And Motherwell has called Pollock’s relation-
ship to Greenberg his “nearest approach to collaboration.” Though
Motherwell’s comment is less measured than Rosenberg’s, there is little
doubt that, through Pollock, Greenberg played the role of critic-as-artist.
Nor is there much doubt that, through the “art world” and the larger
world beyond, Rosenberg played artist-as-critic. In any case, their positions
were opposed. Rosenberg states his position clearly opposite Greenberg’s
in “Action Painting: Crisis and Distortion” (The Anxious Object, 1966):

How responsible it seems to the young academician, or to the old salesman, to

think of painting “as painting” rather than as politics, sociology, psychology,
metaphysics. No doubt bad sociology and bad psychology are bad and have
nothing to do with art, as they have nothing to do with society or with real
individuals. And about any painting it is true, as Franz Kline once said, that it
was painted with paint. But the net effect of deleting from the interpretation
of the work the signs pointing to the artist’s situation and his emotional con-
clusions about it is to substitute for an appreciation of the crisis-dynamics of
contemporary painting an arid professionalism that is a weak parody of the
estheticism of half a century ago.

Indeed, a little further on in the same essay, Rosenberg’s target is

specific:

The will to remove contemporary painting and sculpture into the domain of
art-as-art favors the “expert” who purveys to the bewildered. “I fail to see any-
thing essential in it [Action Painting], writes Clement Greenberg, a tipster on
masterpieces, current and future, “that cannot be shown to have evolved {pre-
sumably through the germ cells in the paint] out of either Cubism or Im-
pressionism, just as I fail to see anything essential in Cubism or Impression-
ism whose development could not be traced back to Giotto and Masaccio
and Giorgione and Titian.” In this burlesque of art history, artists vanish, and
paintings spring from one another with the help of no other generating prin-
 Fame: 1948-1949

139

ciple than whatever “law of development” the critic happens to have on hand.
Nothing real is “anything essential’—including, for example, the influence on
Impressionism of the invention of the camera, the importation of Japanese
prints, the science of optics, above all, the artist’s changed attitude toward form
and tradition. In regard to historical differences the critic’s sole qualification 1s
his repeated “I fail to see,’ while name-dropping of the masters supplies a
guarantee of value beyond discussion....

Yes, Pollock would have felt the weight of both Rosenberg’s and
Greenberg’s words, the pressure of the two most influential art critics of
his generation. Redmountain and Greenmountain. He would have felt
their presence as they felt his. But if these serious critics “‘got to” Pollock,
if he felt sometimes that even they misunderstood him, accepted him in-
completely, compared him crudely or lumped him with others, we can
imagine how the more simplistic popular press affected him. For Pollock,
who equated himself with his work, every misunderstanding was a mis-
understanding of him personally, every attack an attack on him personally.
For such a man, there could be but little satisfaction in fame and, neces-
sarily, much pain.
So from the moment mass media (particularly Time and Life) had
its attention brought to Pollock by small-circulation weeklies and occa-
sional “little magazines,” he was to become increasingly self-conscious and
uncomfortable. He hardly knew whether he was a “reputation” (to use the
word Tony Smith quotes) or a “star” (to use that lofty accolade of show
biz). But he was aware now as he bought gas, groceries, or paint and
hardware supplies that whatever he had been—among fellow artists and
to some extent critics, dealers, and collectors—was now lifted, blown up,
distorted into grotesque fragments of public celebrity. People stared,
looking for signs of “the greatest living painter in the United States”...
“the greatest American painter of the 20th Century”... “the shining new
phenomenon of American art”... “the most talked-of and controversial
USS. painter.” ... And Pollock wondered if he was this celebrated thing,
this superstar. He found himself torn between pleasure in the recognition
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

140

finally coming to him and pain from the misunderstanding nature of that
recognition. He didn’t feel he was competing within some league of local
artists but rather measuring himself against the history of art. As he
looked at reproductions of work by Goya or Picasso he was, as always, im-
pressed, even overwhelmed by what had already been done. And as he
looked at his own work, he felt mostly how much there was still to do and
how impossible it would be to present visually the whole tangle of his
emotions.
Soon after the Life article appeared, Pollock said, “I can no longer
walk into a gallery and look at a show the way I used to.” This remark
must be understood from two viewpoints: that of Pollock, who on an-
other occasion told his wife, “I feel like a clam without a shell,’ and that
of the people in the gallery to whom his reactions and opinions suddenly
mattered.
If being the local best was a prize too small and the image of himself
in Life too simple, he must have felt driven to try, to keep trying, to get
the larger, more complex image he had of himself down on canvas and
paper. There were moments—explosive and orgasmic—when working,
there on the studio floor, seemed very close to making love and when, as
in the act of love, he would lose himself in his work. And there were
moments when that rhythmic flowing or spurting of himself into his work
seemed likely to assure his being loved in return, finally for the right
reasons rather than for those in Life. However, privately as well as pub-
licly, he continued to be misunderstood. Dr. and Mrs. Frank Seixas, East
Hampton acquaintances, brought another couple to Pollock’s studio to see
his work. When he described his method to them, the wife asked, “But,
Mr. Pollock, how do you know when you're finished?” He replied, “How
do you know when you're finished making love?’’*
Like all those other ambivalences which had tortured him through-
out his life, no doubt he hoped his split feelings about fame could be re-

* See Bibliography No. 199.

 Fame: 1948-1949

141

solved—the pain and pleasure accepted, brought together in harmony—

On paper or canvas. He was spending more and more time in his studio,
searching there, if not for relief, at least for some degree of peace. His
concentration was intense. When he worked he didn’t think about fame,
reputation, celebrity. These words existed outside the studio.
Pollock’s bursts of creativity—sometimes moments; sometimes hours;
or, more rarely, the better part of a day—lasted off and on from the dis-
mantling of the early 1949 show at Betty Parsons until the installation of
another at the same gallery later in the same year (November 21—Decem-
ber 10). During that period of approximately nine months, Pollock com-
pleted thirty-four more works, most of them numerically titled. Many
were on sheets of paper approximately 31” & 2114”, covered richly and
intricately with skeins of enamel and aluminum paint in Pollock’s by now
“classic” style. Even these—and still smaller works on canvas, such as
White on Black (244%” X 171\4””)—have an assurance and freedom that
exists in only a few small works of the previous year. Indeed these paint-
ings, though small in size, suggest a much larger scale and more continu-
ing space. They are miniature murals, as rich and evocative as, say, the
“major” 4’ X 8° Number 7 (Out of the Web), in which vaguely Sur-
realistic, biomorphic shapes have literally been cut out of the web (of oil
and enamel) to expose the composition board on which the web is
mounted. This painting, like two other cut-outs in the show, has a tenta-
tive, experimental, even belabored quality; it shows the additional, second-
thought incisions made on the right side. However, all three—beginning
with the simplest, a biomorphic cut-out, the discarded portion of which
was later given to the dealer John Myers for his puppet theater—antici-
pate a problem to which Pollock would return again and again during the
next two years or so: the extraction of the figure from the web, once
having hidden it there; or, to put it more specifically, the use of line for
configuration, once having invented the use of a nonfigurative line (ie.,
one not intended to define shapes but rather to become part of a field of
energy).
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

142

This was Pollock’s only show that sold well, virtually out, though
still at low prices. Among the purchases were Ossorio’s of Number 10, a
14’ X 9 “frieze,” and Roy Neuberger’s of Number 8, having more con-
ventional 3’ X 6’ dimensions. Ossorio stated his reaction to Pollock’s
work at the time of the earlier 1949 show. Since then his enthusiasm had
further intensified as during the year, under Pollock’s influence, he com-
pleted his last Surrealist works, and moved towards freer abstraction.
Ossorio’s response to Pollock was that of the artist-as-collector. A more
common response—that, aspiringly, of collector-as-artist—is described by
Daniel Robbins in An American Collection:

Roy Neuberger feels that this Pollock is the equal of any, except perhaps One
(The Museum of Modern Art) and Autumn Rhythm (The Metropolitan
Museum of Art). At the time of its acquisition, it represented a big departure
for him, yet, by 1950, he already had two Baziotes, two Gottliebs, and was in
the process of acquiring his David Hare. At Betty Parsons he had seen the
Pollock with “only a slight suspicion of its greatness,” but he could not get it
out of his mind. He recalls discussing the work with Samuel Kootz, who told
him categorically that if he wanted a Pollock, “now is the moment.” {Accord-
ing to Kootz there was more than a discussion. Kootz says he selected the
painting for Neuberger and insisted that the collector pay the asking price of
$1,000.] On all sides [Neuberger] heard that Pollock needed money badly,
| but many artists were in the same boat and Neuberger knew that he had some-
times bought mistakenly in order to help the artist. He debated the purchase for
several months, finally acquiring it in the summer of 1950. Living with it
proved to be a revelation. Initially impressed with its extraordinary technique,
he came to regard it as the canvas that most expressed the actuality of the
unknown. He feels that it defies description and can be compared only to “the
limitless area of the Universe.”

The “limitless” or, at least, muralesque aspect of Pollock’s work was

emphasized by the installation at Betty Parsons’ gallery of the model of a
museum for Pollock’s work. The announcement read: “Murals in Modern
Architecture. A Theatrical Exercise Using Jackson Pollock’s Paintings and
Sculpture. By Peter Blake.” Blake had met Pollock in 1947 through
 Fame: 1948-1949

143

Herbert Matter. Since that time he had become increasingly committed to

the artist’s work and anxious for the Museum of Modern Art, where he
was then Curator of Architecture, to do more for Pollock. However, it was
against museum policy for a staff member to commit himself to a particu-
lar artist. Blake persuaded Ossorio to pay the cost of materials necessary
for the comparatively small project he had in mind. It was described by
Arthur Drexler (later also Curator of Architecture at the Modern) in the
January 1950 Interiors:

Peter Blake has given the open-plan treatment to the paintings of Jackson
Pollock, but. in this case not merely to effect a circulation of visitors so rapid
that no one stops to look at the exhibits. The pictures are heavily pigmented
designs whose continuous rhythms often appear to end because there was no
canvas left for more, and Mr. Blake feels that their distinguishing characteris-
tics are best revealed by open space and by the absence of frames. The paintings
seem as though they might very well be extended indefinitely, and it is pre-
cisely this quality that has been emphasized in the central unit of the plan.
Here a painting 17’ long constitutes an entire wall. It is terminated on both
ends not by a frame or a solid partition, but by mirrors. The painting is thus
extended into miles of reflected space, and leaves no doubt in the observer's
mind as to this particular aspect of Pollock’s work.
The model also includes three small polychrome sculptures made by the
artist for Mr. Blake’s use, and one of them stands before a curved screen of
perforated brass. This is the only wall in the ensemble which serves exclusively
as a background. The largest of the sculptures rests on a square base, while the
other two stand on the floor.
In its treatment of paintings as walls the design recalls an entirely dif-
ferent kind of pictorial art; that of the Renaissance fresco. The project suggests
a reintegration of painting and architecture wherein painting is the architecture,
but this time without message or content. Its sole purpose is to heighten our
experience of space.

The general tone of Pollock criticism changes about now. Even if not
always sympathetic, it becomes considerably more respectful. For the
first time, whether critics like the work or not, they all take it seriously.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

144

Stuart Preston’s comments in the Times (November 27) are typical:

“,.. Color is Pollock's forte. In the dense web of paint that weaves back
and forth it is remarkable how the silvers, blacks, whites and yellows
stand on their own instead of killing each other. In the very biggest canvas
the myriad tiny climaxes of paint and color fail to add up to an over-all
design, but in the long narrow ones a pleasingly large repeat design
gathers momentum as it moves from left to right. ...”
Henry McBride, then the dean of American art journalists, did not
review the latest show, but he wrote about Pollock soon afterward (New
York Sun, December 23) when Number 14 was included in the Whitney
Annual:

... The note of advance is sounded at once in the entrance hall by Jackson |
Pollock. For the first time I looked with respect and sustained interest upon |
one of his pictures. Previous works by him which I had seen looked as though |
the paint had been flung at the canvas fram a distance, not all of it making
happy landings. Even the present one has a spattered technic, but the spattering
is handsome and organized.... The effect it makes is that of a flat, war-shattered
city, possibly Hiroshima, as seen from a great height in moonlight. There ts
sparkle to the color and hints of a ribbon of a river holding the glimpses of
the city together. The composition looks well in the entrance hall and will be
the most discussed picture in the show.

Perhaps these critics became more sympathetic to Pollock’s work

partly in response to the power of the Luce publications. Even as in its
own ads, “Life makes things happen.” However, it is ironic that while
many critics were becoming more friendly, Life and Time were adopting
an attitude of increasing hostility, perhaps backlash, to Pollock and other
avant-garde American painters, which would last until Pollock’s death.
This editorial policy is analogous to that of the same magazines in relation
to the “Beat” writers, several years later. There, too, the magazines
brought the cultural phenomenon to popular attention and then felt the
need to ridicule it and try to destroy it. Time (December 26) described
the Whitney Annual: “Most of the pictures on the walls looked like more
 Fame: 1948-1949

| 145

or less distorted reflections of each other. Jackson Pollock’s non-objective

snarl of tar and confetti, entitled No. 14, was matched by William de
Kooning’s equally fashionable and equally blank tangle of tar and snow
called A¢tic. If their sort of painting represented the most vital force in
contemporary U.S. art, as some critics had contended, art was in a bad
way.”
On that note 1949 ended. It had been a good year—in the studio,
where Jackson made at least thirty-four paintings; in the gallery, where
those paintings were exhibited nine months after a show of twenty-six
completed the previous year and where his contract was renewed until
January 1, 1952; in other galleries here and abroad, many of them in-
stitutional; at home, where he hadn’t had a single drink; everywhere,
except in those publications where words came between him and his work.

Until the past two years Pollock had been one of many artists in the
American vanguard. By 1948 he had been recognized by Time and Life as
one of a smaller group of leaders. But by 1949—with the big Life story
on him—his position was unique. No other American painter of his gen-
eration had received as much attention. From the general public’s view-
point Pollock was now the single leader and representative of the new
American painting. However, from his peers’ viewpoint, though surely 2
leader, he was not ¢e leader.
Among several artists who could equally have claimed leadership,
none was more respected than Willem de Kooning. Within the art world
he was perfectly cast as Poilock’s rival. Much of his best work was figura-
tive, and much of his best abstract work was more obviously formai than
Pollock’s. In addition, he was more intellectual and more literary than
Pollock. Though he spoke with a heavy Dutch accent and could not al-
ways find the exact English word he wanted, he was, allowing for a some-
what limited vocabulary, incisively articulate. Finally, though strikingly
handsome, de Kooning’s face was that of a beautiful Dutch boy rather
than a rugged American, and he was very much smaller than Pollock.
| Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

146

A debt to both Pollock and de Kooning is generously acknowledged

by many of the best painters among their contemporaries and those of the
next generation. However, more peripherally, it became something of an
art world game to choose between Pollock, the champ, and de Kooning,
the slightly older but scrappy challenger. Until now Pollock and de
Kooning had freely exchanged ideas in a small world that was compara-
tively unwatched, if not neglected. But as Pollock’s work moved out into
the larger world, de Kooning watched along with everyone else goading
him on in the roi. of the competitor, not always the friendly competitor.
The promoters of this championship fight were the critics. Greenberg was
deeply committed to Pollock. Virtually alone he had led the popular press
to Pollock’s work which was beginning to be accepted as the most radical
visual breakthrough since Cubism. To the extent that he had had any real
support in this view it had come mostly from a few less influential—i.e.,
less public, more underground—“critics,” if that designation can be ap-
plied to such as the painter John Graham and the architect-sculptor-
lecturer Tony Smith. And it had come from comparatively small and
amateurish dealers—Peggy Guggenheim, now in Venice; Howard Putzel,
who had committed suicide; and now Betty Parsons. And, finally and most
important, it had come from Lee Pollock herself, who was still fighting
hard for Jackson, arranging for the right people to see his work and pro-
tecting him from friends whom she considered to be bad influences,
mainly former drinking companions. On the other side, Rosenberg, until
now closest to Sam Kootz’s artists, especially Hofmann and Baziotes, was
becoming more and more interested in Willem de Kooning. Since Gorky’s
death, in 1948, de Kooning’s work was, he believed, the most powerful
and thoughtful synthesis of Cubism and Surrealism. Alongside, or ahead
of Rosenberg in this view was Tom Hess, by now second in command
at Art News, and Elaine de Kooning, who wrote for the magazine, be-
sides, like Lee Pollock, being a good painter in her own right and a wife
very devoted to her husband’s career.
To illustrate the mounting competitiveness, Phillip Pavia has de-
 Fame; 1948-1949

147

scribed a series of evenings at The Club a little later (1951), prompted

by the publication of Hess’s Abstract Painting: Background and American
Phase, which raised many of the questions that needed answering. Pollock
and de Kooning were present at the first of these discussions, perhaps the
only one at The Club in which Pollock participated on a more than hit-
and-run basis, though not much more. Even without reading the text,
Pollock would have been affronted by the book’s design and layout. For
him, the message was there, right on the jacket, both sides of which con-
tained details in color of Gorky’s The Betrothal, II; and on the endpapers
which contained still more greatly enlarged details in black-and-white
from the same painting; and in the frontispiece which reproduced this
Gorky again, now in its entirety, in color; and in the color illustrations
immediately following the Gorky, works by Tobey, de Kooning, and
Pollock in that order; and in the arrangement of the text, ending with
Pollock. Initially all this would have been more important to Pollock
than that his friends and gallery mates Clyfford Still and Barnett New-
man were missing from the book. And it is most unlikely that he would
have read the text carefully, for Hess’s placement of him, at the end, was
far from a put-down—at least, it suggests the culmination of the abstract
tradition; at most, the beginning of a new tradition. Hess wrote:

... Not only patnters had felt that the separate traditions of abstract painting
and Expressionism, that the formal and the fantastic, the contrived and the
automatic, must join. Collectors, connoisseurs, and museum officials also sensed
this eventuality, and recognized its fulfillment in a Jackson Pollock.
As the first of the group of New York abstractionists to become a public
success, Pollock has had considerable influence on younger painters, in his use
of calligraphy and in his insistence on the absolutely spontaneous touch, as
well as by his example of glorifying the creative act—a more dangerous
concept for the inexperienced....
Like De Kooning’s, Pollock’s stature as a major artist seems already defined.
... It would be invidious and unprofitable to compare the two artists’ accom-
plishments, but they stand at the extremes where the spirit of the painter and
the body of his paint become tndistinguishable.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

148

And yet, as Pavia describes it, Pollock sat clutching the book as if
he wanted to crush it. He disagreed noisily with passages that were read
from it, swore a great deal, and finally threw the book at de Kooning’s
feet.
“Why'd you do that?” de Kooning asked. “It’s a good book.”
“It’s a rotten book,” Pollock replied. “He treats you better than me.”
Hess, who was not there that night but remembers Pollock popping
in during another night in the series, believes that Pollock’s gesture was
playful, his words bantering “as between two guys on the same team
going after a home-run record.” That may be part of the truth. But if,
on one level, Pollock and de Kooning were playing on the same team, on
another, they were playing for themselves. De Kooning himself has stated,
“A couple of times [Pollock] told me, “You know more, but I feel more.’
I was jealous of him—his talent. But he was a remarkable person. He’d do
things that were so terrific.”*
Hess argues that then, at the beginning of the fifties, when one guy
made it, it was good for everybody. And that, too, is part of the truth—
perhaps the most objective part, historically accurate—but not the part
seen or felt by the guy who makes it or by those who don’t and have to
watch him. Tom Hess said, “Maybe it was like Giacometti being
mentioned in the same breath with Matisse—Pollock, like Matisse, was
much more famous. ... Anyway, Jackson couldn’t have disliked the book
so much—a little later he and Lee asked me to do one on him, an ex-
pansion, an amplification of that Betty Parsons catalogue [of the black-
and-white show in 1951]}.” Once again we believe that Hess has part of
the truth. Another part may be Jackson’s (and Lee’s) need for Hess's
support in Art News and elsewhere.
Whatever the truth in all its multifaceted complexity, it is clear that
by now Jackson recognized his public identity as a target or goal. He
felt the pressure of contemporaries beside him and younger artists behind

* See Bibliography No. 218a.

 Fame: 1948-1949

149

him. From now on this painter who had been freely able to give or even
throw away paint, emotions, and ideas would be forced to think about
every stroke, every splash he made until finally his self-consciousness be-
came paralyzing.
i Chapter Seven

The “Biggest” Year

(1950)
...1 saw Yin, the Female Energy, in its motionless grandeur; I saw Yang, the
Male Energy, rampant in its fiery vigour. The motionless grandeur came up out
of the earth; the fiery vigour burst out from heaven. The two penetrated one|
another, were inextricably blended and from their union the things of the world
were born.
LAO TZU
(translated by Arthur Waley)

Early in 1950 Alfonso Ossorio left for the Philippines to do murals for
the church his family was building in Victorias. Before leaving he offered
—and the Pollocks accepted—his house on MacDougal Alley as a pied-
a-terre and also as a place where Jackson could show large paintings.
Ossorio asked the Pollocks to watch for a home in East Hampton for him.
With Peter Blake’s help, Pollock had received a commission to do a
6’ X 8’ mural for the Breuer-designed Geller House in Lawrence, Long
Island, the only commission other than Peggy Guggenheim’s he was ever
to be given. Besides size, there was an additional stipulation: that the
ground color be as close as possible to the rust tone of Arabesque (Num-
ber 13, 1948), a painting done on a commercially prepared ground. Pol-
lock closely matched the color and was then free to make his mural. He
completed it in March. Later in the spring he wrote to Ossorio, struggling
with his much larger commission in Victorias:
Dear Alfonso,
The project sounds exciting and hope you have solved the painting medium
—Summer has come upon us (people). The Geller mural is finished but not
installed. The house is unfinished—the studio untouched—I am gradually getting
into painting again—I sent you Parker Tyler's article on my painting in the
Magazine of Art [“Jackson Pollock: The Infinite Labyrinth’}, but forgot to
send it air mail. You will probably get it a week before you leave. The recent
things at 9 Mac [paintings by Ossorio] looked good to me—
 The “Biggest” Year: 1950

151

Lee, who disliked writing as much as Jackson did, continued the letter.
Not surprisingly, she thought Jackson’s mural was beautiful and said that
after a long drying period they would cope with its installation. (Later,
the Pollocks’ friend Giorgio Cavallon built a bookcase, to be used in the
Geller house as a free-standing room divider, and mounted the mural on
the back of it.) The rest of Lee’s postscript was mostly lists of people and
exhibitions seen and events attended, including part of a lecture at The
Club, Recent Acquisitions at the Modern (“Brancusi’s Fish and Pollock’s
painting shine”), and “an education reception” at the same museum.
The reception was given in connection with the Twenty-Fifth
Venice Biennale. There, in June, the United States Pavilion would be
divided, one-half for a John Marin retrospective, the other half for a
selection of paintings by six younger artists: Arshile Gorky, Willem de
Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, chosen by Alfred Barr of the Museum of
Modern Art; and Hyman Bloom, Lee Gatch, and Rico Lebrun, chosen by
Alfred Frankfurter, publisher of Art News, president of the Art Founda-
tion, and United States Commissioner for this 1950 Biennale. One of the
photographs taken at the reception in the museum penthouse shows
Frankfurter with several members of the museum staff and four of the
artists: Marin, Gatch, de Kooning, and Pollock. As projected in this
particular photo, the most startling personality is Marin. With his long
hair and flowing cravat, he “looks like an artist,” though perhaps one
of another era. His thin sensitive hands protruding from cuffs fastened
by links add to the sense of bygone elegance. In comparison with him
everyone else looks like a businessman. Even Pollock has discarded all
hints of Western individualistic eccentricity. He appears positively Ivy
League in striped tweed jacket, white shirt, black tie, gray flannels, dark
socks, and loafers. He is trim, clean-cut, well-shaved, his little remaining
hair cropped close. His expression is determined as, with lips pressed tight,
he stares past and away from the camera, past everyone in the room,
toward—what?—the future? We return to Marin and follow his eyes.
He, too, is staring—straight at Pollock. Marin’s expression is puzzled. He
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

152

may be asking himself if that critic Greenberg can possibly be right about
this young man, more than forty years his junior, so quiet, so intense, so
definite in the way he refused a drink, antisocial almost. Will Pollock, as
Greenberg suggested, compete with him for recognition as the greatest
American painter of the twentieth century? If Marin asks himself that,
then in staring at Pollock, he too is staring into the future.

Not mentioned in the Pollocks’ joint letter was an open letter of

about the same time addressed to Roland L. Redmond, president of the
Metropolitan Museum, in which Pollock and seventeen other so-called
“jrascible” painters (Baziotes, Brooks, Bultman, Jimmy Ernst, Gottlieb,
Hofmann, Kees, de Kooning, Motherwell, Newman, Pousette-Dart,
Reinhardt, Rothko, Stamos, Hedda Sterne, Still, Tomlin) refused to
participate in a national competitive exhibition of “American Painting
Today 1950”—scheduled by the museum for December—because the
award juries were “notoriously hostile to advanced art.” The letter charged
that Francis Henry Taylor, museum director, had “on more than one oc-
casion publicly declared his contempt for modern painting” and that
Robert Beverly Hale, the museum’s associate curator of American art,
had, in accepting such juries, taken his “place beside Mr. Taylor.” The
signatures of the “Irascible Eighteen” were supported by those of ten
sculptors, about as representative of the avant-garde as the painters.
It is interesting to look through the catalogue of this show: 6,248
paintings were entered in competition; 761 were accepted by regional
juries; 307 were exhibited. Yet, judging by illustrations, virtually all of
the paintings were Cubistic or Realistic, some of the latter having over-
tones of Expressionism and Surrealism. With the exception of Tobey’s,
there was nothing that represented post-World War II developments in
painting. The signers of the letter were justified in complaining about the
juries. The regional one for New York consisted of Burchfield, Kuniyoshi,
Kroll, Sample, Vytlacil, and Pleissner, who was on the eight-man National
Jury too, along with one other New Yorker, Maurice Sterne. The Jury
| The “Biggest” Year: 1950

153

of Awards was still more conservative: William M. Milliken of Ohio,

Franklin C. Watkins of Pennsylvania, and Eugene Speicher of New York.
The awards were predictable: first prize ($3,500), Karl Knaths; second
($2,500), Rico Lebrun; third ($1,500), Yasuo Kuniyoshi; fourth
($1,000), Joseph Hirsch. The Jury of Awards may even have been
stretching to show the Irascibles how advanced it was by giving the first
two prizes to Cubist compositions. But of course a bigger stretch would
have been to invite the Irascibles in the first place. Consider how much
even the fourth prize would have meant to Pollock, not to mention the
other seventeen, except for a few with money.
Some of this material appeared in Life (January 15, 1951: “The
Metropolitan and Modern Art”) soon after the exhibition opened. Con-
fronting four pages of color reproductions of the prizewinning paintings
and other comparatively conservative works is one full-page black-and-
white photograph captioned IRASCIBLE GROUP OF ADVANCED ARTISTS
LED FIGHT AGAINST SHOW. Nina Leen’s collective portrait of fifteen of
the eighteen Irascibles is the most famous group photograph ever made of
this generation of American artists, each of them, like Pollock in the
center, projecting an intense mixture of sadness and anger. The story
begins: “The solemn people above, along with three others, made up the
group of ‘irascible’ artists who raised the biggest fuss about the Metro-
politan’s competition. ... All representatives of advanced art, they paint
in styles which vary from the dribblings of Pollock... to the Cyclopean
phantoms of Baziotes, and all have distrusted the museum since its director
likened them to ‘flat-chested’ pelicans ‘strutting upon the intellectual
wastelands.’ ”
Sam Kootz wanted to exhibit paintings by the eighteen Irascibles.
However, Tony Smith insisted that the work of Pollock, Still, Rothko, and
Newman had to be seen in large scale, that the exhibition of small ex-
amples of their work—framed and treated as art objects in Kootz’s com-
paratively small gallery—would reduce the artists. Smith discussed the
possibility of showing the work of the four artists in depth, in the proper
| Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible |

| 154 |

context—perhaps in a circus tent on a parking lot. Though the tent was

never put up, the idea of exhibiting a small group of related artists in a
series of environmental large-scale one-man shows, rather than a lot of
artists in a collection of isolated contextless single works, may well have
influenced subsequent exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism, especially
those, both here and abroad, of the Museum of Modern Art.
So much for the events of early 1950. By spring, when the Pollocks
made their transition from the city to the country, they had had enough
of New York’s stimulation and confusion to last them awhile. It was good
to see the Zogbaums, the Nivolas, John Little, and other year-round resi-
dents while preparing for the onslaught of summer people. But, most
important, Jackson’s gradual period of getting into painting again was
over. By now he had plunged into it. During the summer and fall he
would do thirty-two paintings—four of them among his greatest, in
every sense including size—while struggling not to be distracted by an
almost constant buzz of attention from both here and abroad, much of it
centering around the Venice Biennale.
A few days before the Biennale opened Emily Genauer gave New
York Herald Tribune readers a sort of pre(non) view of the United States
Pavilion:

| Visitors who enter to learn about the state of art in America will see (with
| the exception of a group of paintings by the distinguished octogenarian, John
| Marin) not one single painting by any of the artists who have been recognized |
by our leading museums, critics, collectors, and connoisseurs as the most creative |
|and accomplished talents in America. There will be no canvas by Franklin
Watkins, or Stuart Davis, or Max Weber, or Yasuo Kuntyoshi, or Feininger, or
Shahn, or Reginald Marsh.... All that visitors will find... will be several can- |
| vases by that singular and ubiquitous sextet, Jackson Pollock, Willem de
| Kooning, Hyman Bloom, Arshile Gorky, Lee Gatch, and Rico Lebrun. |

If ever a sextet wasn’t a sextet, this was it: it was more like two trios,
though not really that either. And it wasn’t at all ubiquitous: we know
of no other exhibition in which these six artists appeared together.
 The “Biggest” Year: 1950

155

In the summer issue of Art News Alfred Barr wrote about his selec-
tions for the Biennale. He described Pollock’s as “perhaps the most origi-
nal art among the painters of his generation... an energetic adventure
for the eyes, a luna park full of fireworks, pitfalls, surprises and delights.”
By July 6 Douglas Cooper, writing for London’s The Listener, was
already responding to Barr:
The younger painters in this pavilion mostly imitate well-known Europeans,
with a singular lack of conviction and competence though on a very large scale.
One of them, however, Jackson Pollock, is a striking exception. He is undenia-
bly an American phenomenon. Working without brushes, he spreads his canvas
on the floor and dribbles the contents of paint-tubes on to it from above. The
result is an elaborate if meaningless tangle of cordage and smears, abstract and
shapeless, but, to quote Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art, it is
“an energetic adventure for the eyes.” Personally, I think this is merely silly.

By the following month Time would join the dialogue: “U.S. Painting
did not seem to be making much of a hit abroad. At Venice’s ‘Biennale,’
the U.S. pavilion (featuring the wild and woolly abstractions of Arshile
Gorky and Jackson Pollock) was getting silent treatment from the
critics.” And by September 10 Aline Louchheim would reply in The New
York Times: “It would be accurate to report... simply that Europeans do
not bother to give our pavilion very serious consideration. Marin has re-
ceived passing praise.... Even the most intelligent critics... spent little
time looking at Gorky and de Kooning. ... Pollock is a special case. ...
His detailed description of how he works (dripping paint, etc. on to
canvas spread on the floor) has been assiduously translated and is grounds
for violent arguments pro and con all abstract and automatic art.”
Early in the summer—at the same time as the Biennale was begin-
ning to receive attention—Berton Roueché interviewed Lee and Jackson
for The New Yorker. Roueché was an East Hampton neighbor of theirs
and Peter Blake, who had sent him the announcement of the Parsons
“Murals in Modern Architecture” exhibition. However, the interview was
more topically pegged to Pollock’s inclusion in the Biennale and appeared
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

156

in the August 5 “Talk of the Town” under the title “Unframed Space.”
Though the comparatively short piece contains no new information about
Pollock’s background or art training, it is revealing about the relationship
between Lee and Jackson, emphasizing the self-effacing, supportive nature
of her role and the rather broad, Western style of his delivery:

... Pollock, a bald, rugged, somewhat puzzled-looking man of thirty-eight,

received us in the kitchen, where he was breakfasting on a cigarette and a cup
of coffee and drowsily watching his wife, the former Lee Krasner, a slim,
auburn-haired young woman who also is an artist, as she bent over a hot stove,
making currant jelly. Waving us to a chair in the shade of a huge potted palm,
he remarked with satisfaction that he had been up and about for almost half
an hour. It was then around 11:30 AM. “I’ve got the old Eighth Street habit
of sleeping all day and working all night pretty well licked,’ he said. “So has
Lee. We had to, or lose the respect of the neighbors. | can’t deny, though, that
it’s taken a little while. When’d we come out here, Lee?” Mrs. Pollock laughed
merrily. “Just a little while ago,’ she replied. “In the fall of 1945.”
“It’s marvellous the way Lee’s adjusted herself,’ Pollock said. “She's a
native New Yorker, but she’s turned into a hell of a good gardener, and she's
always up by nine. Ten at the latest. I'm way behind her in orientation. And |
the funny thing is 1 grew up in the country. Real country...” |

At this point Pollock summarized the material with which we are

familiar—from Cody to New York City—and then went on:

“|. Lee and I came out here. We wanted to get away from the wear and tear. |
Besides, 1 had an underneath confidence that I could begin to live on my
painting. I’d had some wonderful notices. Also, somebody had bought one of
my pictures. We lived a year on that picture, and a few clams I dug out of the |
bay with my toes. Since then things have been a little easier.’ Mrs. Pollock |
smiled. “Quite a little,” she said. “Jackson showed thirty pictures last fall and |
sold all but fie. And his collectors are nibbling at those.” Pollock grunted. “Be
nice if it lasts,” he said.
We asked Pollock for a peep at his work. He shrugged, rose and led us
into a twenty-five-by-[fifteen]-foot living room furnished with massive Italianate
tables and chairs and hung with spacious pictures, all of which bore an offhand
 The “Biggest” Year: 1950

157

resemblance to tangles of multicolored ribbon. “Help yourself,’ he said, halting

at a safe distance from an abstraction that occupied most of an end wall. It
was a handsome, arresting job—a rust-red background laced with skeins of
white, black, and yellow—and we said so. “What's it called?” we asked. “I’ve
forgotten,” he said, and glanced inquiringly at his wife, who had followed us in.
“‘Number Two, 1949, I think,’ she said. “Jackson used to give his pictures
conventional titles—‘Eyes in the Heat’ and ‘The Blue Unconscious’ and so on
—but now he simply numbers them. Numbers are neutral. They make people
look at a picture for what it is—pure painting.” “I decided to stop adding to
the confusion,” Pollock said. “Abstract painting is abstract. lt confronts you.
There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any
beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was. It was
a fine compliment. Only he didn’t know it.” “That's exactly what Jackson's
work is,’ Mrs. Pollock said. “Sort of unframed space.”

The paintings by Pollock in the Biennale—including Number 1,

1948, the most important of three shown (and also the second and last
to be purchased by the Museum of Modern Art until after his death )—
were not his only works to be seen in Venice that summer. Early in the
year Peggy Guggenheim had tried unsuccessfully to arrange a one-man
show for him in Paris. Now, from July 22 to mid-August, she exhibited
her entire collection of his works—twenty oils, two gouaches, and one
drawing, including two paintings she had given to the Stedelijk Museum
in Amsterdam. The original catalogue for this exhibition contained, in
addition to introductory comments by Miss Guggenheim, an essay called
“A Short Talk on the Pictures of Jackson Pollock” by Bruno Alferi, re-
printed from L’Arte Moderna (where, in the same issue, an Italian trans-
lation of Pollock’s possibilities statement had also appeared). In the
second version of the catalogue, the Alfieri essay was eliminated. This
elimination is not difficult to understand:

Jackson Pollock's paintings represent absolutely nothing: no facts, no ideas, no

geometrical forms. Do not, therefore, be deceived by suggestive titles such as
“eyes in heat” or “circumcision”: these are phony titles, invented merely to
distinguish the canvases and identify them rapidly....
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

158

No picture ts more thoroughly abstract than a picture by Pollock: abstract

from everything. Therefore, as a direct consequence, no picture is more auto-
matic, involuntary, surrealistic, introverted and pure than a picture by Pollock.
I do not refer to André Breton’s surrealism, which often develops into a
literary phenomenon, into a sort of snobbish deviation. I refer to real surrealism,
which is nothing but uncontrolled impulse....
In any case it 1s easy to detect the following things in all of his paintings:
—chaos
—absolute lack of harmony
—complete lack of structural organization
—total absence of technique, however rudimentary
—once again, chaos....
It is true that he does not think; Pollock has broken all barriers between
his picture and himself: his picture is the most immediate and spontaneous
painting. Each one of his pictures is part of himself. But what kind of a man
is he? What is his inner world worth? Is it worth knowing, or is it totally
undistinguished? Damn it, if I must judge a painting by the artist, it is no
longer a painting that | am interested in, I no longer care about the formal
values contained in it. On the other hand, however, Pollock never meant to
insert formal values in his pastiches. What then? Nevertheless, there are some
formal values in his pictures; 1 can sense something there, because I can see
shapes (garbled and contorted) that say something to me. What do they say?
If they are pieces of Pollock, they will show Pollock to me—pieces of Pollock.
That is, I start from the picture, and discover the man: suddenly, without
reasoning, instantaneously, more instantaneously than with any other modern
painter....
The exact conclusion is that Jackson Pollock 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, the little
gentleman who, for a few decades now, troubles the sleep of his colleagues
with the everlasting nightmare of his destructive undertakings, becomes a quiet
conformist, a painter of the past,

Except for Aline Louchheim’s brief general reference to it, Alfieri’s

“short talk” would not be picked up by the American press until the fall.
Meanwhile, The New Yorker piece was followed within two weeks by a
 The “Biggest” Year: 1950

1s9

long local-boy-makes-good rehashing of it in the East Hampton Star, the

first of many articles there on Pollock.
In October the Modern Art’s Department of Circulating Exhibi-
tions began touring a show called “Calligraphic and Geometric: Two
Recent Linear Tendencies in American Painting,” which included Pol-
lock’s Number 13, 1949 and later, in lieu of it, Number 12, 1948. (The
show made twenty-five stops in its travels around the States, covering a
period of three-and-a-half years.) Later in the month, the Sidney Janis
Gallery (in Sam Kootz’s former space, across the elevator landing from
Betty Parsons) did an exhibition organized by Leo Castelli and called
“Young Painters in U.S. and France.” In it Pollock’s Number 8, 1950
hung with Lanskoy’s Heavenly Harvest within a context of other com-
parisons: Gorky—Matta, Kline—Soulages, de Kooning—Dubuffet, Rothko—
de Staél. On November 10, the day before the exhibition closed and less
than three weeks before Pollock’s own exhibition at Parsons, there was
an open meeting at Janis on “Parallel Trends in Vanguard Art in the
U.S. and France.” Besides Castelli, the panel included Greenberg and
Rosenberg, Frederick Kiesler, Nicolas Calas (a Surrealist critic, whom, like
Kiesler, Pollock knew from Art of This Century days), Ritchie of the
Modern, and the painter and devotee of the arts Theodore Brenson.
Though the painterly, Surrealist-oriented work of Gorky and Matta
was closely related, the resemblances between the other American and
European artists were superficial. Pollock and Lanskoy painted overall,
Kline and Soulages used a broad slashing brushstroke, de Kooning and
Dubuffet were interested in surface, etc. But the panelists cared more
about the differences they saw than the similarities Janis had seen. As
happened too often also at The Club, the comparisons were made invidious
and chauvinistic: it was not enough to point out the virtues of the New
York School—its directness, physicality, and honesty—one had to attack
the Paris School for its painterliness, slickness, and dishonesty.
As Pollock was deep in his work, probably none of these events
centering on Venice and New York distracted him very much. They must
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

160

have been like so many flies in his studio—there, in and out, but not
taking up much room or demanding much attention. However, when
Time (November 20) published “Chaos, Damn It!” it did annoy him:

Jackson Pollock’s abstractions (Time, Dec. 1, 1947 et seq.) stump ex-

perts as well as laymen. Laymen wonder what to look for in the labyrinths
which Pollock achieves by dripping paint onto canvases laid flat on the floor;
experts wonder what on earth to say about the artist. One advance-guard US.
critic has gone so far as to call him “the most powerful painter in America.”
Another, more cautious, reported that Pollock “has carried the irrational quality
of picture-making to one extremity” (meaning, presumably his foot). The
Museum of Modern Art’s earnest Alfred Barr, who picked Pollock, among oth-
ers, to represent the U.S. in Venice's big Biennale exhibition last summer,
described his art simply as “an energetic adventure for the eyes.”
Pollock followed his canvases to Italy, exhibited them in private galleries
in Venice and Milan. Italian critics tended to shrug off his shows. Only one,
brash young (23) Critic Bruno Alfiert of Venice, took the bull by the horns.
“It is easy,” Alfiert confidently began, “to describe....” {The balance of
the article quoted extensively from Alfieri’s essay, including the passage on
chaos.)

Pollock responded quickly with a telegram that was not published

until the December 11 issue of Time:

| NO CHAOS DAMN IT. DAMNED BUSY PAINTING AS YOU CAN SEE BY MY SHOW |
|COMING UP NOV. 28. I'VE NEVER BEEN TO EUROPE. THINK YOU LEFT OUT |
MOST EXCITING PART OF MR. ALFIERI'S PIECE. [Pollock was probably thinking
|of the comparison between himself and Picasso.}

But of all the fall's many events—continuing, beginning, ending,

weaving in and out of Pollock’s life as if elements in one of his own
paintings—none were more climactic than those surrounding a short film
on Pollock, produced by Hans Namuth and Paul Falkenberg. Namuth, a
professional photographer with a summer home in nearby Water Mill,
had met Pollock at a Guild Hall exhibition. Namuth continues the story
in a statement written for the American Society of Magazine Photograph-
 The “Biggest” Year: 1950

161
Beenie
esCees
ers’ Picture Annual at the time of Pollock’s death and used again eight
years later in a pamphlet distributed with Convergence, “The World’s
Most Difficult Jigsaw Puzzle” (of which, by 1970, more than 100,000
would be sold):

j J had little contact with Jackson Pollock's work before 1 met him. The impact
of his personality had a great deal to do with my relationship to his art: it was
|a sudden recognition. I felt related to him—and to yb aneta
| moment I spoke to him.
the
|
| The day before 1 was to come to his studio (Summer 1950) he had prom-
| ssed that he would start a new painting for me and perhaps finish it while |
7 was still there. When I arrived, however, he shrugged his shoulders and told
| me it was too late, the painting was done; we could not take any pictures.
| I was disappointed; I also was aware of his reluctance to have anyone
present while he was at work. Hesitantly, 1 suggested going into the studio.
An enormous painting covered almost the entire surface of the floor.
Dripping wet paint, white, black, maroon; the painting was finished.
There was complete silence. (He never communicated much, verbally.) 1
looked aimlessly through the ground-glass of my Rollei. He examined the
painting. Suddenly (he must have decided then that there was more work to be
; ; . |
done) he took hold of a paint can and a brush and began to re-do the entire |
painting, his movements, slow at first, gradually becoming faster and almost |
dancelike,..,
He had forgotten that I—and Lee, his wife—were present.
It was an exciting and also a strangely self-effacing session. (It was, too,
ihe first hour of a friendship that was interrupted only by his death in August,
1956.)
The cap of childhood legends which makes its bearer invisible would be
a great asset to a photographer. Sometimes, on rare occasions, this fairy-tale gift |
becomes ours.

In subsequent black-and-white still photographs Namuth recorded

Pollock’s entire procedure: unroiling canvas on the floor, crouching in
readiness before the empty canvas with a can of black enamel in his left
hand and a brush in his right, drawing with paint spilled from the brush
onto the canvas, dancing around the canvas, sometimes stepping onto it
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

162

and then backing off, switching to white enamel and other colors, and
finally standing and looking at the finished painting.
“It was great drama,” Namuth said in an article written a year later
for the graphic arts magazine Portfolio, “the flame of explosion when
the paint hit the canvas; the dancelike movement; the eyes tormented
before knowing where to strike next; the tension; then the explosion
again... my hands were trembling.”
Like Matter a few years before, Namuth knew that in order best to
present Pollock on film he should be photographed in motion. There was
a period of persuasion. Though Pollock—especially the sober Pollock of
this period—may still have felt “reluctance to have anyone present while
he was at work” and though being photographed while working may
have seemed intrusive at the least and perhaps almost obscene, quite
comparable to being photographed while making love, Namuth had
nevertheless built up a rapport with him. By August of 1950, Pollock
had accepted the idea of a motion picture. The first very short film was
done on a minimal budget in black-and-white. But then Namuth felt that,
besides motion, Pollock required color. Since neither Namuth nor his
coproducer Falkenberg could afford the elaborate lighting necessary for
indoor color photography, they decided to do the film almost entirely
outdoors. Namuth shot it on the Pollock property in several sessions
during September and October of 1950 and one brief session at the Betty
Parsons gallery in early December, after Pollock’s next show had been
installed.
The film begins with Pollock painting his signature and the date
“’51” (in anticipation of when the film would be completed). He takes
off his loafers and puts on paint-spattered work shoes. His voice, rather
strained and tense, is heard on the soundtrack: “My home is in Springs,
East Hampton, Long Island. I was born in Cody, Wyoming, thirty-nine
years ago. In New York I spent two years at the Art Students League with
Tom Benton. He was a strong personality to react agaimst....” The
narration—basically a collection of previous statements by Pollock—
 The “Biggest” Year: 1950

163

continues for a minute or so as images of the studio and surrounding

property are presented. Then he makes a painting on canvas.
This was the first part of the film shot by Namuth. Again he
realized it lacked something. “I wanted to see the painter painting—his
face, his hands. One night I couldn’t sleep, thinking about it. I literally
dreamed the idea of having Jackson do a painting on glass. I discussed
it with Jackson, who was a good carpenter. He got the idea right away
and interpreted what I had vaguely suggested. He built the wooden
horses for the glass and a platform for himself high enough so I could
photograph from underneath.”
As the sequence begins Pollock says, “This is the first time I am
using glass as a medium.” We watch him arrange pebbles and wire mesh
on the 4’ X 6’ sheet of glass and then begin to pour paint. After about
a minute and a half he stops, wipes the paint and other materials from the
glass, and says, “I lost contact with my first painting on glass, and I
started another one.” Again we see him place objects on the glass: scraps
of wire mesh, bits of string, shells, pebbles, small colored glass rods and
sheets. These things are isolated until joined by the flow of spilled paint
which we see hit the glass surface and spread as though alive. Tony
Smith says,* “I think that his feeling for the land had something to do
with his painting canvases on the floor. I don’t recall if I had ever thought
of this before seeing Hans Namuth’s film. When he was shown painting
on glass, seen from below and through the glass, it seemed that the glass
was the earth, that he was distributing flowers over it, that it was spring.”
When the poet Frank O'Hara wrote the first monograph on
Pollock, he described the painting-collage on glass, Number 29 (as it
was designated), as perhaps

[Pollock’s} most remarkable work of 1950, from a technical standpoint...tt

is majestic and does not depend on novelty for its effect. It is unique in that
it 1s a masterpiece seen front or back, and even more extraordinary in that it ts

* See Bibliography No. 172.

 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

164

the same masterpiece from opposite sides of viewing, What an amazing identity
Number 29 must have!—like that of a human being. More than any other work
of Pollock, it points to a new and as yet imponderable esthetic. It points to a
world a young experimentalist like Allan Kaprow, who has written on Pollock
in another vein, is searching for, and it is the world where the recent works of
Robert Rauschenberg must find their emotional comfort. Other paintings of
Pollock contain time, our own era with valuable elements of other eras revalued,
but Number 29 is a work of the future; it is waiting. Its reversible textures,
the brilliant clarity of the drawing, the tragedy of a linear violence which, in
recognizing itself in its own mirror-self, sees elegance, the open nostalgia for
brutality expressed in embracing the sharp edges and banal forms of wire and
shells, the cruel acknowledgement of pebbles as elements of the dream, the
drama of black mastering sensuality and color, the apparition of these forms in
open space as if in air, all these qualities united in one work present the crisis
of Pollock’s originality and concomitant anguish full-blown. Next to Number
29, Marcel Duchamp’s famous work with glass [The Bride Stripped Bare by
Her Bachelors, Even] seems mere conjecture, a chess-game of the non-spirit.
This ts one of the works of Pollock which it is most necessary to ponder
deeply, and it is unfortunate for the art of the future that it is not permanently
(because of its fragility) installed in a public collection. [Number 29 was pur-
chased in 1968 by the National Gallery of Canada.]

The last outdoor sequence of the film—that is, the sequence in which
Pollock made Number 29—was completed in the afternoon of a clear,
very cold day in late October. By three-thirty or four, when Namuth and
Pollock returned to the house, they were chilled. Pollock went right for
the bourbon and poured stiff drinks for Namuth and himself. Namuth
knew immediately what was happening: that after being on the wagon
for two years, Jackson was going off. What he didn’t know was that Dr.
Heller had recently died and that Jackson would never again find anyone
who could help him with his alcoholism. “Don’t be a fool,” Hans said,
but by dinnertime Jackson was drunk. Namuth describes the evening in
a way which agrees substantially with a description by Lee Pollock:*

* See Bibliography No. 172.

 The “Biggest” Year: 1950

165

.. we were having ten or twelve people for dinner. Jackson and Hans
te

Namuth were at one end of the table. I don’t know what the argument
was about, but I heard loud voices and suddenly Jackson overturned the
whole table with twelve roast beef dinners. It was a mess. I said, ‘Coffee
will be served in the living room.’ Everyone filed out and Jackson went
off without any trouble. Jeffrey Potter and I cleaned up.”
Everyone who has talked about that day’s events—Hans Namuth,
Alfonso Ossorio, and Lee Pollock—emphasizes the penetrating cold, the
early touch of winter in the air. And yet, having a chill, Pollock might
have drunk coffee or tea or soup. Isn’t it possible that what he was feeling
was being photographed as much as being cold? What was it like paint-
ing on a “glass canvas,” with Namuth beneath it, pointing a camera at
him? And in those days, before commonplace television interviews, be-
fore the mass selling of artists (and politicians, and everyone else),
wouldn’t having a film made about oneself—even a short art film—have
struck Pollock as the ultimate in celebrity, the conclusion of a sequence
beginning with little magazines and moving on to big ones? To be in a
film! How many American artists had had that? Only Calder, as far as
he knew. No one of his own generation... There was that side of it:
a positive sense of excitement in being on screen. And on the other side:
knowing intuitively that this was the final reduction of himself to subject
matter, to becoming a thing, a commodity, an entertainment. Pollock’s
ambivalence about all the publicity received during the past two years
may well have intensified as he faced Namuth’s camera. Pollock may even
have remembered Herbert Matter’s reluctance to photograph him. Then,
something had been said about mutual discomfort.... And someone—
was it Herbert too?—had told him about Chinese artists who several
times during their careers changed their names in order to preserve their
privacy....
However, Namuth believes that Pollock was totally at ease and felt
no tension in connection with the film until a few months later when the
time came for recording his portion of the soundtrack. In support of
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

166

Namuth’s view, one can quote Bryan Robertson, an Englishman who,

after O'Hara, wrote the next monograph on Pollock. Robertson said:

Pollock works on the painting, in front of the camera, with a total absence of
self-consciousness and a riveting degree of ease and spontaneity; more to the
point, the formal command is consummate. The formidable dexterity and con-
| trol shown here by Pollock in selecting materials at hand and using them with
extreme fluency and inventiveness could only be rivalled by that other genius,
Alexander Calder. To perform in public in this way 1s abhorrent to most Euro-
pean artists but the film convinces one of Pollock’s utter absorption in the work
in progress. There is not the slightest suggestion of a bravura exercise. Later
Pollock liked to place this glass painting outside his studio and see landscape |
through it. Again we see the isolated specific incident set against a generalized
background, or another kind of imprint on the land. [Hess of Art News quotes
Pollock as saying, “The fields and beach looked wonderful through it.”}

Pollock’s fourth exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery—his eighth

one-man show in as many years—opened November 28. It was surely his
greatest to date. In it there were thirty-two paintings, all on canvas,
except for Number 29. Note now the arbitrariness of the numbering: it
was simply a matter of convenience, based as much as anything on how
paintings were stacked, rolled, or hung in the studio (often a matter of
size) and the order in which they were removed. From Namuth’s photo-
graphic documentation we know that Number 32 preceded Number 31
(One, now in the collection of the Modern, after being bought by Ben
Heller during the last year of Pollock’s life) and Number 30 (Autumn
Rhythm, now in the collection of the Metropolitan); and we know that
all three preceded Number 29. These four works are the only ones of
this year that we can date within a month: Number 29, late October;
Number 32, July or August; Number 31 and Number 30, September
or October,
Surely Number 32, One, and Autumn Rhythm are among Pollock’s
masterpieces of 1950. The second and third of these 9’ X 18’ paintings
is an enrichment or at least a further improvisation on the gloriously lyrical
 The “Biggest” Year: 1950

167

themes stated in the previous painting, with One and Autumn Rhythm te-
lated to each other not only in size and rhythmic pattern but palette as
well. The other unquestionable masterpiece was Number 1 (Lavender Mist).
As indicated, it is no more likely that this was Pollock’s first painting
of 1950 than that Number 32 was his last. Because of its richness,
sensuousness, and seductiveness, as well as its comparatively large scale
(7'3” X 9'10”), we would date it close to One. Ossorio, back from the
Philippines and soon to be on his way to Paris, bought it immediately.
It was the only major painting that sold from the show, which received
far less attention than it deserved. Perhaps by now Pollock was taken
for granted.
Howard Devree, in The New York Times (December 3), expressed
strong reservations:

More than ever before...it seems to me that Pollock’s work is well over
toward automatic writing and that its content (not definite subject-matter but
content) zs almost negligible—that what one gets out of it one must first put
there....

The painter Robert Goodnough, reviewing for Art News (De-

cember), was among the few who responded enthusiastically:

Jackson Pollock...the most highly publicized of the younger American ab-

stractionists whose controversial reputation 1s beginning to grow abroad, has
been deeply occupied with some enormous paintings this summer—the largest
are 18 by 9 feet. No. [32] of this series is done in great open black rhythms
that dance in disturbing degrees of intensity, ecstatically energizing the powerful
image in an almost hypnotic way. His strength and personal understanding of
the painter's means allow for rich experience that projects a highly individ-
ualized (yet easily communicable to the un-selfconscious observer) sense of
vision that carries as well through to the smaller colorful paintings in which
convergences of tensions rule. Pollock has found a discipline that releases
tremendous emotive energy combined with a sensitive statement that, if to some
overpowering, can not be absorbed in one viewing—one must return.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

168

Perhaps this show—so grand in both its aspirations and achieve-

ments—could be appreciated only by artists and serious critics. There was
no new story for the popular press. The editorial board of Art News in its
January issue voted Pollock’s the second most outstanding one-man show of
the year (with Marin’s first, and Giacometti’s third). Hess, by then manag-
ing editor of the magazine, was completing the manuscript of his book
Abstract Painting. In it he very well summed up Pollock’s position at
the end of 1950:

|... with... gratifying attentions have come several equally distasteful ones.
|When conservatives or Marxists wish to point to some real or fancied evil,
| they almost invariably hit at Pollock. The Soviet art critic and the one writing
for Time magazine, both covering the 1950 Biennale exposition in Venice...
were hunting, respectively, for some particularly horrifying evidence of bour-
geots decadence, and for some un-American scrawling. Both found what they
|sought in Pollock. He is accused of being too fashionable and too obscure, the
| head of a coterie and minor eccentric, etc., etc. Thus true fame has come to
| him from his detractors, and his best publicity has been of the wrong kind....
 Chapter Eight

Black and White |

(1951)
“... Strictly speaking, drawing does not exist!... The line is the method by
which man expresses the effect of light upon objects; but there are no lines in
nature, where everything is rounded; it is in modelling that one draws, that 1s |
to say, one takes things away from their surroundings.... Observe that too |
much knowledge, like ignorance, leads to a negation. | doubt my own work!”
BALZAC
“The Unknown Masterpiece”
A ss lb]
Though Pollock’s show had closed December 16, he and his wife
were still in New York at Ossorio’s MacDougal Alley house in January.
At that time he wrote to Ossorio and his friend Edward Dragon in Paris:

Dear Alfonso and Ted, |

The two Dubuffet books came this very moment—they are really very |
beautiful. There is a photograph of him in this issue of Art News—a surprise.
We have had no word from {Pierre} Matisse about borrowing the two
D{ubuffets}. Gorky’s show {a memorial retrospective, January 5-February 18,
at the Whitney] opened yesterday—it’s really impressive and wonderful to see
an artist's development in one big show. More than 90 per cent of the work I'd
never seen before—he was on the beam the last few years of his life. The
catalogue doesn’t have enough reproductions in it—but will send you one |
anyway.
I found New York terribly depressing after my show—and nearly tm-
| possible—but am coming out of it now....

Jackson's letter crossed one from Alfonso covering five closely

written pages, begun December 23 and completed December 30. Alfonso
mentions first the difficulties of getting settled (“the difference between
living in an hotel with a bilingual staff & being on one’s own is quite
startling”). He asks about the last week of Jackson’s show at Parsons.
“Did all the pictures come down safely? I still think of the magnificence
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

170

of that room, & I hope Hans took adequate photographs; I await them
very anxiously. ...” He describes the complications in getting a painting
of Jackson’s through French customs. He requests a progress report on a
project of Tony Smith’s for a church containing murals by Jackson (a
project which will drag on for many months before being abandoned).
He mentions Dubuffet’s interest in seeing more of Jackson’s work. The
letter ends with requests to Lee to take care of various matters having to
do with Alfonso’s bank account, bills, the loan of two Dubuffets to
Pierre Matisse, the shipment of twelve bottles of varnish, etc. “I shall
write again very soon (as soon as I have more for you to do!) ...”
Three weeks later he wrote the following short note:

Dear Jackson, In my last letter to Lee I enclosed $200 to be applied towards

the next painting of yrs. we acquire. We'd like to continue sending this amount
on a monthly basis if this sort of arrangement is agreeable to you & Lee. We've
no particular painting (or sculpture) in mind at the moment but I know that
there'll [be] many we'll want in the future.
Love to you both,
Alfonso

Late in January Lee and Jackson returned to Springs. From there

Jackson wrote again to Paris:

Dear Alfonso—
I really hit an all-time low—with depression and drinking—NYC is
brutal. I got out of it about a week and a half ago—followed with a construc-
tive dream—(happily Tony was here to interpret it for me) and now your
letter. It is so thoughtful and kind—I won't try to find words (of my feeling).
Last year I thought at last I am above water from now on in—but things don't
work that easily I guess. | have seen a great deal of Dr. {Elizabeth Wright]
Hubbard {a homeopathic physician in New York he had been seeing intermit-
tently since 1943} she has been extremely helpful.... The Museum of M.A.
opened the survey of American abstract painting {January 23—March 25, Ab-
stract Painting and Sculpture in America, in which Pollock’s Number 1, 1948
was shown in the “Expressionist Biomorphic” category] with drinks—and
supper for about two hundred painters in the pent house—and at least fwe
 Black and White: 1951

171

thousand down stairs in the gallery—couldn’t get any idea of the show, will
send a catalogue. Betty [Parsons] was seen in Florida the past ten days.
{Clyfford] Still’s show opens this Monday—am anxious to see it up—liked some
things I saw recently. I was really excited about Dubuffet’s show—was prepared
not to. Your two canvasses hold with his best. I have been asked to be on a
jury in Chicago the 9th and 10th of Feb. which I accepted, something I swore I'd
never do. But I think seeing Chicago and the experience might do me good,
at any rate I'll try it. We'll drive out, two days going two days there and two
days coming back, the show I’m to have there will be mid season next year.
I’m very happy to hear of Peggy's interest in your work, perhaps you will
return here via Venice if you have a show there. Have you seen the Matisse |
Church and design or is that terribly far from Paris? Hans and Falkenberg
are still working on the movie. We have seen nothing more of itt....
Again Alfonso I am really moved by your sensitivity and thoughtfulness,
and of course you and Ted may have first on anything I do. I hope this letter
doesn’t seem so damned down and out—because I have been making some
drawings on Japanese paper—and feel good about them.
With love to you both,
Jackson

The jury on which Pollock had been asked to serve was typical in its
diversity. He himself represented the extreme avant-garde; Max Weber,
the old Cubist avant-garde, softened now into a more sentimental Expres-
sionism; and James Lechay, then at the University of Iowa, middle-of-
the-road Romanticism. The artists to be judged called themselves the
“Momentum” group and were in opposition to discriminatory (ie., anti-
abstract) policies of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since the jurying
might well have developed into a tense situation and since Jackson was
drinking again, he decided it would be best not to make the long trip to
Chicago by car. He mentions the trip, among other things, in his next
letter to Paris:

... There is a lot of unrest among the painters in [Betty Parsons’) gallery. I
don’t know what, if anything, is the solution. P. Matisse didn’t put red stars on
any of D{ubuffet’s} paintings. I met a collector in Chicago [Maurice Culberg}
who has seventeen and had just given the Art Institute there one. There is an
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

172

enormous amount of interest and excitement for modern painting there—it’s

too damned bad Betty doesn’t know how to get at it. The jurying was dis-
appointing and depressing—saw nothing original being done—out of 850
pieces we picked 47 and it still wasn’t a very good show. 1 flew out and back
alone—and liked it, flying, and also Chicago.... This issue of Vogue has three
pages of my painting (with models of course).... |

For the balance of the winter and spring, the Pollocks were in and
out of New York. They visited their doctors, including a new one to
whom Jackson had been recommended, Dr. Ruth Fox, a psychiatrist spe-
cializing in alcoholism. He saw her intermittently from March 1951 until
June 1952, took part in group therapy sessions and sometimes, but evi-
dently not frequently enough, used Antabuse, a drug which is sickening
when one drinks alcohol. She recalls an anxiety-filled dream of Jackson’s in
which he was on ahigh structure, possibly a building or a scaffold, and his
brothers were trying to push him off. When the break with this doctor
occurred it was caused by her “attack” on a chemist who, during the same
year, had persuaded Jackson that his problem could be solved by estab--
lishing a proper balance of gold and silver in his urine!
In early 1951, there were also several art events which would have
brought Pollock to New York, events with which he was involyed—or
should have been. The first of these (March 16—April 29) falls into that
latter category: The 75th Anniversary Exhibition of Painting and Sculp-
ture by 75 Artists Associated with the Art Students League of New York,
presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ic is startling that in this
historical survey—beginning with George Inness, John LaFarge, and
Thomas Eakins—there was room for only three artists born in the twen-
tieth century: Isabel Bishop, Peter Blume, and Jon Corbino. Pollock,
by now surely the best-known painter of his generation, is included at the
back of the catalogue in a “Partial List of Artists Associated with the
Art Students League 1871-1951.” (The League’s next major anniversary
show would be called “American Masters from Eakins to Pollock,” but
that would take place eight years after Pollock’s death.)
Hans Namuth’s famous photograph of Pollock sitting on the running board of his Model A Ford. It was
first used in the February 1952 Harper's Bazaar (with a note by Clement Greenberg), and the year after
Pollock's death, on the cover of Evergreen Review (again with a note by Greenberg).
 Seven action shots and one of a corner of Pollock’s studio taken by Namuth during the summer of 195(
when Jackson was at the height of his powers, having just completed such mural-size masterpieces a:
One and Autumn Rhythm. These photographs led shortly to the photographer's two motion-picture film:
of Pollock, the first in black and white, the second in color. The photographer felt that Pollock’s working

HANS NAMUTH
methods could only be appreciated in motion and color. The color film was completed after Jackson’:
1951 show at the Betty Parsons gallery.
Jackson in front of a section of the approximately nine-by-eighteen-foot One (1950). He is
studying the gallery register of visitors to this 1951 show, perhaps his greatest. Though
many came, few bought. However, the critics were appreciative. Art News voted the show
“second most outstanding of the year.”
ee and Jackson Pollock in a corner of the living room of their Springs house, soon after settling there
nd before furnishing. Jackson found the old anchor on a nearby beach. The powerful sculptural quality
f this man-made object had the same attraction for him as forms found in nature.
 (Top) Pollock cleaning up after work. (Bottom) Another of Namuth’s famous portraits, This one, |
several of the others, was widely reproduced, particularly after the artist’s death. The dissemination
this image of Pollock was so wide that by 1967 Gudmundur Erro, an Icelandic painter working in Pai

HANS NAMUTH
would make it central to his painting, The Background of Pollock, which includes works of Expression-
sts, Fauves, Cubists, Surrealists—in short, the history of modern art.
(Top, left) Mrs. Stella Pollock with her sons Charles, left, and Jay, right. Behind them, left to right, a
Frank, Jackson, and Sandy. (Top, right) Jackson between his friends the painter Barnett Newman an
sculptor-architect-lecturer Tony Smith, in front of a Newman painting at Betty Parsons. (Bottom) In t
penthouse of the Museum of Modern Art, 1950, left to right: Steichen, D’Harnoncourt, Marin, Ritchi

JACK CALDERWOOD
 atch, Frankfurter, De Kooning, and Pollock. (Bottom) “The Irascibles” who protested a show at the
etropolitan Museum in 1950: front row, left to right, Stamos, Ernst, Newman, Brooks, Rothko; middle
ow, Pousette-Dart, Baziotes, Pollock, Still, Motherwell, Tomlin; back row, De Kooning, Gottlieb,
einhardt, Sterne.
 (Top, left) Pollock with his friend, the painter James Brooks, in Montauk. (Top, right) With anothe
friend, Daniel T. Miller, who traded groceries for the painting on the wall. In background are Mrs. Polloc
and the sculptor Tino Nivola. (Bottom) Pollock meditating outside his studio.

HANS NMAMUTH
9p, left) 1955 passport photo made in Riverhead when Jackson was considering a trip to Europe. He
ver went. (Top, right) In the same year, with his dogs Gyp and Ahab. (Bottom) Jackson alongside
arch, which is generally believed to be his last painting.

MAMUTHE
(Top) In the Pollock living room, Lee and Jackson have their backs to the camera as they face their frien
the painter John Little, flanked by the Petersens. Lee made the mosaic table and the “hieroglyph” pai
ing on the right wall, Jackson the vertical on the left. (Bottom) A typical night at the Cedar Tavern, 2
the sign which hung outside.

FRED W. McDARRAH
.ckson, in front of a self-portrait portion of his 1953 painting Portrait anda Dream. About his work of |
lis period (his last nonretrospective exhibition) Robert Coates wrote, “his ‘dribble’ technique...is gen- |
ally used with more formal, compositional purpose, or as a background motif, instead of as an end in
self?”

SS NAMUTH
 Pollock was the subject of much satire, both during his life and after his death. This 1957 cartoon is
Whitney Darrow, Jr., who was a classmate and close friend of his at the Art Students League. They ma
a “sketching trip” to the West Coast in the summer of 1932.

fe at all right to meer af these

DRAWING BY WHITNEY DARROW, JR.< © (999 THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, INC.
Pollock, heavy and depressed, shortly before his death in an automobile accident, August 11, 1956. His
friend the painter Conrad Marca-Relli speaks of the spotlight that by that time had been on Jackson for
‘0 long, “a light as cruel as that in which a rabbit freezes”

NS NAMETH
 Pollock’s grave at the Green River Cemetery in Springs. Beside it stands Nicholas Carone, one |
many friends and neighbors. Others buried here include: Stuart Davis, Wilfred Zogbaum, Frank O”
Frederick Kiesler, A. J. Liebling, George Cooke, Ad Reinhardt, and Judy Heller—all friends a
colleagues of the artist.

HANS NAMUTH
Number 3, 1951 (Image of Man)
The Guardians of the Secret (1943)
The She-Wolf (1943)
Lucifer (1947)
Number 14, 1948: Gray
Number 8 (1949)
Convergence: Number 10, 1952
Search (1955)
 sa

.
‘

'
i ¥
. *

s i

y i

>

.
 Black and White: 1951

173

On St. Patrick’s day, the day after the opening at the Metropolitan,
there was one for a Whitney Annual which included Pollock’s watercolor
Number 1, 1951. And ten days later was the Peridot Gallery’s “Sculpture
by Painters.” For this Pollock had made an untitled work in papier-maché
by covering chicken wire with some of those “drawings on Japanese
paper” about which he had written to Ossorio in late January. The piece,
approximately five feet long, was mounted on a door, flat on the floor.
Judging only from photographs of it in the gallery, it had the raw power-
ful presence of an animal carcass and indeed suggested a Rembrandt
side of beef. (The sculpture itself was later deliberately left outside in
Springs to see if it could withstand the weather. It couldn't.) And finally,
there was the famous 9th Street Show (May 21—June 10)—organized
by members of The Club (most notably Franz Kline, who designed the
announcement) and chosen and installed by Leo Castelli—in which
Pollock’s Number 1, 1949 hung with the work of sixty other American
artists.
Also early in 1951, Falkenberg was editing the film. As soon as
that was completed, the composer Morton Feldman was called in to see
it. He says, “I watched the film, got the exact span of time for each of
the sequences—the shots of the studio and the Springs property, the
painting on canvas, the two on glass—and then wrote the score as if I
were writing music for choreography.” For the soundtrack Daniel Stern
played the two cello parts in Feldman’s composition, and Pollock nerv-
ously read his statements.
Away from New York other things were happening, and reports
were coming in: a selection of nineteen works by Pollock from Peggy
Guggenheim’s collection of “Surrealism and Abstraction” was shown at
the Stedelijk Museum in January and February, at the Brussels Palais des
Beaux-Arts in March, and at the Zurich Kunsthaus from mid-April to
mid-May; two paintings were in the Third Tokyo Independent Art
Exhibition (February 27—March 18); and one was shown through most
of March in Véhémences Confrontées, a Paris exhibition at Galerie Nina
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

174

Dausset (“For the first time in France the confrontation of the most
advanced American {besides Pollock, only de Kooning], Italian and
French painters of today presented by Michel Tapie’’).
Thus far in 1951 Pollock’s impulse had been toward drawing—
mostly on paper—but by early June, as he wrote in yet another letter to
Paris, he was drawing on canvas:

June 7, 1951
Dear Alfonso and Ted,
It’s really great to be back im Springs. Lee is doing some of her best
painting—it has a freshness and bigness that she didn't get before—I think she
will have a handsome show. I’ve had a period of drawing on canvas in black—
with some of my early images coming thru—think the nonobjectivists will find
them disturbing—and the kids who think it simple to splash a Pollock out.
Joe Glasco I think really liked them. He asked Viviano if she thought Matisse
would handle me. She definitely thought he would—( but that I might be better
off in her gallery)—I don’t intend asking him and anyway his real interest 4s
in his French painters. Have a letter (yesterday) from the Associated American
Artists Gallery—do you know it?—asking me to come in and talk with them—
Will see him (Reeves Lewenthal) Monday. His gallery is a kind of department
store of painting (most of it junk) but they do a terrific business. I suppose
the best thing for me is to stick with Betty another year. Tony Smith suggested.
I make the drawings I’ve made into a portfolio of prints—either lithographs or
silk screen—I may try a couple to see how they look. Tony has done some
exciting houses. He is doing a studio for Stamos in Greenport—that is on the
south shore. We see the film at the Museum of Modern Art next Thursday—
everyone in New York city has been asked (if they come). I’m anxious to see
it and hear the music young Feldman (a friend of John Cage’s) has done—
think it might be great—I speak in the movie which I’m not too happy about.
We shall see.
Haven't heard anything on the summer art activity here yet—I have a
show in Maryland (close to Washington D.C.) this month {June 26-July 8,
Hilltop Theater Art Room, Lutherville, Md., twelve works from between 1 948
and 1951]—(means nothing) —The show at the Chicago Arts Club has been
set for next October {at which Pollock would show seven paintings along with
 Black and White: 1951

17S

selections of work by Ben Shahn and Willem de Kooning|—it is a new gallery

| designed by Mies—van der Rohe—I think there might be some good reaction
| to my stuff out there....

This is the only one of his six letters written to Ossorio and Dragon
in 1950 and 1951 which is actually dated (rather than dated from
internal evidence). Note also that Pollock wrote to Ossorio only during
this period and once again (March 30, 1952) when Ossorio was in
Paris. Writing was always a great effort for Pollock. In the remaining
years of his life, when he was able to afford it, he used the phone for
almost all social and professional communication that couldn’t be han-
dled in person.
Neither in this letter to Ossorio and Dragon, nor in his next (in
early August) does Pollock mention an exhibition of American art to be
shown in West Berlin in September where he would have two paintings
or the first biennial in Sao Paolo where he would have one. Most likely
he did not yet know anything of these events, handled in an institutional
way by the American Federation of Arts and the Museum of Modern Art,
respectively. The details of his career were proliferating now at a rate he
couldn’t keep up with.
A long interview with Pollock was done at about this time for
station WERI in Westerly, R.I., by William Wright, who lived across
the road from Pollock:*
“Modern art... is nothing more than the expression of contempo-
rary aims.... All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing
their immediate aims—the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The
thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject
matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different
source. They work from within.
* The tape has never been heard publicly since the Westerly broadcast in 1951, though it
may be used in connection with a reediting of the Namuth—Falkenberg black-and-white
and color films of Pollock. Excerpts were published in Art in America (August-September
1965) and both sides of the entire interview in an appendix to the O'Connor chronology.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

176

“,..mew needs need new techniques. 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... the strangeness will
wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern
art.... [Laymen looking at a Pollock or other modern painting] should
not look for, but look passively—and try to receive what the painting
has to offer and not bring a subject matter or preconceived idea of what
they are to be looking for.... The unconscious is a very important side
of modern art and I think the unconscious drives do mean alot in looking
at paintings. ... [Abstract art} should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed
—after a while you may like it or you may not.... I like some flowers
and others, other flowers I don’t like. ... I think at least give it a chance.
“,.. the modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have...
mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera
and photograph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and
expressing an inner world—in other words, expressing the energy, the
motion, and other inner forces ... the modern artist is working with space
and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating. ... [Modern
art] didn’t drop out of the blue; it’s part of a long tradition dating back
with Cézanne, up through the Cubists, the post-Cubists, to the painting
being done today.... Well, method is, it seems to me, a natural growth
out of a need, and from a need the modern artist has found new ways
of expressing the world about him. I happen to find ways that are different
from the usual techniques of painting, which seems a little strange at the
moment, but I don’t think there’s anything very different about it. I paint
on the floor and this isn’t unusual—the Orientals did that. ...
“Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint. The
brushes I use are used more as sticks rather than brushes—the brush
doesn’t touch the surface of the canvas, it’s just above. ... I’m able to be
more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas with
 Black and W hite: 1951

177

greater ease ... with experience it seems to be possible to control the flow
of the paint to a great extent, and I don’t use... the accident. ... I deny
the accident.
“[A preconceived image} hasn’t been created... . Something new—
it’s quite different from working, say, from astill life where you set up
objects and work directly from them. I do have a general notion of what
I’m about and what the results will be.... I approach painting in the
same sense as one approaches drawing—that is, it’s direct. I don’t work
from drawings, I don’t make sketches and drawings and color sketches
into a final painting. Painting, I think, today—the more immediate, the
more direct, the greater the possibilities of making... a statement.
“,.. painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very
exciting. Five or six of my contemporaries around New York are doing
very vital work, and the direction that painting seems to be taking here
is away from the easel, into some sort, some kind of wall—wall painting.
... [Some of my canvasses are] an impractical size—9 X 18 feet. But
I enjoy working big and, whenever I have a chance, I do it whether it’s
practical or not.... I’m just more at ease in a big area than I am on
something 2 X 2. I feel more at home in a big area.... I do step into
the canvas occasionally—that is, working from the four sides I don’t have
to get into the canvas too much.
“,..the first thing I’ve done on glass...I find it very exciting. I
think the possibilities of using painting on glass in modern architecture—
in modern construction—terrific.... In this particular piece I’ve used
colored glass sheets and plaster {lath} and beach stones and odds and ends
of that sort. Generally it’s pretty much the same as all of my paintings. ...
The possibilities... are endless, what one can do with glass. It seems to
me a medium that’s very much related to contemporary painting . . . the
result is the thing, and it doesn’t make much difference how the paint is
put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of
arriving at a statement.”
Much of the material in this interview—the single longest series of
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

178

statements we have by Pollock—is compressed in a handwritten note,

found in the artist’s files, undated but possibly also from about this time:

Technic is the result of a need.

new needs demand new technics
total control_-—————denial of
the accident:
states of order
organic intensity
energy and motion
made visible—_——__—_
memories arrested in space,
human needs and motives
|. ‘acceptance————_———_—-

And the ideas in this highly compressed statement may have influenced
part of the catalogue introduction (quoted later in this chapter) which
Ossorio was to do for Pollock’s forthcoming show.
In August Pollock wrote Ossorio and Dragon:

Dear Alfonso & Ted—-1 get quite a different picture of Tapié’s gallery {Studio
Paul Facchetti, at which Ossorio will arrange for an exhibition of Pollock’s
work}|—lI think 1 would rather wait until you get back here and advise me on
what to send—l’ll need a lot of painting here for the two shows (Chicago and .
N.Y.). Betty sailed last Sat. Aug 4. She has probably written you. As usual there
was no time to plan or discuss things. The mural (A[ssociated] A{merican]
A{rtists]) isn’t definitely out—but is a matter of waiting (how long I don't
know) and it involves other things and people too damned involved to try and
explain in a letter. Tell Betty I suggest she talk to you about it.... We showed
the movie out here (clipping enclosed) the reaction was mixed—am anxious
for you to see it. I think the house idea had better wait until you are here—
Then we can see what is available and at what price. Happy {Macy} said last
night that the place across from the one you had was now for sale (Ted got
flowers there) and that it is in excellent condition. There are probably many
such places but you have to see them. This has been a very quiet summer—
no parties, hardly any beach—and a lot of work. Until later—
Love to you both,
Jackson
 Black and White: 1951

179

The place Ossorio had had was the Helmuth house, which he rented
during the summer of 1949. To give some idea of the accelerating infiltra-
tion of East Hampton by the art world, after Ossorio’s rental the house
was sold to the art dealer Leo Castelli; shared by him and his wife with
the de Koonings; and, finally, rented and then sold to the collector Ben
Heller, who still owns it. Very soon after writing, Pollock must have
phoned or wired Ossorio that Mrs. Macy had discovered that The Creeks,
a sixty-acre showplace on Georgica Pond, was being offered for sale by
the estate of the painter Albert Herter. Ossorio had seen this property in
1949. He remembered it well. It was not one of “many such places”; it
was unique. Before the end of August he flew over to contract for its
purchase.

For about five years Lee Pollock had been working in the cramped
bedroom studio, making mostly those tense little paintings which read like
hieroglyphics, or cuneiform, or some other ancient and mysterious writing.
Though there are works of this period which have a less geometrically
organized web or skein, all are heavily painted, with color absent or
subdued and the image small and overall. By 1950 she began to break
through these self-imposed conventions and was using thin paint, more
color, and a different kind of tension, developed between vertical and
horizontal space rather than between organic form and geometric or
Cubist grid. She must have felt a great sense of liberation and, with
Jackson’s encouragement, a strong desire to show her new paintings and
to forget those of the five years leading up to them. It is one of the
ironies of her career that the fully realized small-image paintings were
never shown, except for isolated examples in later group exhibitions.
Instead, her first one-person show (Betty Parsons Gallery, October 15-
November 13, 1951) consisted only of transitional breakthrough work
having, as Jackson wrote, “a freshness and bigness that she didn’t get
before,” but nevertheless lacking the authority of work done both earlier
and later. Betty Parsons remembers* that Jackson “telephoned me and
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

180

asked me to give her a show.... I said I never showed husbands and

wives, but he insisted. He was charming with Lee when he was sober;
she ruled the nest. But when he was drunk, he ruled the nest. Lee always
protected his business interests. Business ideas bored him, though he was
fairly wise about them.”
The tender tone of Betty Parsons’ reminiscence is sustained through-
out an interview done some sixteen years after Lee Krasner’s only show at
her gallery and what turned out to be Pollock’s last. Thus, her tenderness
is even more remarkable, considering that when recorded she spoke as
Pollock's rejected dealer:

I loved his looks. There was a vitality, an enormous physical presence. He was
of medium height, but he looked taller. You could not forget his face. A very
attractive man—oh very.
He was always sad. He made you feel sad; even when he was happy, he
made you feel like crying. There was a depression about him; there was some-
thing desperate. When he wasn’t drinking, he-was shy; he could hardly speak.
And when he was drinking, he wanted to fight. He cursed a lot, used every
four-letter word in the book. You felt he wanted to hit you; 1 would run away.
His whole rhythm was either sensitive or very wild. You never quite knew
whether he was going to kiss your hand or throw something at you. The first
time I went out to see him at Springs, Barney [Newman, whom the Pollocks
then met for the first time] brought me; we were planning Jack’s first show.
After dinner we all sat on the floor, drawing with some Japanese pens. He
broke three pens in a row. His first drawings were sensitive, then he went
wild. He became hostile, you know. Next morning he was absolutely fine.
I had met him around New York since 1945. One day in’47 he telephoned
me and said he wanted a show in my gallery. | gave him a show the next
season. In all the time he was with me he was never drunk either during the
show or during the hanging. At Sidney Janis’ [Pollock’s next dealer) it was
different; once they waited for him until four in the morning to hang a
SHOW. ...
He was either bored, or terrified of society. He thought most women were
terrible bores. He needed aggressive women to break through his shyness. He
liked very few artists. He liked Barney Newman, Tony Smith, Franz Kline,
 Black and White: 1951

181

Alfonso Ossorio, and Bradley Tomlin. He thought artists were either awful or
terrible—it had entirely to do with their work.
He thought he was the greatest painter ever, but at the same time he
wondered, Painting was what he had to do. But he had a lot of the negative in
him. He was apt to say, “It didn’t work—it’ll never work.” When he got in
those terrible negative states he would drink.
He associated the female with the negative principal. The conflict showed
clearly in The She Wolf (1943). Inside himself was a jungle, some kind of
jungle, because during his life he was never fulfilled—never—in anything. Of
course, this didn’t diminish his power as a painter. His conflicts were all in his
life, not in his work.
He was a questioning man. He would ask endless questions. He wanted to
know what I thought about the world, about life. He thought | was such a
jaded creature because I'd traveled; he wanted to know what the outside world
was like—Europe, Asia. He was also intrigued with the inner world—what is it
all about? He had a sense of mystery. His religiousness was in those terms—a
sense of the rhythm of the universe, of the big order—like the Oriental philoso-
phies. He sensed rhythm rather than order, like the Orientals rather than the
Westerners. He had Indian friends, a dancer and his wife {the Vashtis], with
whom he talked at length and who influenced him greatly.
His most passionate interest after painting was baseball. He adored base-
ball and talked about it often. He also loved poetry and meeting poets. He
often talked about Joyce. He loved architecture and talked a lot about that too.
He adored animals; he had two dogs and a crow—he had tamed the old crow.
He had that kind of overall feeling about nature—about the cosmic—the power
of it all—how scary it is.
I could never relax with Jack. He certainly was pursued by devils.
Life is an endless question mark, but most of us find a resolution, He never
did. But I loved him dearly. The thing about Pollock is that he was completely
unmotivated—he was absolutely pure.

We may disagree with some of these statements. Was Jackson’s first

show prompted only by a phone call from him? Was Lee’s? How close
was he to the Vashtis? How passionate about baseball?—yet all in all it
rings emotionally, if not always factually, accurate. This is the complex
and tortured man who is now working on his black-and-white show,
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

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surprising not only in the lack, the seeming denial of color but in the
several examples of a return to figurative work. It was not so surprising
to his wife who says* she

had one advantage that very few others had— 1 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 drawings he did as a student of
Benton, but just after that, when he began to break free, about in the mid-
thirties. For me, all of Jackson’s work grows from the thirties; 1 see no more
sharp breaks, but rather a continuing development of the same themes and
obsessions. The 1951 show seemed like monumental drawing, or maybe paint-
ing with the immediacy of drawing—some new category.... There's one other
advantage I had: I saw his paintings evolve. Many of them, many of the most
abstract began with more or less recognizable imagery—heads, parts of the
body, fantastic creatures, Once I asked Jackson why he didn’t stop the painting
when a given image was exposed. He said, “I choose to veil the imagery.” Well,
that was that painting. With the black-and-whites he chose mostly to expose
the imagery. 1 can’t say why. 1 wonder if he could have.
Q: Then do you consider these paintings more “naked” than his earlier work?
A: No, no more naked than some of those early drawings—or paintings like
Male and Female or Easter and the Totem. They come out of the same sub-
conscious, the same man’s eroticism, joy, pain.... Some of the black-and-whites
are very open, ecstatic, lyrical; others are more closed and hidden, dark, even
oppressive, just as with the paintings in color.
Q: In the 1950 show there seems to have been something like a primitive
horror vacui: the entire canvas, or nearly all, needing to be filled—except for
Number 32. In that painting, as in the 1951 black-and-whites, there’s an accept-
| ance of empty space, negative space, the void. The voids read positively. Do
| you think the 1951 show came out of that one monumental black-and-white in
the’50 show?
A: After the ’50 show, what do you do next? He couldn't have gone further
doing the same thing.
Q: Pollock spoke about liking the resistance of the hard surface of the floor
when he painted. Perhaps, in a sense, limiting himself to black and white may
have been another form of self-imposed resistance?

* See Bibilography No. 264.

 Black and White: 1951

183

A: I haven't a clue to what swung him exclusively into black-and-white at

that point—besides the drawings, he did some black-and-white paintings of
considerable size earlier—but it was certainly a fully conscious decision. There
were no external causes, no shortage of color or anything like that.
Q: He very much admired Guernica and the studies for it. Was he still re-
sponding to that, reacting to it?
A: If 50, it was an awfully slow burn—say, fifteen years. But there’s no question
that he admired Picasso and at the same time competed with him, wanted to
go past him. Even before we lived in East Hampton, 1 remember one time
hearing something fall and then Jackson yelling, “God damn it’—or maybe
something stronger—‘that guy missed nothing!” I went to see what had hap-
pened. Jackson was sitting staring; and on the floor, where he had thrown it,
was a book of Picasso’s work.... Jackson experienced extremes of insecurity
and confidence. You only have to see the film of him making his painting on
glass to know how sure he was of himself: the way he wipes out the first start
and begins over. But there were other times when he was just as unsure. A little
later, in front of a very good painting—not a black-and-white—he asked me,
“Is this a painting?” Not is this a good painting, or a bad one, but a painting!
The degree of doubt was unbelievable at times. And then, again, at other times
he knew the painter he was. It’s no wonder he had doubts. At the opening of
the black-and-white show one of the New York dealers, supposedly in the know,
told him, “Good show, Jackson, but could you do it in color?” A few weeks
later another dealer satd—to me this time: “It’s all right, we've accepted it.”
The arrogance, the blindness was killing. And, as you see, not only from the
outside world, but the art world itself.
Q: What about the imagery? Did Pollock ever talk about it?
A: I only heard him do that once. Lillian Kiesler and Alice Hodges were vis-
iting and we were looking at Portrait and a Dream [a diptych of 1953, in
which the left panel is black-and-white, abstractly suggestive of two anthropo-
morphic figures, and the right—gray, orange, and yellow—is clearly a man’s
head, probably a self-portrait}. In response to their questions, Jackson talked for
along time about the left section. He spoke freely and brilliantly. 1 wish I had
had a tape-recorder. The only thing | remember was that he described the
upper right-hand corner of the left panel as “the dark side of the moon.”
Q: Several writers have connected some black-and-white paintings—and some
colored ones too—with the feel of the East Hampton landscape, particularly in
winter: the look of bare trees against the sky and flat land moving out toward sea.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

184

A: Jackson was pretty explicit about that in the Arts and Architecture ques-
tionnaire. Then [1944] he emphasized the West, but by the time of the black-
and-white show, after living in Springs for six years, I think he would have
given just as much emphasis to this Eastern Long Island landscape—and sea-
scape. They were part of his consciousness: the horizontality he speaks of, and
the sense of endless space, and the freedom.... The only time 1 heard him use
the word “landscape” in connection with his own work was one morning before
going to the studio, when he said, “I saw a landscape the likes of which no
human being could have seen.”
Q: A visionary landscape?
A: Yes, but in Jackson's case I feel that what the world calls “visionary” and
“real” were not as separated as for most people.
Q: ...How were these paintings made? What was the physical procedure?
A: ... Jackson used rolls of cotton duck, just as he had intermittently since the
early forties. All of the major black-and-white paintings were on unprimed
duck. He would order remnants, bolts of canvas anywhere from five to nine feet
high, having maybe fifty or a hundred yards left on them—commercial duck,
used for ships and upholstery—from John Boyle down on Duane St. He'd roll a
stretch of this out on the studio floor, maybe twenty feet, so the weight of the
canvas would hold it down—it didn’t have to be tacked. Then typically he'd
size it with a coat or two of Rivit glue to preserve the canvas and give it a
harder surface. Or sometimes, with the black-and-white paintings, he would
size them after they were completed, to seal them. The Rivit came from Behlen
and Brother on Christopher St. Like Boyle, it’s not an art-supplier. The paint -
Jackson used for the black-and-whites was commercial too—mostly black in-
dustrial enamel, Duco or Davoe & Reynolds. There was some brown in a cou-
ple of the paintings. But this “palette” was typically a can or two of the black
—thinned to the consistency he wanted—standing on the floor beside the rolled-
out canvas. Then, using sticks, and hardened or worn-out brushes (which were,
in effect, like sticks) and basting syringes, he’d begin. His control was amazing.
Using a stick was difficult enough, but the basting syringe was like a giant
fountain pen. With it he had to control the flow of paint, as well as his gesture.
He used to buy those syringes by the dozen at the hardware store.... With the
larger black-and-whites he'd either finish one and cut it off the roll of canvas, or
cut it off in advance and then work on it. But with the smaller ones he'd often
do several on a large strip of canvas and then cut that strip from the roll to
study it on the wall and make more working space. Sometimes he'd ask, “Should
I cut it here? Should this be the bottom?” He'd have long sessions of cutting
 Black and W hite: 1951

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and editing, some of which 1 was in on, but the final decisions were always his.
Working around the canvas—in “the arena” as he called it—there was really
no absolute top or bottom. And leaving space between paintings, there was no
absolute “frame” the way there is working on a pre-stretched canvas. Those
were difficult sessions. His signing the canvases was even worse. I’d think every-
thing was settled—tops, bottoms—and then he’d have last-minute thoughts and
doubts. He hated signing. There's something so final about a signature....
Sometimes, as you know, he’d decide to treat two or more successive panels as
one painting—as a diptych, or triptych, or whatever. Portrait and a Dream,
though a little later, is a good example. And, do you know, the same dealer who
told me Jackson’s black-and-whites were accepted, asked him then, two years
later, why he didn’t cut Portrait and a Dream in half!

From mid-October, when Lee’s show opened at Parsons, until just

before the end of the year, the Pollocks were seldom in Springs, mostly
in New York, and once or twice briefly in Deep River, Connecticut. It
was a hectic, pressured, difficult stretch of time. Her show was perhaps a
bad omen. It was poorly received, and nothing sold. Betty Parsons felt
Lee’s disappointment, and Jackson’s too. Knowing that on top of this he
was not satisfied with the way his own work had been selling and that
there was a good chance he would leave her gallery at the end of the
year when his contract expired, she did what she could to make his show
a success. She had recently, and continued now, to go along with Jackson's
suggestions and those of his friends. First, there had been his desire for a
catalogue, something he had never had for any of the selections of his
work shown in America. Alfonso Ossorio, whose own show was hung
right after Lee’s came down and before Jackson’s went up, had written
an appreciation of Pollock after seeing his new work during a brief visit
to East Hampton in August. Originally Ossorio thought of it as a possible
catalogue introduction for the Pollock show he was arranging in Paris.
But could it be used now? Yes. Tony Smith had suggested a portfolio of
black-and-white prints. What about that? Yes, that too, after Betty
Parsons got Alexander Bing to provide $400 for printing. And if Jackson
wanted his brother Sanford to do the silk-screening in Connecticut? Yes.
Like Lee Krasner’s, Alfonso Ossorio’s show was transitional and
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

186

rather poorly received: another bad omen. In Ossorio’s work the influ-
ences of Surrealism, Pollock, and Dubuffet had been well assimilated,
but he had not as yet produced the completely personal imagery of his
maturity. The introduction to the Pollock catalogue is as much a descrip-
tion of Ossorio’s searchings at mid-career as it is of Pollock’s findings at
the zenith of his:

These paintings are another assertion of the unity of concept that underlies the
work of Jackson Pollock. Through the work that he has already done and
through these more recognizable images there flows the same unifying spirit
that fuses together the production of any major painter; the singleness and
depth of Pollock's vision makes unimportant such current antithesis as “figura-
tive” and “non-representational.” The attention focused on his immediate quali-
ties—the unconventional materials and method of working, the scale and im-
mediate splendor of much of his work—has left largely untouched the forces
that compel him to work in the manner that he does. Why the tension and com-
plexity of line, the violently interwoven movement so closely knit as almost to
induce the static quality of perpetual motion, the careful preservation of the
picture's surface plane linked with an intricately rich interplay upon the canvas,
the rupture with traditional compositional devices that produces, momentarily,
the sense that the picture could be continued indefinitely in any direction?
His painting confronts us with a visual concept organically evolved from
a belief in the unity that underlies the phenomena among which we live. Void
and solid, human action and inertia, are metamorphosed and refined into the
energy that sustains them and is their common denominator. An ocean’s tides
and a personal nightmare, the bursting of a bubble and the communal clamor
for a victim are as inextricably meshed in the coruscation and darkness of his
work as they are in actuality. His forms and textures germinate, climax, and
decline, coalesce and dissolve across the canvas. The picture surface, with no
depth of recognizable space or sequence of known time, gives us the never
ending present. We are presented with a visualization of that remorseless con-
solation—in the end is the beginning.
New visions demand new techniques: Pollock's use of unexpected ma-
terials and scales are the direct result of his concepts and of the organic in-
tensity with which he works, an intensity that involves, in its complete identifi-
cation of the artist with his work, a denial of the accident....
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Pollock’s show contained sixteen oil paintings and five watercolors

and drawings, all done in 1951. In addition, Number 2, 1951 was hang-
ing at the new Whitney Annual which had opened November 8. Of all
these, not one of the very large works sold, only a few of the smaller ones
did, and even the portfolio—at $200 for a signed edition of six prints,
each limited to twenty-five copies—was bought by but a few collectors.
It is no wonder that Greenberg would write in “Feeling Is All,” the
“Art Chronicle” in the January-February 1952 Partisan Review:

Jackson Pollock’s problem is never authenticity, but that of finding his means
and bending it as far as possible toward the literalness of his emotion. Some-
times he overpowers the means but he rarely succumbs to it. His most recent
show, at Parsons’, reveals a turn but not a sharp change of direction; there is a
kind of relaxation, but the outcome is a newer and loftier triumph.... Now he
volatilizes in order to say something different from what he had to say during
the four years before, when he strove for corporeality and laid his paint on
thick and metallic. What counts, however, is not that he has different things to
Say in different ways, but that he has a lot to say.
Contrary to the impression of some of his friends, this writer does not take
Pollock’s art uncritically. 1 have at times pointed out what I believe are some of
its shortcomings—notably, in respect to color. But the weight of the evidence
still convinces me—after this last show more than ever—that Pollock is in a
class by himself.... If Pollock were a Frenchman, I feel sure that there would
be no need by now to call attention to my own objectivity in praising him;
people would already be calling him “maitre” and speculating in his pictures.
Here in this country the museum directors, the collectors, and the newspaper
critics will go on for a long time—out of fear if not out of incompetence—
refusing to believe that we have at last produced the best painter of a whole
generation, and they will go on believing everything but their own eyes.*

For the February 1952 Harper's Bazaar Greenberg did a more

“popular” note on Pollock’s recent paintings—three of which were re-
produced, much too small, down the left margin of the page. However,
on the entire facing page, overpowering the cramped illustrations and
* See also the revised version of this review in Bibliography No. 26, pp. 152-153.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

188

brief text, appeared a Namuth photograph of Pollock, probably taken the

previous summer. In it Pollock sits pensively on the running board of
his battered Model A Ford, looking downward or inward, but not at the
camera. There is a sense of exhausted relaxation, of his having just
finished work, conveyed not only by paint-spattered dungaree suit and
loafers but by the solid weight of head, shoulders, and hands centered
over feet, the inevitable cigarette barely held, seemingly forgotten be-
tween his fingers. Like the earlier Life photographs, it is one of the
images of Pollock that grips our minds as forcefully as his paintings.
Besides the two pieces by Greenberg, other critics, even if powerless
to help sales, were enthusiastic too. Howard Devree of the Times, the
painter Fairfield Porter writing for Art News, and James Fitzsimmons in
Art Digest were all pleased by the direction in which Pollock was moving
—away from what they called a “dead end” or “blind alley.”
Less than two weeks after the black-and-white show closed, one of
the paintings in it, Number 9—along with another of two years earlier
bearing the same number—had been moved to the Sidney Janis Gallery
at the other end of the fifth floor. There Janis, once again with the help
of Leo Castelli, was presenting an “American Vanguard Art for Paris
Exhibition,” a group of paintings which would be shown at Galerie de
France from the end of February through mid-March. The list of artists
in this exhibition is slightly heterogeneous: Albers, Baziotes, Brooks, de
Kooning, Goodnough, Gorky, Gottlieb, Guston, Hofmann, Kline, Matta,
Maclver, Motherwell, Russell, Reinhardt, Tobey, Tomlin, Tworkov,
Vicente. Yet one can read much of the list as threads in Pollock’s biog-
raphy, as friendships and associations going back as far as Manual Arts
High School in Los Angeles, moving through the Project, Art of This
Century, Springs, the Cedar, threads moving forward and backward, in
and out, touching and separating and touching again, until this moment
on the threshold of the Janis Gallery.
On January 3, 1952 the East Hampton Star devoted most of a
column to Alfonso Ossorio’s purchase of and actual taking title to The
 Black and W hite: 1951

189

Creeks, where by summer his important Pollocks, Dubuffets, Stills, and

more than a thousand pieces of L’Art Brut—the Raw Art, collected by
Dubuffet, of self-taught artists, often institutionalized or imprisoned—
would be installed along with a more modest sampling of his own work,
three small de Kooning Women on paper, and examples of paintings by
Lee Krasner, Wols, and Fautrier. Alongside the story of the purchase was
a smaller item:

JACKSON POLLOCK, ARTIST,

WRECKS CAR, ESCAPES INJURY
NO HOLIDAY FATALITIES
Village and Town police report a fairly quiet weekend and New Year's
Day, with no serious accidents.
Early Saturday morning, Jackson Pollock, 39, abstract artist who makes
his home in Springs, escaped injury when his Cadillac convertible left the road
while turning a corner at the intersection of The Springs-Amagansett Road and
the Louse Point Road. It mowed down three mail boxes, and glanced off a tele-
phone pole, bringing down a wire, and continued on for fifty feet, stopping
when it hit a tree. Mr. Pollock was driving alone, and was unhurt. The car was
badly damaged.

Some critics treat Pollock’s career as if it ended here, as if perhaps

he had died in that holiday crash. There are even some who would
chop it off a year earlier—that is, in 1950—considering his black-and-
white paintings, particularly the figurative ones, retrogressive. It is true
that from 1952 on, for the remaining four-and-a-half years of his life,
there will be no more radical changes in style. His career will indeed take
on a rather retrospective character. Even now, in 1952, the big events
will appear to be his first Paris show and his inclusion in the “15
Americans” show at the Museum of Modern Art. However, although
Pollock will make no more radical discoveries, his explorations of the
world he has discovered in himself will continue. In 1952 he will paint
his most controversial masterpiece, Blue Poles, the related Convergence,
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

190

and Number 12; in the following year Easter and the Totem, Portrait
and. a Dream, Ocean Greyness, and The Deep; in 1954 White Light; and
in 1955 Scent and the appropriately named Search. Yes, the annual lists
of his paintings will grow shorter. Nevertheless, to abandon Pollock now
would be to miss too much of his short life and too much of its meaning.
The black-and-white paintings, particularly the semifigurative ones, were
rather another transition in Pollock’s development, employed (Frank
O’Hara said in the subsequent catalogue New Images of Man) “as one
of the elements in an elaborate defense of his psyche.... It is drawing,
as so many of the great masters seem to tell us, that holds back the
abyss.” The abyss, previously only visited by Pollock, will become a
dwelling place during the next five years.
 Chapter Nine

The Action Painter

(1952)
Esthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds.
BARNETT NEWMAN

Pollock’s first one-man show in Paris—during March, at the Studio

Paul Facchetti—was a labor of love. Ossorio helped Michel Tapié
finance and organize it. Tapié wrote a catalogue introduction and had
Ossorio’s Betty Parsons introduction translated (now given the title,
“Mon Ami, Jackson Pollock”). Hans Namuth contributed photographs.
... Yet maybe there was about all this something too gentle, too
amateurish (in the most literal sense). The gallery was not long estab-
lished—it had been a photographer’s studio, hence its name. The eight-
page paperbound catalogue was rather skimpy and poorly printed. And
Tapié’s introduction bristled with such phrases as “one of the most
prestigious representatives of the contemporary American pictorial ad-
venture ...a bomb in the Paris art world... first-rank position in the
present great pictorial adventure... huge paintings that are among the
most compelling phenomena of our time...’—none likely to have
seduced the typically chauvinistic French press. No, it was, rather, the
artists who responded: Mathieu, for example, who had long since written
Betty Parsons that he considered Pollock “the greatest living American
painter,” and Henri Michaux, poet and painter referred to in Tapié’s text.
(Dubuffet was not now in Paris. He had returned to New York after a
trip to Chicago. But in 1950 he wrote Ossorio that Pollock “is one of the
few living painters ... whose oeuvre interests me.”)
Few paintings sold, notably Number 19, 1951 to the Milanese col-
lector Carlo Frua de Angeli. And Tapié bought two smaller works—
Number 17, 1949 (which had been reproduced in Life) and Number
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

192

8, 1951—for himself, but at a dealer’s discount of fifty percent. After

this discount and the normal one-third commission on the other purchases
plus reimbursement for crating, shipping, and catalogue publication, there
was only about $1300 left for Pollock. In Paris the real reaction, the
more broadly positive reaction occurred a year or two later, when still
younger Americans would receive the benefits of this missionary work and
European dealers would begin to see and buy American paintings.
However, it may be too easy now, a generation later, to make these
evaluations. At the time, Pollock’s were quite different:

Monday, March 30, 1952.

Dear Alfonso,
First we like the catalog as everyone did who saw it—haven’t yet had a
decent translation of Tapié’s forward—even Dubuffet couldn't do too well.
Also I had one of the nicest letters from Tapié before the show opened—I hope
you will thank him for me (I will write him this week.) And of course the
sales are out of this world—certainly not expected by me, and everything
around the sales are of course satisfactory—and if there are further decisions—
you can use your own judgment. I have offers by two good galleries here—but
I don’t plan to make any final decision until you are back. The Museum of
Modern Art show opens next week (I'll send the catalogues out as soon as they
are ready). There is no change with Betty—haven’t seen her since you left.
This getting settled in a new gallery isn't easy to solve personally. 1 feel I have
been skinned alive—with my experience with Dr. [Grant] Mark [a biochemist
who had Pollock dieting on minerals and proteins as well as bathing in a solu-
tion of rock salt) which got more involved each weak [sic] until a crisis last
week—l’'m still a little dazed by the whole experience. All this we can discuss
when you return—including Tapié’s offer. If there are any Paris catalogues left
I could use a few more, and if there are any newspaper reports would love to
see them....
Our love to you both,
Jackson

Pollock’s comments about the catalogue may have been politeness—

after all, Ossorio had initially paid for it. However, those about the sales
 The Action Painter: 1952

193

cannot be taken for anything but sincerity; the tone of appreciation is

unmistakable. As famous as Pollock now was, even four European sales
were still unexpected. That, he must have thought, was the trouble with
Betty—she just didn’t sell, didn’t know how. In most other ways she was
perfect. There was a tendency to be undiscriminating, to show too many
artists, but still she was really sensitive and understanding, even painted
herself. However, when it came to putting alittle pressure on a collector
Or an institution—well, she couldn’t do it. At the turn of the year and
the termination of his contract, Jackson may have said some of this to her,
told her how much he liked her, but made it clear that he needed a more
aggressive dealer. Of course she was hurt, wanted him to understand how
hard she had been trying, the extent of her investment in him. At the
end of January she had written, asking him to stay with her until May so
she might at least get the benefit of possible sales still pending from his
last show and others that might come from interest stimulated by the one
about to open at the Museum of Modern Art. Jackson had gone along
with her request and had agreed to keep an open mind, if she succeeded
in doing some business. Meanwhile, without committing himself, he
listened to the propositions of some of the other dealers. More aggressive,
less nice than Betty, they talked tougher and spoke of art as merchandise.
And yet, maybe, as Leo Durocher was fond of saying, “Nice guys don’t
win ballgames.” Janis met with Lee and Jackson and asked, “Do you
think the Pollock market has been reached?” Lee replied, “The surface
hasn’t been scratched.” They all knew there was a rapport.

“15 Americans” was one of a series of exhibitions organized by

Dorothy Miller at the Museum of Modern Art. For them she selected an
arbitrary number of artists, each of whom had developed his own style
and was deserving of what amounted to a small one-man show. Pollock
was shown with Baziotes, Still, Rothko, Tomlin, Corbett, Ferber, and
Kiesler, among others. Miss Miller’s previous “14 Americans” (1946)
had included Tobey, Gorky, Motherwell, Hare, and Roszak, and her “12
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Vistble

194

Americans” (1956) would include Brooks, Guston, Kline, Lassaw, and

Lipton. Thus a substantial part of what was to become the official institu-
tional list of Abstract Expressionists (one which excludes Lee Krasner,
among others) was already formed or being formed, and once again we see
in this list threads of Pollock’s biography, associations from the past—
California, the Project, Art of This Century, the Cedar, Springs—East
Hampton, Betty Parsons Gallery—tleading to future biographical threads,
particularly the Sidney Janis Gallery.
Eight paintings representing Pollock’s work from 1948 to 1951
were selected, including the mural-sized Autumn Rhythm and the glass
Number 29, 1950 (installed free-standing and illuminated so that its
shadow was cast on the wall). Soon after the opening Pollock wrote
Miss Miller: “I want you to know what a wonderful job I think you did
in hanging my room at the Museum. There was probably extra work for
you (or was there?) in my staying away. At any rate I think it was wise
Of. Me. tevin
In the catalogue, Pollock’s work was introduced by Ossorio’s piece
for the 1951 show, slightly modified. This may have been Pollock’s way
of repeating what he said to Janis in 1944: “... Any attempt on my part
to say something about it, to attempt explanation of the inexplicable,
could only destroy it.” Ossorio echoes Pollock’s fear in his phrase “the
communal clamor for a victim.” So does Rothko in the same catalogue:
‘Wo vile: is Peal riskyeactito *sendala picture} out into the world. How
often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of
the impotent who would extend their affliction universally!” And Still:

That pigment on canvas has a way of initiating conventional reactions for most
people needs no reminder. Behind these reactions is a body of history matured
into dogma, authority, tradition. The totalitarian hegemony of this tradition 1
despise, its presumptions I reject. Its security 1s an illusion, banal, and without
courage. Its substance is but dust and filing cabinets. The homage paid to it 15 a
celebration of death. We all bear the burden of this tradition on our backs but
I cannot hold it a privilege to be a pallbearer of my spirit in its name.
 The Action Painter; 1952

195

These statements indicate a mood, a spirit in the air, a sense of

drama and urgency—indeed, of life and death—in painting which had
emerged during the past decade or so. This ambience was best expressed
by Harold Rosenberg in his essay “The American Action Painters,”
which appeared in the December 1952 Art News:

... At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter
after another as an arena in which to act—rather than as a space in which to
reproduce, re-design, analyze, or “express” an object, actual or imagined. What
was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.
The painter no longer approached his easel with an image in his mind; he
went up to it with material in his hand to do something to that other piece of
material in front of him. The image would be the result of this encounter.
... 10 work from sketches arouses the suspicion that the artist still regards
the canvas as a place where the mind records its contents—rather than itself
the “mind” through which the painter thinks by changing a surface with paint.

In Pollock’s files at the time of his death there was, along with the
handwritten statement already quoted, this one:

No Sketches
acceptance of
what I do—.
Experience of our age in terms
of painting—not an illustration of—
(but the equivalent.)
Concentrated
fluid

Compare for a moment Pollock’s public (and economic) reception

with that given to other vital cultural phenomena emerging in America
at about the same time: “cool” jazz, Actors’ Studio, the Beat Writers,
“serious” stand-up night-club comedians. It is not difficult to find similari-
ties between Pollock’s life and those, for example, of Charlie “Bird”
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Vistble

196

Parker (1920-55), James Dean (1931-55), Jack Kerouac (1923-69),

and Lenny Bruce (1926-1966).
A phrase from Bird’s saxophone swoops through the mind, diving
in a thin line, spreading out in a glide, exploding as if hit by a bullet.
James Dean’s face twitches; his mouth opens; the sounds are those
of feeling rather than known words; he starts to run; he talks with his
body.
A little later—with the publication, in 1957, of On the Road—
Jack Kerouac comes up from underground: “...bleary eyes, insaned
mind bemused and mystified by sleep, details that pop out even as you
write them you don’t know what they mean, till you wake up, have coffee,
look at it, and see the logic of dreams in dream language itself .. .”*
And Lenny Bruce: “All my humor is based on destruction and
despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence,
I'd be standing in the breadline—right back of J. Edgar Hoover.”
How similar Kerouac’s words are to Pollock’s statement in possibilities.
How similar are all of these approximately contemporaneous statements,
whether made on the stage or in the studio. But there is this difference:
after whatever early struggles, an audience did finally buy drinks and,
later, records to hear Bird and Lenny; did pay for tickets to see Jimmy and
for books to read Jack. A large paying audience. Pollock never had that.
Never during his lifetime. For him there was no New York Times item
like the following:
The newest and in some ways most scarifyingly funny proponent of significance
...to be found in a nightclub these days is Lenny Bruce, a sort of abstract-
expressionist stand-up comedian paid $1750 a week to vent his outrage on the
chentele....

So, in context, the context of “The American Action Painters,”

Rosenberg is writing about a comparatively quiet aspect of existential art,
the private, solitary studio world of the canvas as mind. He goes on:
* See Bibliography No. 275.
 The Action Painter: 1952

197

... What matters always is the revelation contained in the act. It is to be taken
for granted that in the final effect, the image, whatever be or be not in it, will
be a tension.
A painting that is an act is inseparable from the biography of the artist.
The painting itself is a “moment” in the adulterated mixture of his life—
whether “moment” means, in one case, the actual minutes taken up with spot-
ting the canvas or, in another, the entire duration of a lucid drama conducted
in sign language. The act-painting is of the same metaphysical substance as the
artist’s existence. The new painting has broken down every distinction between
art and life.

In these fragments of Rosenberg’s composite portrait there are broad

reminders of Pollock’s life and outlook. In the remainder of the essay the
reminders seem sometimes to refer even more specifically to Pollock (who
himself referred to the essay as “Rosenberg’s piece on me”’)—that is, more
than to de Kooning and Kline who must have ‘been Rosenberg’s other
ptincipal models. Rosenberg has, in any case, written the author*:
“Action Painting was not intended to describe Rothko, Still, Gottlieb or
Newman. Nor Gorky either.... In short, A.P. is not a synonym for
Abstract Expressionism, though there is a connection... .” He continues,
in the essay itself:

... Their type is not a young painter but a reborn one. The man may be
over forty, the painter around seven.
... The American vanguard painter took to the white expanse of the can-
vas as Melville’s Ishmael took to the Sea.
... Lacking verbal flexibility, the painters speak of what they are doing in
a jargon still involved in the metaphysics of things: “My painting is not Art;
it’s an Is.” “It’s not a picture of a thing; it's the thing itself.” at “It doesn’t repro-
duce Nature; it is Nature.” ...
Language has not accustomed itself to a situation in which the act itself is
the “object.” Along with the philosophy of TO PAINT appear bits of
Vedanta and popular pantheism.
In terms of American tradition, the new painters stand somewhere between

* Letter dated June 22, 1970.

 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

198

Christian Science and Whitman's “gangs of cosmos.” That is, between a disci-
pline of vagueness by which one protects oneself from disturbance while keep-
img one’s eyes open for benefits; and the discipline of the Open Road of risk
that leads to the farther side of the object and the outer spaces of the conscious-
ness.
... What is a painting that is not an object nor the representation of an
object nor the analysis or impression of it nor whatever else a painting has
ever been—and that has also ceased to be the emblem of a personal struggle?
It is the painter himself changed into a ghost inhabiting The Art World. Here
the common phrase, “I have bought an O” (rather than a painting by O) be-
comes literally true. The man who started to remake himself has made himself
into a commodity with a trademark.
... Considering the degree to which it is publicized and feted, vanguard
painting ts hardly bought at all. It is used in its totality as material for educa-
tional and profitmaking enterprises: color reproductions, design adaptations,
human-interest stories. Despite the fact that more people see and hear about
works of art than ever before, the vanguard artist has an audience of nobody.
An interested individual here and there, but no audience. He creates an environ-
ment not of people but of functions. His paintings are employed not wanted....

Rosenberg presented the situation of the Action Painter as it was in

1952 and as it would remain until about 1956, the time of Pollock’s
death. It must be reemphasized that as yet neither Pollock nor his less-
well-known and even less-well-selling contemporaries had any sizable
audience but other artists. The middle-class executives and professional
people who were willing to give these painters a few minutes—a few
condescending chuckles, more often than not—as they flipped through
the pages of Time were not yet ready to spend the several hundred dollars
an average-size painting or drawing would cost. In short, Pollock’s success
was not economic but professional. Of his most important paintings only
about half a dozen were sold during his lifetime, half of these during his
last year. The Museum of Modern Art acquired Number 1, 1948 for about
$1,000 in 1950; Lavender Mist went, at the time of its first showing, to
Ossorio for about $1,500 spread over a considerable period; Blue Poles
to Dr. Fred Olsen for $6,000, a year after its first showing; and One to
 The Action Painter: 1952

199

Ben Heller, five years after its first showing, for $8,000 to be spread over
four years and with a medium-size black-and-white given to Heller “in
recognition of his commitment to Pollock’s work.” In addition, just before
Pollock’s death, Heller bought Echo, an important black-and-white of
1951 (about which Greenberg had enthused in Partisan Review), for a
price difficult to establish because it involved a discount, but rumored
to have been approximately $3,500. Finally, in March 1956, Convergence
(1952) was bought at an undisclosed price by Seymour H. Knox for the
Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. If one deducts dealers’ commis-
sions and routine working and living expenses, Pollock had a meager
income at the end of his life. In the early fifties he could barely survive.
Tony Smith says,* “The financial pinch must have been terrible, especially
when you realize how generous the Pollocks were. I think Jackson started
to drink again... just out of despair. Despair at his plight. He had done
so much, and so little had come out of it... he gave me a sketchbook to
draw on while going to New York on the train. He had figured out his
income tax on the cover; the whole income was only $2,600 or something
like that.”

... Art comes into being not through correct reasoning but through uniting con-
tradictions of reason in the ambiguities of a metaphor. To remove the object
and make the artist’s action into the work of art is to bring the artist face to
face with the audience.... The Action painter does not, like the Surrealist,
begin with an image, nor does he proceed by the association and combination
of images. From his first gesture on the canvas, be it a sweep of yellow or the
figure 4, he establishes a tension upon the surface—that is to say, outside him-
self—and he counts upon this abstract force to animate his next move. What
he seeks is not a sign representing a hidden self, the unconscious, but an event
out of which a self is formed, as it is formed out of other kinds of action when
those actions are free and sufficiently protracted. It ts in this sense that Action
painting could be said to break down the barrier between art and life—not by
merging art into the environment, as in Pop and Happenings, but through en-
gaging in art as areal (that is, total) activity.
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

200

Though the P in Action Painting has become small, the voice is

the same. It is that of Harold Rosenberg, clarifying and expanding upon
the concept; doing so almost twenty years later, in The New Yorker,
where by then he has replaced Robert Coates and where an audience now
exists for long philosophical essays on art, an audience previously to be
found reading only little magazines and specialized art journals. Again,
it is probably no accident, but rather a subconscious association, that
made Rosenberg choose the figure 4 as a way of establishing tension on
the surface of the canvas. Pollock had used the number often—in Steno-
graphic Figure, in Male and Female, in Wounded Animal, and elsewhere
—sometimes only as a doodle; sometimes in 46, his address on East 8th
Street (and earlier on Carmine); sometimes as that number reversed.
By September 1952 Pollock’s black-and-white show had been down
for nine months, with none of the largest paintings sold. By then Janis’s
“American Vanguard” had been seen at Galerie de France, and Pollock’s
one-man show at Studio Facchetti. By then a watercolor had been shown
at yet another Whitney Annual. By then “15 Americans” had come and |
gone. By then a black-and-white painting had been included in “The First
International Art Exhibition” at the Metropolitan Art Gallery in Tokyo,
from which it traveled to Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, and Kyoto. By then
Pollock knew that another black-and-white would be in the Carnegie In-
stitute’s “Pittsburgh International” and that Greenberg was organizing a
retrospective show of eight paintings ranging from the 1943 Pasiphaé to
Number 25, 1951, scheduled to open at Bennington College in Novem-
ber and then travel to Williams College in December. By then Pollock
had completed about nine paintings that year—including Number 2, a
triptych—all of which were pretty much a continuation of the previous
year’s work in black-and-white. And he had left Parsons and joined Janis,
had added that pressure to all the others out there beyond the studio,
including being rated best by Greenberg and being defined as prototypical
Action Painter by Rosenberg. There can be little doubt that as Pollock
contemplated his most recent paintings and the empty canvas before him,
 The Action Painter: 1952

201

the pressure of his next show was there, intruding on the void. We can
imagine how much he wanted “to make a splash” with his first show at
this more high-powered gallery where not only the work of young Ameri-
cans—several of them, like Pollock himself, formerly at Parsons—but
that of established Europeans was shown and sold.
During the two months or so remaining until his November 10
opening, Pollock completed three outstanding paintings—outstanding
within the context of the work done earlier in the year, within that of his
total oeuvre, and within that of all twentieth-century art. Number 10
(Convergence), which had been black-and-white and was then added to
in color; Number 11 (Blue Poles), which he had worked on through the
year, re-entering it several times; and the explosive Number 12 were sin-
gled out for praise by almost every reviewer—Fitzsimmons, Devree,
Goodnough, Faison—and must have been the basis on which this exhibi-
tion was voted by Art News (January 1953) the second-best one-man
show of the year in New York—second this time to Miré.
Perhaps because Numbers 10, 11, and 12 were immediately so well
received, there was a sort of backlash on the part of some painters and
critics, particularly at The Club, who said that these works represented a
further falling off from the high period of 1947 to 1950 (or, in Green-
berg’s case, 1951). Instead of seeing the particular power of the recent
paintings and the daring of their palette, they saw garish color applied to
a crude repetition of previously done, warmed-over patterns. And in Blue
Poles they saw a return, as in the black-and-whites, to line used to define
shape. But worse, they saw references to work by Pollock’s contempo-
raries. The stained areas in Number 12 reminded them of work by Mark
Rothko, and the near-verticals of Blue Poles of the stripes or “zips” of
Barnett Newman. Newman reinforced the second of these superficial
views with a witticism: “My blood is in that painting.” By this he said he
meant only to refer to stepping on broken glass in Pollock’s studio when
the painting was spread on the floor.
Whatever the reasons, Convergence did not sell until the March
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

202

preceding Pollock’s death. Blue Poles, too, was not sold until his last year
and then probably only because of the urging of Tony Smith, who was
designing a new house for the Olsens in Guilford, Connecticut. (After
Pollock’s death Olsen sold it to Heller for what at the time seemed a huge
price: $32,000, representing a profit to Olsen of $26,000)* Number 12,
the only one of these three paintings sold soon after the show, was bought
by Nelson Rockefeller who subsequently took it with him to Albany.
There, in the Governor’s Mansion, it was badly damaged by fire in 1961.
In 1959, when Frank O’Hara’s monograph on Pollock was published,
he stated:

Much has been written about Pollock's difficulties in the last three years of
his life, and more has been spoken. The works accomplished in these years, if
created by anyone else, would have been astonishing. But for Pollock, who had
incited in himself, and won, a revolution in three years (1947-50), it was not
enough. This attitude has continued to obscure the qualities of some of these
works, for in Blue Poles he gave us one of the great masterpieces of Western
art, and in The Deep a work which contemporary esthetic conjecture had cried
out for. Blue Poles is our Raft of the Medusa and our Embarkation for Cythera
in one. I say our, because it is the drama of an American conscience, lavish,
bountiful and rigid. It contains everything within itself, begging no quarter: a
world of sentiment implied, but denied; a map of sensual freedom, fenced; a
careening licentiousness, guarded by eight totems native to its origins (There
Were Seven in Eight). What is expressed here is not only basic to his work as
a whole, but it is final.

When the next monograph on Pollock was written—that, previ-

ously mentioned, of the British critic Bryan Robertson—Blue Poles was
its focus. He begins defensively: “... this picture is considered by some
American observers to go over old ground too much and to return a shade
hysterically ...to the celebrated style of Pollock’s great paintings of the
1949-51 period....” before asserting: “Blue Poles is in fact a master-
piece and one of the half-dozen key paintings in Pollock’s output. There is
no slackening of invention or uneasy groping back to an earlier and
*In September 1973 Heller sold Blue Poles to the Australian National Gallery in Canberra for
$2,000,000.
 The Action Painter: 1952

203

more familiar manner. On the contrary, Blue Poles should be considered

as a definitive summing-up work of magisterial proportions and convic-
BO...
Blue Poles is all the things Robertson says and at least one more: it
is the last of Pollock’s “murals”; like the other great ones, it was private
and uncommissioned. However, it may well have reminded Pollock’s
friends of the possibility of an architectural commission. During the ex-
tended period in which Pollock worked on it, Ossorio continued to speak
to Tony Smith and to Pollock himself about designing and decorating a
Catholic church. It was understood that such a project would be specula-
tive, with no particular site in mind, and that Pollock would be free to
decorate prescribed areas according to his own feelings about required
emotional content, achieved through scale, color, rhythm, etc., rather than
traditional iconography. Pollock and Smith were receptive to the plan, and
Ossorio agreed to pay Smith a fee for sketches and a small model. Smith
remembers that while he developed these, Pollock questioned him about
Catholicism. However, though one hears rumors that in the last desperate
years of his life, Pollock was considering converting to Catholicism, the
specific possibility was never discussed with Smith nor with Ossorio who,
like Smith, was Catholic. Smith attributes Pollock’s interest in Catholicism
to his background (the McCoys were Catholic), his longstanding general
interest in all religions, and the specific appeal of the external form and
symbolism of Catholicism.
The church Smith designed was poised above a cemetery, suspended
there, like a honeycomb, between earth and sky, a cluster of prefabricated
hexagonal elements, an elegant enclosure for art. It was a church, like
Pollock’s painting on glass, through which one saw and felt the landscape.
Ossorio and Pollock were delighted. Ossorio arranged to have a group of
prominent Catholics associated with avant-garde art (Eloise Spaeth, pa-
tron, writer, and active committeewoman; the critic and curator James
Johnson Sweeney; Father Ford of Columbia; Maurice Lavannoux, editor
of Liturgical Arts) meet Smith at the carriage house on MacDougal Alley.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

204

However, some of those present showed such a lack of enthusiasm or even

receptivity to both the church and paintings by Pollock in the house that
Smith left in disgust.
Nothing came of the meeting. Peter Blake wanted very much to
publish these studies, along with others Smith had done previously, but as
always Smith refused. He went on to use the hexagon as the basis for an-
other project, a much less costly hexagonal tent, possibly to be built in
East Hampton, in which Pollock’s work could be shown without patron-
age. This, too, was never built and never published.
 Chapter Ten

The Final Years

(1953-1956)
“,..1'm a dawdler! I’m a failure! I shall do nothing more in this world.... I’ve
been sitting here for a week, face to face with the truth, with the past, with my
weakness and poverty and nullity. I shall never touch a brush! I believe I’ve
neither eaten nor slept. Look at that canvas!... That was to have contained my
masterpiece! Isn’t it a promising foundation? The elements of it are all here.”
And he tapped his forehead with that mystic confidence which had marked the
gesture before. “If I could only transpose them into some brain that had the
hand, the will!...” And he pointed with a gesture 1 shall never forget at the
empty canvas.
HENRY JAMES
“The Madonna of the Future’
In Action painting the pressing issue for artists was: When is a painting fin-
ished? Answer: At exactly the end of the artist’s lifetime.
HAROLD ROSENBERG
Act and the Actor

1953 will be the first year since 1944 in which Pollock won’t have had at
least one one-man show. He is tired now, tense, confused, desperate,
drinking more than ever, under pressure to paint masterpieces, to main-
tain the standard of those three paintings which salvaged his 1952 show.
On the one hand he is too proud, too honest to want to repeat himself, to
give the critics more of what they seem to think is his best work, and on
the other he isn’t sure of where he’s going, where he can go. He is lost at
sea, foundering between recapitulations and new quests.
At Janis’s urging, because the dealer feared the possibility of con-
fusion resulting from the use of the same numbers in different years (or
even in the same years, by different artists), Pollock—with help from
friends, including Jeffrey Potter—named the paintings in his 1954 show.
There were ten, all completed between the end of 1952 and the begin-
ning of 1954 and all dated 1953; some of the titles, as well as the im-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

206

ages themselves, tell the story. There is the vast sea of his subconscious,
turbulent and churning, no longer moving in the more regular rhythms
of tides and waves: Ocean Greyness; The Deep. There is the sense of
strain, of labor rather than joy, of grayness rather than color, of vari-
ations in gray itself and even in its spelling: Ritual; Sleeping Effort;
Ocean Greyness; Grayed Rainbow. There are the partially repre-
sentational recapitulations: Sleeping Effort; Easter and Totem; Portrait
and a Dream—of which the first two contain suggestions of Matisse and
Picasso not seen in Pollock’s work for about ten years. There are these
things, and yet one more, looked at as paintings rather than art history,
they are all strong work. Two are unique among Pollock’s entire output.
The diptych Portrait and a Dream Lee Pollock has already commented
on. We want only to emphasize how well this painting holds in tension
its panels of black and white and color, of abstraction and figurative
portraiture. It is a startling resolution of opposites. A more difficult, a
more totally abstract resolution, is The Deep. Discussing this painting im-
mediately after his remarks on Blue Poles, O’Hara wrote:
The Deep is the coda to this triumph. It is a scornful technical masterpiece,
like the Olympia of Manet. And it is one of the most provocative images of our
time, an abyss of glamour encroached upon by a flood of innocence.

The dark central area of the painting can be read more prosaically
as an abyss of gloom. However, one supposes that O’Hara was projecting
into the painting his own knowledge of Pollock’s life, his sympathy for
the public, indeed overly publicized, man.
But, at the time—during February 1954, when the show was up—
the reviewers, though generally enthusiastic, responded with more de-
tachment than O'Hara. They noted changes in Pollock’s work—some
uncertainty, less dripping, more figurative elements—and in this uneven-
ness they looked for positive transition and growth. Stuart Preston in the
daily Times said the works “are painted in an angry manner, heaped high
and churned up with paint-color, now thick, now thin; and design will
vary from the sequence of leaping forms of harsh color in ‘Ocean Grey-
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

207

ness’ to baroque spirals in ‘Four Opposites’ and to the powerful ambiguity

of restless shapes in ‘Sleeping Effort.’”” Preston concluded that these
“strong pictures...mark a happy advance over the impersonality of
much of his early work.” By Sunday, in an “Abstract Roundup,” Preston
noted, “there are indications that the return to subject matter is not all
just talk. In Jackson Pollock’s impressive new pictures... unmistakably
intuitions seethe under restless and tortured surface textures....” The
same day Emily Genauer, in the Herald Tribune, saw “a new and promis-
ing approach. To begin with they're really painted, not dripped!” In The
New Yorker Robert Coates saw “new trends.” S. Lane Faison, Jr. of The
Nation observed that the paintings “are surprisingly different, one from
the other. As a result the consistency of style that marked Pollock’s work
of three or four years ago is patently disrupted. This is a normal occur-
rence, of course, particularly if it turns out to be a period between
periods.”
As to the art magazines as such, James Fitzsimmons observed in
Arts & Architecture: ‘... Pollock has confounded his critics and bemused
his admirers. For one thing, he has not repeated himself. And though he
has introduced figurative elements into his work, he has not succumbed to
... failure of nerve and imagination....” And Thomas Hess in Art
News: “... Pollock still walks on the edge separating violence from
decorativeness; in the new pictures containing figurative elements, the
edge separates violence from sentimentality. That he passes so seldom be-
yond violence, and that he so consistently roots the image in its pictorial
qualities, reaffirms one’s belief in his international importance.”
The absence of a review by Greenberg of the 1952 show had been
conspicuous. Now again, for the time being anyway, he abstained from
public comment, though he told Pollock privately that he was disap-
pointed in the recent work. Indeed, by this time he may have been a little
bored by Pollock and wanted to “discover” someone new, the “discovery”
of Pollock having become possibly too large a part of Greenberg's iden-
tity. In any case, he did not refer to the 1954 show in print until the fol-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

208

lowing year when his well-known essay “ ‘American-Type’ Painting”*

appeared:

... Though Pollock is a famous name now, his art has not been fundamentally
accepted where one would expect it to be. Few of his fellow artists can yet tell
the difference between his good and his bad work—or at least not in New York.
His most recent show, in 1954, was the first to contain pictures that were
forced, pumped, dressed up, but it got more acceptance than any of his previous
exhibitions had—for one thing, because it made clear what an accomplished
craftsman he had become, and how pleasingly he could use color now that he
was not sure of what he wanted to say with it. (Even so, there were still two
or three remarkable paintings present.) His 1951 exhibition {the black-and-
white show], on the other hand, which included four or fie huge canvases of
monumental perfection and remains the peak of his achievement so far, was
the one received most coldly of all.

Further on in this article, which attempted to define the American

art scene and which has indeed been used by many collectors and curators _
as a working definition, Greenberg referred to

the emergence of Clyfford Still as one of the most important and original
painters of our time—perhaps the most original of all painters under fifty-fwe,
if not the best.... Rothko and especially Newman are more exposed than Still.
to the charge of being decorators by their preference for rectilinear drawing.
This sets them apart from Still in another way, too. By liberating abstract paint-
ing from value contrasts, Still also liberated it, as Pollock had not, from the
quasi-geometrical, faired drawing which Cubism had found to be the surest way
to prevent the edges of forms from breaking through a picture surface that had
been tautened, and therefore made exceedingly sensitive, by the shrinking of the
illusion of depth underneath it.

One does not have to italicize phrases like “if not the best” and “as
Pollock had not” to recognize how far Greenberg has moved from his
initial commitment to Pollock. However, it must be noted that neither

* See Bibliography No. 108 and compare with revised version in No. 26.
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

209

now nor later did Greenberg modify his opinions of Pollock’s earlier
work. Where most critics began to concentrate on the “classic” work of
1947 to 1950, Greenberg maintained his interest in key paintings of the
early and middle forties and in the black-and-white paintings of 1951.
These are the last reviews of current work by Pollock. From now
on such critical commentary as appears will be retrospective—some in
response to “15 Years of Jackson Pollock” at Janis, almost two years
later, half a year before his death; most in response to larger retrospective
exhibitions after his death. As a painter, Pollock is, and will continue to
be for the remaining two-and-a-half years of his life, “a ghost inhabiting
the Art World.”

During the summer of 1954 Elaine and Bill de Kooning, Franz

Kline and Nancy Ward, and Ludwig Sander, another painter, rented the
big oxblood-colored house in Bridgehampton on the north side of the
Montauk highway. They were still getting settled, putting books out of
the way which had been stored there by Don Braider, when Jackson drove
up in his Model A. There was the usual horsing around, the same sort of
bear-hugging and back-slapping and sparring as went on at the Cedar.
Jackson helped and hindered. He carried a load of books to the basement,
but mostly he interfered. While they worked inside and outside the
house, he helped himself to beer and continued to kid around. No one
knows quite how it happened but at some point he stumbled in a hole and
broke his ankle. His friends got him to the clinic and then had the job of
calling Lee. Of course she was furious and blamed them for getting Jack-
son drunk. De Kooning said later, ‘“He’s a big boy. If he wants to take
some beer from the refrigerator I’m not going to stop him.” It was weeks
before Jackson’s ankle was sufficiently healed so that he could pick up his
Model A. By then, because of his inactivity, he was beginning to put on
the weight which would so markedly change his appearance during the
last two years of his life. And by then also, he had begun to grow a beard.
Meanwhile career details accumulated—past work appeared in
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

210

Whitney Annuals and “The New Decade” (1955) at the same institu-
tion; in exhibitions at or emanating from other New York museums (the
traveling shows organized by the Modern; “Younger American Painters”
at the Guggenheim) and museums in other American cities (Urbana,
Baltimore, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Colorado Springs, St.
Louis, Newark, Pittsburgh for another Carnegie “International”) and
abroad (Paris, Diisseldorf, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Bern, Zurich, Bar-
celona, Frankfurt, London, The Hague, Vienna, Belgrade, Venice for
“American Artists Paint The City” in the 28th Biennale, New Delhi,
Caracas)... . Catalogue details, dots on maps representing places Pollock
had never been and will never be, less than dots, nothing .. . nothing to
fill the void of the empty canvas before him, nothing now to ease those
twin pressures: not to repeat himself and to be as good as he had been...
as he had been as recently as in 1953 when painting The Deep.
Days, weeks, months, years, more than two full years go by, during
which Pollock makes only a few medium-sized paintings in a style that,
typically now, is torn between dripping and heavy brushwork. Two of ~
these late paintings, White Light and Search, were shown at the Janis
Gallery along with fourteen earlier ones (none yet in collections except
for three of the smallest, including one belonging to Peggy Guggenheim)
in “15 Years of Jackson Pollock” through December 1955. Not a single
reviewer mentioned either of the late works.
Although Pollock accepted the idea—that of Janis, encouraged by
Lee—of a small retrospective, he may have felt that to have one was to be
buried prematurely. Could he have accepted the reassurances of friends
who said that looking backward did not preclude looking forward again?
To Pollock there must have been something terribly final about this show
at Janis, final in the same way he found signing a canvas final. And here
his signature was, spread over the walls of the gallery, spread all the way
from The Flame (1937) to his most recent Search.
Typically the press treated Pollock as an old master, a past master;
gave him a premature funeral; buried him beneath thousands of words.
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

211

However, where most publications were eulogistic, Time (December 19,

1955), even in its selective anthology from other reviews, was snide:

THE CHAMP

Jackson Pollock, at 43 the bush-bearded heavyweight champion of abstract

expressionism, shuffled into the ring at Manhattan's Sidney Janis Gallery, and
flexed his muscles for the crowd with a retrospective show covering 15 years of
his career. The exhibition stretched back to the time when Pollock was imitat-
ing imitations of Picasso, reached a climax with the year 1948, when Pollock
first conceived the idea of dripping and sloshing paint from buckets onto vast
canvases laid flat on the floor. Once the canvases were hung upright, what grav-
ity had accomplished came to look like the outpouring of Herculean energy.
Pollock had invented a new kind of decoration, astonishingly vehement.
That was Pollock’s one big contribution to the slosh-and-spatter school of
postwar art, and friend and foe alike crowded the exhibition in tribute to the
champ’s prowess. They found a sort of proof of his claims to fame in the exhibi-
tion catalogue, which lists no less than 16 U. S. and three European museums
that own Pollock canvases. But when it came down to explaining just what
Pollock was up to, the critics retreated into a prose that rivaled his own gaudy
drippings. Items:
The New York Times regretted that “until psychology digs deeper into
the workings of the creative act, the spectator can only respond, in one way or
another to the gruff, turgid, sporadically vital reelings and writhings of Pol-
lock’s inner-directed art.”
The New York Herald Tribune stated firmly that “whether or not you like
Pollock’s painting, or think the results no better than color decorations, one
must admit the potency of his process.”
Art News explained that Pollock’s work “sustains the abstract-size scale
toward which his vision has probably always been directed. It is a ‘cosmic’ scale
because of the multiple overlay and continuous spiral movement in conjunction
with the non-figurativeness.”
Arts summed up: “A Pollock painting, charged with his personal my-
thology, remains meaningless to him for whom Pollock himself is not a tangible
reality. An Indian sculpture is related to Vedic and Upanishadic thought, ex-
actly so are Pollock's canvases related to his self. Ignore that relation and they
remain anonymous and insignificant.”
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

212

In other words you can't tell very much about the champ without a per.
sonal introduction.

Pollock must have been hurt and angry, and there was no comfort in
the other articles on the art pages of Time. The lead piece dealt blithely
and condescendingly with a Pascin retrospective commemorating the
twenty-fifth anniversary of this painter’s suicide at forty-five (“The pasty
little man with the well-ripened nose sat fingering a razor blade”).
“Sculpture on the Bargain Counter” was about a sale of antiquities at the
City Art Museum of St. Louis (“Art objects of various neglected periods
proved to be even better bargains than contemporary pictures by little-
known artists”). These were no better than the piece on himself, so full of
oversimplifications, half-truths, outright lies; so full of shit, he would have
thought. Did The Flame, the earliest painting in his show, have anything
to do with Picasso? Didn’t they know he had drawn with spilled paint
before 1948? And was 1948 “a climax” when viewed in the context of
Out of the Web (1949)? Autumn Rhythm (1950)? Echo (1951)?.
Convergence (1952) ?—all in the show, hanging right before their eyes,
those collective eyes of Time, Inc. And why at this stage in Pollock’s
career did Janis have to list museum collections (sixteen in the U.S., not
“no less than 16”)? Why did Time have to pick up on those credentials?
Weren't his paintings, there on the walls, credentials enough? And if
Time was going to do things like this, why didn’t it dig a little deeper?
Why didn’t it say that many of the works in museums were there as tax-
deductible gifts from Peggy Guggenheim? Why, instead of presenting
him as some kind of best-selling success, didn’t it come right out and say
that he needed sales, needed money, had had and was continuing to have
a hard time supporting himself and his wife? And why did Time have to
rip from their context the words of a responsive and sensitive critic like
Leo Steinberg in Arts and turn these words into more shit, more lies?
Why?
Pollock could tell himself that Time didn’t matter, that words didn’t
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

213

matter, that the reactions of the outside world didn’t matter, that the only
thing which really mattered was the work itself, doing it, being alive in it.
He had been able to tell himself these things during the years when he
was working. But even then perhaps the outside world had meant more
than he was willing to admit. Now blocked, unproductive, unalive, he had
no present work to fall back on, no work immediately ahead of him,
nothing but the empty canvas, waiting to receive him but receiving in-
stead reflections of the world.
Within two months, Time (February 20, 1956) was, from Pollock’s
point of view, after him again—after him and his colleagues: Gorky, who
had hanged himself in 1948, de Kooning, Guston, Baziotes, Motherwell,
Rothko, Gottlieb... none of them much better off than he himself, some
born richer but drinking just as much, advancing now almost as little in
their work, and all needing recognition. ... The long article, called “The
Wild Ones,” presented Abstract Expressionism as—economically, if not
esthetically—a success story. There were color reproductions of the eight
artists’ work, including Pollock’s most recent painting, Scent (1955); and
besides background references to him, there was this paragraph:

JACK THE DRIPPER. Adolph Gottlieb’s Blue at Noon, for example, conveys a
strong sense of light and dark skies and of lilting movement. Looking at it is
rather like watching a snowstorm through a windowpane and remembering
Thomas Nash’s line: “Brightness falls from the air.” Jackson Pollock’s Scent is
a heady specimen from what one worshipper* calls his “personalized skywriting.”
More the product of brushwork than of Pollock’s famed drip technique, it
nevertheless.aims to remind the observer of nothing except previous Pollocks
and quite succeeds in that modest design. All it says, in effect, is that Jack the
Dripper, 44, still stands on his work.

Perhaps Pollock would have glanced from this issue of Time (with
the smiling face of Ohio’s Governor Frank Lausche on the cover) to ear-
lier issues of Time and Life which he had saved. And we can imagine him
looking at the 1951 Léfe containing that group portrait of the Irascibles.
*See Bibliography No. 91.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

214

How sad they all appeared, especially his friend Brad Tomlin, the first of
this group to go, having died in 1953 just as he was about to move to
Springs. And Pollock might have looked at the two issues of Life he had
saved since the late forties: one containing “Is he the greatest living
painter in the United States?” and one with the “Round Table on Modern
Art.” Again, as with Time, images would have flashed by: cover men,
cover girls, news photos, printed words, ads... the overwhelming amount
of material consumed by magazines—human material mostly—to be re-
consumed by a hungry public. Perhaps Pollock wondered about the brief
lives of these people and products and people/products. Not only had
many of the names of these people already been forgotten, but so had
some of the trade names, the creations of once seemingly immortal cor-
porations. Perhaps Pollock wondered, too, about his own name and the
longevity of what he had done. ... Had done—almost everything now
existed in the past tense.
How long can a man face an empty canvas? How long can he look
at himself in one? How long before he needs a drink? How long before
he flees the studio?
Jackson had often said to his wife, “Painting is no problem; the
problem is what to do when you're not painting.” He used to say that in
the early days when the barn was simply too cold to paint in or the light
inadequate. Now, even with a good stove or even in the summer (which
had always been the season in which he worked best), he could have said
it—he could have said it anytime and all the time.
The painter Conrad Marca-Relli, a neighbor and close friend of
Pollock’s during the final years, has described Jackson’s going to the
studio in the morning and lighting the stove, even long after he had
stopped painting. Marca-Relli asked him why he did this, why he wasted
the time, and the cost of fuel. Jackson replied, “I light the stove so the
studio will be warm in case this is the day I can start to paint again.”
Of course Marca-Relli understood. The previous summer Jackson
had told him that Janis wanted the paintings remaining in the studio to
be moved from there to a fireproof warehouse. Jackson was reluctant to
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

21S

do this, felt it might be a kind of entombment, but understood the danger

of leaving them in the barn. Conrad had said, “You're out of your mind.
You mustn’t consider storing your life away. You need the warmth of
your work around you. One day you'll begin reworking one of these paint-
ings and then you'll move on to new work. Don’t think of your life as
being over. Your best work is still ahead of you.”
Pollock appreciated Marca-Relli’s encouragement. He never stored
the paintings, but neither did he start work again. By the spring of 1956
he was in even more need of encouragement.
“What's the biggest painting you've ever done?” Conrad asked.
“About nine by twenty—the one for Peggy.”
“Why don’t you do something really big, something no one’s ever
done, maybe forty by sixty, something great?”
Jackson’s eyes brightened. “I could,” he said. “Tony has a garage
that size.”

During the final years, in his lonely terror of the blank canvas, Pol-
lock became both increasingly gregarious and aggressive. More than ever
before, he needed people to drink with. Sometimes artists. One can read
between the lines of this item which appeared in the East Hampton Star
(September 2, 1954):

JACKSON POLLOCK INJURED

A collision occurred on Tuesday night when two cars met head on through the
fallen tree in front of Nelson Osborn’s house on Main Street. Lester Hildreth
was in a 1950 Chevrolet, on the south side of the tree. He was facing north,
and waiting to go around the tree. Franz Kline, operating a 1937 Lincoln road-
ster, was going south and he was unaware of the one lane traffic. He pulled out
to pass the cars going south, and crashed through the tree. He met Hildreth
head on. Jackson Pollock, a passenger in Kline’s car, was the only injured per-
son. He suffered a cut on the lower lip.

But by then the local police knew Jackson and liked him. He had
had several automobile accidents. Even more frequently he had forgotten
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

216

where he parked his car during evenings of carousing and had either de-
pended on the police to find it for him or had found it for them. Either
way they would laugh and warn him and protect him as much as possible.
So did some New York bartenders, as in an incident at the Cedar de-
scribed by the poet Robert Creeley: *

... I'd been in the Cedar Bar talking with Franz Kline, and another friend of
Kline’s and Fielding Dawson probably was there. We were sitting over at a
corner booth, and they were talking and drinking in a kind of relaxed manner.
But I, again, you know, very characteristic of me, 1 was all keyed up with the
conversation and I’d start to run to get the beer, or whatever we were drinking,
and it wasn’t coming fast enough. I'd go up to the bar, have a quick drink, and
return to the table and pick up the drink that by then had come, and I was
getting awfully lushed, and excited, and listening, and 1 was up at the bar get-
ting another drink, when the door swings open and im comes this very, you
know, very solid man, this very particular man, again with this intensity. He
comes up to the bar, and almost immediately he made some gesture that bugged
me. Something like putting his glass on the bar close to mine, that kind of busi-
ness where he was pushing me just by being there. So I was trying to re-assert
my place. The next thing we knew we were swinging at each other. And I re-
member this guy John, one of the owners, just put his hand on the bar and
vaulted, literally, right over the bar, right between us, and he said, like, “Okay,
you guys,” and he started pushing at both of us, whereupon, without even.
thinking, we both zeroed in on him, and he said, like, “Come on now, cut it
out.” Then he said, “Do you two guys know each other?” And so then he intro-
duced us, and—God! It was Jackson Pollock! So 1 was showing him pictures of
my children and he was saying, “I’m their godfather.” Instantly affable, you
know. We were instantly very friendly. And he was very good to me....

Sometimes, as Lee Pollock mentioned, he would drink with the local

plumber, Dick Talmadge, or the electrician, Elwyn Harris, or sometimes
he would just talk for hours with Dan Miller, the owner of the general
store near the Pollocks’ house. Miller has said: **

* See Bibliography No. 79.

** See Bibliography No. 219.
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

217

You have to understand that when the Pollocks first moved here...they were
in many many ways different from the common concept of an artist. They did
mot dress or act or do anything to their appearance that was different from
ordinary people. They rode up and down here on a couple of bicycles for sev-
eral years before he got an old Model A Ford. | might make the point here
that Jackson Pollock didn’t basically move to Springs—he was moving away
from something more than he was moving to something. He told me that him-
self openly and hinted at it several times. There were conditions in New York
that had developed that he wanted to get away from, associations to a certain
extent. He wanted to get away. Jackson Pollock was in many ways a very very
conservative man....
...1n his art and in his belief in himself he was very sincere and honest.
And I think one of the things that he was moving away from was the tendency
to be surrounded by people who were not as sincere or as able. In other words
he wanted to get away from the fraud, the foam, and battle the waves himself....
He was liked, he was accepted, no problem. He wasn’t belittled as a man
but his art was not understood. People wouldn't take one of his paintings for a
gift. I had one of his paintings. Hung it on the wall in here for many long
years. He sort of traded it off for a grocery bill....
Now my brother had a farm hand working for him. Charlie, an old man
who didn’t know much but who could drive horses and mow. Sometimes in the
summer he mowed the leaves along the side of the road for the Town. He was
in here one day, the team was out in front. Pollock drove by here—he had ac-
quired his beat up old model A Ford by then—and Charlie liked Jackson. He
liked him, worked for him some, mowing around the yard. “That old Pollock”
he said, “lazy son-of-a-bitch, aint he, Dan?” And I said, “Charlie, what do you
mean he’s lazy?” “Why I never see him do a day’s work, did you?” he said.
That was pretty much the local reaction; not bitter, not evil or vicious, but it
was just the way he would talk about anybody else around here. See, at that
time Jackson wasn’t considered wild-hide or anything.
... If {Charlie} didn’t see a man out there he didn’t see him working....
I told Jackson what Charlie said. I've known many artists and wonderful peo-
ple but a good many of them 1 couldn’t have told that story to, but I told
Jackson and didn’t he laugh. Instead of being offended he loved Charlie all the
more. That’s the kind of guy he was—he was a tremendous man.
...1 did take Pollock flying more than once. I laughed the first time I took
him to Block Island. We were coming home, and we sat there in this plane you
 Jackson Pollock; Energy Made Visible

218

know. We wheeled up over the creek here and started to go across those light
wires over the field there and I could feel his knees banging up against mine.
When we hit the ground I said, “Jackson, one of your legs is nervous, isn’t it?”
He grinned and said, “By God | didn’t know what you were going to do.’...
You know one day we were talking and it was a time when he was having
sort of a hard time. He was beginning to get recognized, there had been a
write-up tn some magazine or other, and that had opened up the criticism of
people who were supposed to be critics and writers and it opened up the criti-
cism on the part of the Bonackers {a nickname for the inhabitants of East
Hampton which is derived from the name of the original residents of the area,
the Accabonac Indians} who didn’t know much about painting, except that
what he did was something different....
He came in this day and he was speaking of a few things and was a bit
maa and discouraged—discouraged isn’t the word. He talked a bit about it and
as he was going he stopped in the doorway and said to me “Dan, I want to tell
you something—lI am a great artist. 1 don’t give a damn what anybody said, I’m
a great artist and 1 know it.” And do you know I believed him. 1 believed that
he was.
The native people around here weren’t ready to admit to themselves that |
they were wrong. Of course 1 guess that a good many of them made peace with
themselves by figuring that Life magazine was crazier than Pollock....
Well he was proud of it, of course. Say what you want, we have certain
things by which we measure our efforts in life. Money is one of them, gratifi-
cation is another. People many times use the word ‘notoriety’ in speaking of
Jackson and 1 do not believe that word was ever well used. I don’t believe that
whatever notoriety there may have been gave him a bit of pleasure. But that
Life article did signify achievement, some recognition of what he was trying to
do and succeeded in doing. Obviously it wouldn’t have been there if he hadn't.
Well his big problem with alcoholism comes right on back to the basic
conservative man that he was. He sought an answer to problems in the same
way it’s been sought since recorded history began.... Jackson among other
things got to the point where there was something inside of him that he was
not being able to put down on canvas. The way he wanted to. And it was frus-
tration, that’s what I believe. Then without going into detail there arose a cer-
tain set of circumstances and conditions that he had to strike out at, that he had
to get relief from, and what did he do? Just the same as generations for hun-
dreds of thousands of years—he turned to women and alcohol. It’s been done
a million times. That’s basic—there’s nothing new in that reaction.
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

219

His problem was not the alcohol but frustration, the frustration that there
was in him that he might not be able to express. I believe that with Jackson it
drove him nuts....
I believe that alcohol brought out a Jackson Pollock that was one hundred
percent different than the Jackson Pollock when he was sober. 1 have seen it in
other people reveal the vilest part, the part that all of us try to keep hidden and
subdued. When he'd been drinking he was immediately foul-mouthed and ir-
responsible and he got himself kicked out of almost every ginmill around be-
cause he was offensive.
Now I’ve thought of that many times and my belief is that because he was
an artist that there were things in him that had to bust out and that’s the way
they bust out. Things that | might have been able to cover up and control and
maybe the ordinary man could, but in Jackson Pollock they could not be kept
down. I presume the time came when his wife probably tried to correct him
and it probably just made things worse. Evidently things were going to pot to
some extent. But there is nothing unusual in that, that was no unusual thing.
Lord we've seen it a thousand times the same way....
Well the first number of years life was pleasant, seemed to me. It appeared
in general that he was doing what he wanted to do and needed to do. I suppose
it was a frustration of some kind that seemed to enter the picture. I felt that up
to a point he could do his work and was apparently satisfied with it. Whether
other people were or not, he was happy with it, and he began to get recogni-
tion. Then there was something that began to bother him and he was not as
happy with his work and he was not happy with his home....
Oh 1 would say within a year or two of when he was killed....
I might not have sensed this thing right off the bat but he did begin to
change. It was a frustration that led not only to a breaking out, but an eruption,
a violent reaction seeking relief. It also led to an attitude on occasion of ‘to hell
with it”...
I've seen him drive up here to these gas pumps for gas and get in and
drive away with Mrs. Pollock sitting beside him, and I wouldn't have sat be-
side him in the condition he was in but she did.
There was a quality there of love or however you want to put it. But the
point I wanted to make is that she didn’t just get up and run when things got a
little bit rugged. She sure didn’t. | thought to myself more than once ‘Well,
Lee, I wouldn't drive with that son-of-a-gun—l’d get up and walk off but she
didn’t....
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

220

When Lee would speak to Jackson about her own problems with his
drinking—not knowing where he was, who he was with, if he was alive
or dead; not able to make plans for a day ahead or even a few hours—he
would reply, “Yes, I know it’s rough on you. But I can’t say I'll stop, be-
cause, you know I’m trying to. Try to think of it as a storm. It'll soon be
over.”
He was trying. In the summer of 1955, he had resumed therapy—
this time with Ralph Klein, a clinical psychologist of the Sullivan Insti-
tute (i.e., the Interpersonal School )—and he had begun the weekly trips
to visit this doctor in New York which would continue until the end of
his life. Lee Pollock was in therapy too, with a doctor of the same school,
trying to deal with their situation.
Since her first one-man show at Betty Parsons in 1951, she had cut
up most of those transitional paintings and reworked them into large-scale
large-image collages, now about to be shown at Eleanor Ward’s Stable
Gallery. These collages are dominated by shapes, typically quite linear,
some torn or cut from the previous paintings and drawings of her own, —
discarded scraps of Jackson’s, and heavy black paper. The large col-
lage elements are placed with great authority. They command their
backgrounds, even hot in color as some of these backgrounds are. The
collages sing like Matisse’s papiers coupés, though more raucously, as if
torn from the throat of a blues singer. She had produced a body of work
she could well be proud of, as was Jackson too. And yet, without Jackson
working, without the sense of shared effort, there was less feeling of pleas-
ure than should have been. She spoke defensively about her work, espe-
cially to Jackson.
There has been much said about competition between a wife and
husband practicing the same profession, not enough about such a union’s
special closeness resulting from the mutual interest. And besides, although
Lee Pollock had confidence in the quality of her own work, she never
thought of it in the same terms as those in which she thought of Jack-
son’s. That was obvious in her public and private statements, obvious in
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

221

their studio arrangements, and obvious in their home where only a few
small paintings of hers hung among his large ones. In short, she thought
of herself as a good painter, a serious, committed painter—she thought of
Jackson as a genius. For her even his very late paintings (White Light,
Search, Scent), even his unfinished or discarded canvases were works of
genius, precious compared with the more routine work of others. She
“supported” him to that extent even as, in his unproductive frustration,
he sometimes attacked other artists’ work. By now Pollock was tied into
aggressive-defensive knots. In the past he had taken Ossorio around to see
and buy the work of de Kooning and Clyfford Still. Now he could still be
kind in praising their paintings and those of Ossorio himself and Nick
Carone, younger artists whose work he accepted. And he was encouraging
to the still younger Sheridan Lord, a neighbor who worshiped him, and
Ronald Stein, a nephew of Lee’s still at Yale Fine Arts. But just as often
he would attack the work of his contemporaries and that of the genera-
tion coming up behind him. Larry Rivers had this to say: *

Helen Frankenthaler and 1 visited the Pollocks in The Springs in the spring of
1951. We saw his large light studio; tremendous canvases piled up on the floor,
perhaps 15 one on top of the other. He lifted the corners so we could peek. We
had lunch in his house. The amount of work combined with his serious talk and
the monastic lack of housiness moved us. About an hour after the visit Helen
and I were standing on a deserted beach with drawn faces looking into the
ocean which by now had become the ancient abyss, promising to devote our-
selves even more determinedly and forever to ART. By 1954 this had all
changed considerably. He had tried to destroy a piece of sculpture of mine com-
missioned by Castelli that stood in Castelli’s driveway by running it down with
his Ford. He made many offending remarks about my work, some published
[in Selden Rodman’s Conversations with Artists], some just brought by mouth,
and some directly,...

Despite, or maybe because of, the incident in which he overturned

the table the evening Namuth finished filming Pollock’s painting on
* See Bibliography No. 127.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

222

glass, Lee Pollock insists: * “Jackson’s violence was all verbal. There was
never any physical violence. He would just use more four-letter words
than usual. Or he would take it out on the furniture.” Then she tells a
story about Pollock and de Kooning: “Jackson and he were standing at
the Cedar Bar, drinking. They started to argue and de Kooning punched
him. There was a crowd around them and some of the fellows tried to
egg Jackson on to hit de Kooning back. Jackson turned to them and said,
“What? Me? Hit an artist?’ ”
Motherwell provides this postscript: ** “Sometime before his death, he
came uninvited to my house to a big party I was giving for Philip Guston
and behaved cordially, though fiercely baited by Kline and de Kooning (I
suppose because of some past history, perhaps the episodes at the Cedar
Bar). I marveled at Pollock’s restraint, because I had often seen him violent;
and at Kline’s bruality, because I had never seen him anything but
gentler
Even more complex was Pollock’s relationship with Philip Guston
whom he had known since high school when they were already competi--
tive as Schwankovsky’s two best students. Of the two, Guston was proba-
bly the better, surely the more facile, and, until the late forties, the recipi-
ent of greater official recognition (first prize at Carnegie Institute, 1945;
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1947; Prix de Rome, 1948). However, Guston
was artist-in-residence at the University of Iowa when Pollock began
showing at Art of This Century, and he was in Italy and elsewhere
abroad, working in a comparatively Academic Cubist syle, when Pollock’s
dripped paintings made Life. By the early fifties, when Guston had devel-
oped his own intensely lyrical image, Pollock was already established, a
master, at least among artists.
Guston remembers a weekend at this time when he and Tomlin visi-
ted Pollock in Springs while Lee was away. It was a good weekend.
Jackson’s mood was gentle, even the second night when Guston and
* See Bibliography No. 172.
** See Bibliography No. 127.
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

223

Tomlin did most of the talking. However, at some point in the course of
their discussion of Renaissance art, Jackson picked up a very large nail
and drove it into the living room floor, saying, “Damn it, that’s art.”
In 1953, Pollock came to Guston’s show at the Egan Gallery, looked
at the pulsing gestures hung on the walls, and tore down the paintings
without ever explaining why or how this art, more intimate than his own,
had offended him.
After that they met mostly by accident—at the Cedar, at galleries, at
parties. But in 1956, wherever they met, Pollock ended up at Guston’s
studio and liked his recent, larger-scale work enough to call Sidney Janis
immediately and insist on Guston’s being given a show. Though Janis had
previously seen the work with Leo Castelli, who was then scouting for him,
Pollock’s call assured its being shown soon after at the Janis gallery.
A less totally ambivalent, more particularly painful deterioration of
a professional relationship occurred between Pollock and Clyfford Still.
October 29, 1953 (three months ptior to the showing of The Deep, Por-
trait and a Dream, and the eight other paintings completed during 1953),
Still had written to Pollock:
Went up to Janis’ gallery with Barney [Newman] the other day & took the
liberty of pushing into the office to see some of the paintings you did this
summer.
What each work said, what its position, what each achieved you must
know. But above all these details and intentions the great thing, to me, came
through. It was that here a man had been at work, at the profoundest work a
man can do, facing up to what he is and aspires to.
I left the room with the gratitude & renewal of courage that always comes
at such moments. This is just my way of saying thanks, & with the hope that
some of my work has brought some of the same to you.*
* Still has subsequently explained (in a letter of Nov. 7, 1971, to the author): “The
paintings of Pollock's I saw that day in Janis’ back room were especially interesting to me
on two counts. First, they indicated Jack had decided to try to break away from the device
that had brought him critical and financial approval. Second, the cocktail gossip in reference
to the works I saw had become bitter—labeling the latest work as failures. And Jack was
palpably depressed by the comments and attitudes of the critics and presumed friends....”
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

224

But by March 15, 1955, Still would write to Ossorio, expressing his dis-
appointment in Pollock, and seeing cowardice, wretchedness, and de-
structive self-hatred in him, second only to that of Mark Rothko. And
early in 1956, just after “15 Years of Jackson Pollock” closed, Still would
write Pollock that he didn’t know why he hadn’t been invited to the open-
ing, and ask if it was because Pollock was ashamed of his work, or
ashamed of the people using him and insulting him as an artist. At one
o'clock in the morning Pollock, in East Hampton, was still upset by the
letter and crying as he read it to a friend in New York. There was no way
to comfort him. Finally he said, “I’m in a terrible state,” and hung up.
During the last years of his life, Jackson did a lot of telephoning late
at night. Barney Newman’s widow, Annalee, who was still teaching at the
time, remembers several weekday nights when at two or three in the
morning Barney was still at the studio or at a party, and Jackson awakened
her with a call. No matter how drunk he was, he would always apologize,
saying he knew she had to get up early. And he would keep on apologiz-
ing until Annalee told him very tenderly that she forgave him and knew
she would be able to get back to sleep.

Pollock’s agitation and restlessness intensified. During the summer

of 1955 he and Lee drove with the Marca-Rellis to Riverhead and took
out passports. The Pollocks did not know where or when they wanted to
go. They thought that perhaps they might follow some of his paintings to
Europe or even more distant parts of the world, anywhere away from his
present problems, problems visible even in his passport photograph. (No-
toriously bad as these are, his is not just the product of harsh light.)
There, set above powerful shoulders and bull-neck, is the bloated and
bearded face of a wounded giant. His eyes lack their former intensity;
they are almost blank, withdrawn, ineffably sad. They no longer stare
into the distant future but create their own distance by receding into the
past. This photograph has a tragic heaviness. One feels not only the bloat
of beer and whiskey but the weight of emotional and physical “accidents”
which have made Pollock less active. Though the photograph shows him
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

225

only from the shoulders up, one knows his grace and litheness are gone.
One can imagine, almost read in his face, that accident of the previous
summer when he stumbled and broke his ankle in Bridgehampton. One
can imagine him, more recently, rebreaking the ankle as he fools with
Sherry Lord in the parlor. The emotional and physical accidents, like their
causes and effects, seem interchangeable.
Going abroad and seeing his own art within the context of great art
of other periods may have seemed for a moment to offer possible answers
to the questions and doubts about his work, his life, which now plagued
him. But the next moment travel may have been the last thing he wanted.
Could he now sustain a long trip anymore than a long relationship? How
much more could he take of his wife’s “supportive” advice? How much
before he was drowned in her love, the way he had been drowned in his
mother’s? How many more doctors could he see? How many more of
their nonanswers could he listen to? It was almost impossible to believe
that for two years, from 1948 to 1950, only five or so years ago, he had
been on the wagon, had found peace not in a bottle but in his work—
exactly where he found nothing, nothing but torment, now.
How many more times could he listen to a friend’s anecdotes, hear
the same ones over again, more polished each time as if for some night-
club routine? How many more times could he deal with another friend’s
aristocratic politeness? How many more times call, ask how this friend
was, and get no response but “How are you?” How many more times
could he see and hear still another friend ape the Western inflection of
his speech, the gestures he made with his hands, the way he used to walk
before breaking his ankle and becoming heavy? How many more times
could he listen to critics talking art, drowning him in shat, that sea of
words?
And these, all these, were people Jackson was fond of. But if a man
bases his life on his work and that goes sour, everything goes sour. Which
may be only another way of saying that if a man goes sour, his work goes
sour.
Jackson was drinking all the time now—beer mostly, from morning
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

226

to night. The beer calmed him. If he stayed on it, he could get through
the day and into the night. When he drank whiskey he folded faster; but
first, before the inevitable oblivion, there was a momentary lift, a tight-
ening of nerves, heightened excitability. Jackson spent the last months of
his life juggling whiskey and beer as if they were two different drugs, as
if one counteracted the other.
He was also juggling Springs and New York, practically commuting
from one to the other in a continuing round of doctors’ appointments,
visits to his own gallery and others, nights at the Cedar, reunions with
Lee at the Earle, long drives when he felt up to them, train rides when he
didn’t, beer, beer, beer, and some whiskey. . . .
He couldn’t concentrate long enough to read a book or sit through
a play or movie. In Springs, where he was able to move around when he
listened to music, he played his favorite Fats Waller and Jimmy Yancey
records. But in New York the concert situation was impossible and even
the jazz clubs too confining, the music there too immediate. One night
three of us went to hear a Chicago group at Jimmy Ryan’s. At some point
Jackson left the bar and began edging up to the bandstand where several
prep-school or college boys stood tapping their feet and bobbing their
heads. Jackson stood next to them and seemed to be studying one, a clean-
cut crew-cut kid wearing a sports jacket, button-down shirt, black knit tie,
gray flannels, cordovan shoes: the uniform of the day. Just as a number
ended and everyone was beginning to applaud Jackson grabbed the boy
by the shoulder, turned him so he faced Jackson, then squared off and
socked him in the jaw. All this happened fast. The boy had hardly fallen
to the floor, was still there shaking his head, when his friends jumped
Jackson.
“You bum! You son-of-a-bitch! You dirty old bastard!” they yelled
as they punched him.
We rushed to Jackson, wanting to get him away before these kids
killed him. As we held them off and led him out, we explained that he
was a painter, a great painter, that he was upset, sick, hypersensitive to
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

227

sound. ... The kids weren't having any of that. They kept on punching at
him. They asked, ‘““How does his being a painter give him the right to go
around slugging people?”
Of course there was no answer to that, anymore than to why Jackson
had socked the kid in the first place. The boy had said nothing, done noth-
ing. There was not even any particular thing about him that had bothered
Jackson. Except maybe that itself, the lack of particularity, the clean
blank anonymity.
There was another night—or early morning—when several of us
were in a taxi taking Jackson back to the Earle, trying to talk him out of
stopping for a nightcap at the Cedar. The cab headed down Park, making
good time because of the light traffic late at night. Suddenly he opened
the door beside him and announced that he was leaving, that he’d find a
bar over on Lex. We grabbed him just as he was about to jump out of the
moving cab.
... Beer, beer, beer, cases of beer, and the occasional shot-glass or
tumbler of whiskey; and the cigarettes, the omnipresent Camels; and the
coffee, sometimes late at night and always at breakfast, whenever that
was, lunchtime for most people... alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, the terri-
ble diet padding him in fat and at the same time stretching and jangling
his nerves...
There was yet another night when a waiter at Luchow’s dropped a
tray and Jackson jumped off his seat and out of the restaurant, looking
once again for someplace else, someplace quiet and peaceful, someplace
like places used to be....
By now Jackson had only a few calm hours a day—and these only
on lucky days. Even at the beach where once he had been able to remain
quiet for long stretches, watching waves, clouds, gulls, an occasional ship
in the distance, now he became restless and wanted to leave after a short
time. When he swam, he no longer gave himself to the sea but fought it,
liked to stand up to a big wave and more often than not be knocked
down.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

228

Frequently he was difficult, impossible. One afternoon on the beach

someone mentioned seeing Rebel without a Cause; “The story’s phonied
up, the psychiatric orientation’s oversimplified, but Dean’s fine.”
“T’m not involved with movies,” Pollock snarled.
“You'd like this. It’s almost as good as The Wild One.”
Pollock raised his voice: “What do they know about being wild?
I’m wild. There’s wildness in me. There’s wildness in my hands.” He
paused, picked up some sand, let it trickle through his heavy fingers.
“There was,” he finished softly. Those two small words—There was—
trailed off, like the last grains of sand spilling between his fingers; he
spoke them as tenderly as he handled the sand. After all the loud snarl-
ing, after being “impossible” (as we say), there was still tenderness, as
during the years when he mixed so much of it with the sheer power of his
paintings.

Pollock didn’t like to be quoted. He said, “I’d rather stand on my

painting,” and he didn’t mean this as the pun suggested by Time, in its |
“Jack the Dripper” paragraph. And yet, as certainly as the painting as-
sures him of his place in history, it assures us of our interest in everything
he did and said. There are so few of his words recorded that we want to
preserve all of them. Here, from this writer's journals and notes, are a
few more of the things he said during the last year or so of his life:
“Art is coming face to face with yourself. That’s what’s wrong with
Benton. He came face to face with Michelangelo—and he lost.”
“My concern is with the rhythms of nature...the way the ocean
moves. ... The ocean’s what the expanse of the West was for me.... I
work from the inside out, like nature.”
“You can’t learn techniques and then try to be a painter. Techniques
are a result.”
“Cézanne didn’t create theories. They’re after the fact.”
“Orozco said, “You don’t make a scientific report on love when
221s RS
you're making love. It’s a beautiful thing or it isn’t.
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

229

“You've got to deny, ignore, destroy a hell of a lot to get at truth.”

And, finally, there’s an image—just that, not even a sentence—
which an acquaintance reports Pollock used one night at the Cedar in
‘much the same way he used his own locked hands or the spike in the
|living room floor to indicate the connection between seeming opposites.
|The i image, profoundly impressed upon his mind, was something he had
seen in the Gettysburg National Military Park—two musketballs, one
Confederate, one Union, which had collided and fused in midair.
There were these moments of intense clarity about himself and art,
and there were the others, muddied and increasingly more frequent, the
moments in which he thought that the next drink he swallowed, the next
place he went, the next person he met would somehow end his problems
or change his luck.
Girls were beginning to come to the Cedar—particularly after meet-
ings at The Club—young models and painters and sculptors who offered
themselves to Pollock and other established artists. They didn’t always
know or understand what he or the others had done. The important thing
was that one had done something and was recognized. Sometimes giggly
girls would make little jokes which Jackson would call them on in a loud
voice: “Look, don’t play games, I have a poznt of view.” They'd become
even more interested as his voice became louder, his face more flushed,
and he seemingly larger: a wild animal, an American fauve, an Abstract
Expressionist, the biggest Abstract Expressionist.
In An Emotional Memoir of Franz Kline the artist and writer Field-
ing Dawson gives us a real sense of Pollock’s last days at the Cedar:

JUNE, 1956. AT THE BAR.

Franz pointed to the men’s room. “See the door there?”
I nodded. He said,
“Notice it isn’t very straight on its hinges.”
I saw the door wasn’t set in straight. Franz said,
“One night, Jackson ripped it off its hinges.”
Jackson was a husky man, maybe six two with long arms and huge power-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

230

| ful hands. His head was square, with a large clear forehead and a small dome;
his heavily lined eyes sharply displayed his emotions—his whole face was ex-
pressive, as was his body. His bearlike size and strength made him fluidly hard
to keep up with, or track of, as he changed in a matter of seconds hoping to
be followed, or met. It was his game and pleasure. He’d dance in laughter,
cringe in withdrawal and return rapidly angrily bright-eyed.
I was sitting at the bar having a beer, and 1 heard John, the bartender,
murmur,
“Oh, No.”
In the small square window of the red front door, I saw a part of Jackson's
| face; one brightly anxious eye was peering in. John walked down the duck-
boards towards the end of the bar near the door, and stopped, put his left fist
on his hip, and extended his right index finger at the small window. He shook
his head. The eye looked hurt. John was tightlipped. I was laughing.
The eye disappeared.
John muttered out of the corner of his mouth and he is a man who can
mutter out of the corner of his mouth,
“He'll be back.”
We watched the square window.
Jackson's eye popped in.
“NO!” John yelled. “YOU'RE 86 JACKSON!”
The eye was sad and puzzled, Me 86?
The eye got angry. Jackson’s face slid across the window; then his whole
face was framed by it; mask of an angry smile.
“NO!” John shouted, shaking his head. “Beat it!”
Jackson’s eyes became bright, and he smiled affectionately. John shook his
head.
“Whaddya gonna do? I can’t say no to the son of a bitch.”
He sighed. “All right!” he cried, and pointed to the window, wagging his
finger, “But you've got to be GOOD!”
The door opened and Jackson loped in and they faced each other over the
corner of the bar. Jackson had a happy friendly smile. John jabbed a finger in
his face,
“Remember—one trick and you're finished.” John leaned forward. “Do you
get that? No cussin’, no messin’ with the girls—”
Jackson said, darkly,
“Scotch.”
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

231

With the drink in his hand Jackson left John angrily wiping the bar; and
as I was the only one at the bar that Jackson vaguely recognized, he made his
way toward me, looking intently at me. You never knew. When he got to the
empty stool beside me he put his hand on it and a little stooping gave me his
fuckering friendly Rumpelstiltskin smile,
“Okay if 1 sit here?”
I stammered sure Jackson sure, and in my apprehension rather compulsively
arranged the pack of matches exactly in the center on top of a mew pack of
cigarettes. Jackson watched me, and glanced down at my neat arrangement, and
then at me, then at the cigarettes; then at me. He gravely shook his head.
Wrong. He crushed my smokes and matches in his left hand.
He gazed back where people sat at tables, eating supper. Many of them
were watching him. It was the right beginning for another eight-cylinder
Monday night. They had come from the Bronx, from Queens, from New Jersey
and from the upper East Side to eat at the Cedar and wait until Jackson finished
his fifty minutes with his analyst, and came down to the bar to play. Jackson
walked by each table glaring down at them. They trembled. Pity the poor
fellow that brought his date in for supper, for Jackson was happy to see her.
He immediately sat beside the fellow, glared nastily at him and then gave his
full crude nonsensical attention to the girl while the fellow satd—something—
timidly—‘Say, now just a minute—” Jackson turned to him, and looking at the
poor guy with a naughty smile, swept the cream pitcher, salt, pepper, parmesan
cheese, silverware, bread, butter, napkins, placemats, and drinks on the floor,
while waiters screamed, John shouted, Jackson leaned toward the guy with an
expression as if to say, how do you like that?
We all got a little of it. But Franz was the real one who gave it back, and
then some. One time Franz and Nancy were sitting at the bar, talking, and
unaware Jackson was behind them, staring at Franz. Jackson grabbed Franz
by the hair and threw him backwards off the barstool onto the floor. Franz got
up, straightened himself, glanced at Jackson, and satd,
“Okay Jackson, cut it out.”
Jackson had backed away, slightly stooped, head thrust forward, eyes
bright. He was so happy he glittered. After Franz had sat down Jackson did
it again.
“Jackson!” Nancy cried.
But when Franz got up the third time, he wheeled, grabbed Jackson,
slammed him up against the wall and let Jackson have it in the gut with a hard
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

232

left-right combination. Jackson was much taller, and so surprised, and happy—
he laughed in his pain and bent over, as Franz told me, whispered, “Not so
hard.” ...
One night in the bar Jackson whipped off Franz’s hat, crushed it, and
tossed it up, out of reach on the shelf which overhung the bar. Franz was angry |
and laughing; Jackson was happy. One night shortly thereafter, Jackson appeared
at the bar with a brand new bowler hat on, and when he reached Franz, he
glared at him, took off the bowler, crushed it and tossed it up on the shelf....

Jackson had affairs before and during the years of his marriage, some
possibly with older women. Now, at the Cedar, desperate as he had ever
been, he met Ruth Kligman, a plump, pretty, brunette twenty-five-year-
old artist’s model from Newark. Ossorio said,* “That last relationship ...
was so pathetic—a young girl throwing herself at his feet.” However,
Ossorio may not have fully recognized how dead Pollock felt at the time,
how much he needed to be told he was still alive, still a man even if he
wasn’t painting. Perhaps Ruth Kligman told him physically—and verbally,
in a style that was half—Actors Studio, half—New Jersey, and punctuated ~
by the word “like.”
Pollock’s relationship with Ruth Kligman began casually in Febru-
ary 1956 and intensified in the spring. Morton Feldman remembers a
spring night when he and John Cage were giving a concert at Carl Fischer
Hall and had invited Lee and Jackson. Jackson never showed. After the
concert Feldman took Lee for a bite at Riker’s and then dropped her at
the Earle. He went on to the Cedar for a nightcap. Jackson and Ruth
Kligman were just leaving. “He looked happy,” Feldman recalls.
There may then have been one or two nights when Jackson didn’t
join Lee at the Earle. Since they had always had a very honest and open
relationship, no more than that would have been necessary to precipitate
a discussion. Perhaps then Lee suggested that if she went away for a few
weeks, it might help Jackson to find out how he really felt.
Lee and Jackson planned the trip together. She intended to spend
about six weeks in Europe divided equally between Paris, where she would
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

233

stay with the painter Paul Jenkins and his wife; Venice, where she would
see Peggy Guggenheim; and London, where she would stay with the art
dealer Charles Gimpel and his wife. Since she hated planes, Lee booked a
cabin on the Queen Elizabeth. In mid-July Lee left from New York, feel-
ing reasonably confident that the present storm, as Jackson might have
called it, would blow over. She looked forward to the ocean voyage as both
a rest and a period in which to try to sort out some of her problems.
After Lee left, Jackson invited Ruth Kligman to visit him in Springs.
During this first visit, there may have been times when he felt younger,
less concerned about the days slipping by without any work done. But
basically nothing changed. He was drinking hard, though still mostly
beer. And he was as restless on the beach as at cocktail parties. In fact
these social events—and the Coast Guard Beach was, as much as any
party, a meeting place for the art community—presented new tensions.
Whispers followed Ruth and Jackson wherever they went. Some old
friends of Lee and Jackson ignored Ruth or deliberately cut her; everyone
stared. Though Ruth seemed to enjoy the role of starlet or mistress to a
star, Jackson felt awkward with this kid, this child, this betrayal of Lee.
Lee had always handled social arrangements. Now he was on the phone,
accepting invitations if it was all right to bring Ruth, or asking people
over but being careful to mention that Ruth would be there. Sometimes
Ruth and Jackson didn’t arrive where they were expected. Other times, if
an event became particularly uncomfortable, Jackson would grab Ruth,
lead her to his car—a green 1950 Oldsmobile convertible which the
dealer Martha Jackson had traded for two of his black-and-white paint-
ings—and speed home.

Friday night, August 10, Jackson was alone, expecting Ruth to come
from New York the following morning. Feeling depressed and too tired
to sleep, he visited Conrad Marca-Relli. Conrad offered him a beer. After
a while Jackson said, “Life is beautiful, the trees are beautiful, the sky is
beautiful, but I only have the image of death.”
Marca-Relli recalls that Pollock had said similar things on other oc-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

234

casions but that this time he believed him. He thought that Jackson was
sick both physically and mentally, that he needed medical help. He re-
membered times he had watched Jackson leave for the city or had gone in
with him. Then Jackson had looked very neat in his shirt and tie and
jacket, all pulled together for his therapist. But always when he returned
he was a mess, needing a milk cure or some kind of recuperation. Several
times he had asked Jackson why he went. Why, feeling good in the coun-
try, did he go to the city where he had to have several drinks to even talk
to the doctor and God knows how many more afterwards to unwind?
Why? Now, for the first time, just when the analysts were on August
vacation, Conrad felt Jackson needed one.
Jackson spoke of the forty by sixty mural he was going to do at Tony
Smith’s. Perhaps he’d begin this coming weekend. But tonight this was
impossible to believe. Conrad thought of the spotlight that had been on
Jackson for so long, a light as cruel as that in which a rabbit “freezes.”
Like many other painters, perhaps like Jackson himself, Conrad felt that —
the magazines, the museums, and the rest had never recognized that Jack- —
son had made a statement, a contribution to the history of art. Rather they
had made him feel that this week his work was news but that next week
someone else’s would be. . . .
Thoughts such as these were going through Conrad’s mind when
Jackson put down his barely started can of beer and said, “This is one
time Pollock doesn’t finish his drink.”

Ruth Kligman may have felt the need for someone her own age,
someone interested in fun, someone she could talk to, someone who kept
the same hours as she. For the second weekend in August she invited her
close friend Edith Metzger, a beautician from the Bronx, to join her at
Pollock’s. We can imagine their conversation on the Saturday morning
train out to East Hampton. Ruth would have told her friend about
painters, collectors, dealers, critics she’d met in East Hampton, some for
the first time, some after previous acquaintanceship, particularly at the
 The Final Years: 1953-1956

235

Cedar. She may have remarked on the cars they drove and the homes
they lived in. Most likely she would have described from hearsay the
house they were going to that night for a charity concert: The Creeks,
home of Alfonso Ossorio, who had recently returned from Europe. There
was a lot to look forward to: a new setting, new art, probably some new
faces.
Jackson met the girls at the East Hampton station and drove them
to Springs. There he drank beer through the afternoon and evening. He
was not eating and he seemed weak and exhausted.
He may well have been hesitant about going to the concert. A pub-
lic appearance with one young girl was difficult enough, but with two?
made up and dressed up the way they were?—Jackson stalled. There may
also have been other deterring factors. Though Feldman has described
Jackson’s happy glow at the beginning of his relationship with Ruth, by
now, in East Hampton, there had been less glowing incidents. For exam-
ple, one friend witnessed Jackson throwing Ruth out of his studio, an-
other saw him slap her at a public bar, and Greenberg remembers him
being abusive to her. Anyway, having stalled for a long time, Jackson
finally took the girls to a roadside place for sandwiches and coffee. From
there, at about nine, just as Ossorio was introducing the concert, Pollock
called The Creeks. A maid answered. He left the message that he would
arrive soon.
He may even have started toward The Creeks and changed his mind
once again. However, at about a quarter past ten he was speeding north
towards home on Fireplace Road, just a few hundred yards from his
house, when he lost control of the convertible, seemingly didn’t have the
strength to hold the wheel on a sharp curve. First it ran off the east side
of the road at the curve, hit a soft shoulder, then swerved and plowed
175 feet through underbrush on the west side until it ran over a clump
of young white oaks. The car pivoted, turned end over end, and landed
upside down about three feet from the road.
According to the Herald Tribune, Edith Metzger was found dead “in
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

236

the trunk of the car, presumably rammed there by the impact.” Her death
certificate lists the causes of death as “fracture of neck, laceration of
brain.” Ruth Kligman was thrown clear. She suffered a fractured pelvis,
back injuries, cuts and bruises. Pollock was also thrown clear, but his head
hit a mature oak and he was killed instantly. The death certificate lists
causes as “Compound fracture of skull, laceration of brain, laceration
both lungs. Hemothorax—shock.”
 Chapter Eleven

Post-mortem
(1956- +)
As for his drunkenness—publicized and censured with an insistence which could
make it appear that all the writers of the United States, except Poe, are angels
of sobriety—something should be said. Several explanations are plausible, and
none exclude the others....
I am informed that he did not drink as an epicure but barbarously, with
a speed and dispatch altogether American, as if he were performing a homicidal
function, as if he had to kill something inside of him, a worm that would not
GS, «
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Edgar Poe: His Life and Works

News of Pollock’s death moved quickly from Springs to East Hampton

and from there to New York City and the rest of the world. Casper
Citron, a summer resident then running for Congress in New York and
later a radio interviewer, was in the car behind Pollock’s. Citron saw the
accident and pulled over. The lights of Pollock’s upside-down car were
bright, the wheels still turning, the horn jammed on. Ruth Kligman
moaned, “Jackson, Jackson...” Citron ran to the nearest house and
called the police and the East Hampton Clinic, then stopped a car with
MD license plates, and finally left the scene of the accident because his
wife was pregnant. (She delivered the baby, a month premature, two
days later). While Ruth Kligman was being rushed to the Southampton
Hospital, a Bonacker recognized Pollock’s car and, knowing he was a
friend of Conrad Marca-Relli’s, ran the short distance to the Marca-Relli
home and rapped on the window. Marca-Relli got to Pollock’s car at
about the same time as Earl Finch of the East Hampton Police who
asked him to identify Pollock. Then Marca-Relli returned home to call
Ossorio who quickly left the concert with Greenberg.
The wait for them was flooded with memories of the good neighbor
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

238

Jackson had been during the winter of 1952-53 when the Marca-Rellis
had gutted and rebuilt a six-room farmhouse, turning it into one-and-a-
half spacious rooms; of Jackson drunk and limping around after break-
ing his ankle for the first time during the summer of 1954; of Jackson
strutting into the Cedar and challenging someone with the question
“D’you call yourself a painter?” or, another of his famous questions,
“What're you involved in?” There was no separating the good Jackson
from the bad Jackson, the aggressive one from the gentle one. Often Con-
rad had felt that Jackson teased and baited people to establish contact.
But this time he had established contact too hard.
Within half an hour after the accident Dave Edwardes was taking
flash photographs for the newspapers. Finally Greenberg and Ossorio ar-
rived. Greenberg took one look at Pollock and said, “That son-of-a-bitch,
he did it.”” Ossorio closed Jackson’s eyes and covered his face with a hand-
kerchief.

“The saplings were so thin.”

“Who would have believed they could turn over a caré”
“Who would have believed they could kill two people?”
“Who can believe Jackson Pollock is dead?”
By late Saturday night many of Pollock’s friends had heard the news.
It swept through the East Hampton area and beyond in a chain reaction
of phone calls and short shocking encounters. For example, the Brookses,
the Lassaws, and the Littles had been out to dinner together. Nick Carone,
who had heard from Conrad Marca-Relli, had been trying to reach them.
It was not until late at night that he got an answer at the Littles. And by
early Sunday morning the Littles were over at the Pollock house. There
two ladies who had also heard the news came by to pick up a painting
Pollock had promised for an exhibition at Guild Hall. John refused to let
them have it. They argued that the show must go on. He refused again.
“Over my dead body,” he said finally.
By now the news was on radio and television. Mainly from these
 Post-mortem: 1956—

239

broadcasts it was carried quickly by word of mouth. In his autobiography

Thomas Hart Benton tells how it reached him at his comparatively iso-
lated camp in Chilmark:

...1 was sitting...on the front steps of our Martha's Vineyard home when
two men walked up. I recognized one of them, a former student, Herman
Cherry, who had attended my classes at the Art Students’ League in New York,
back in the early thirties. He introduced me to his companion, the “abstract
expressionist” painter Willem de Kooning, and said they had something to tell
me. I invited them into the house and pointed out chairs, but they didn't sit
down.
Cherry said, “Jack Pollock was killed last night in an automobile accident.
We thought you should know.” After that, they left. With such news there was
nothing to talk about.

Franz Kline had heard the news late Saturday night and was still
drinking Sunday night. Fielding Dawson describes him in the Cedar, “at
the end of the bar, crying, slumped on a barstool”’:

By nightfall he was exhausted. I stood beside him drinking beer, and he

looked up, saw me looking at him tenderly. He touched me, and later, I asked
him, perfectly, what he thought Jackson had done.
Franz responded softly as tears ran down his cheeks,
“He painted the whole sky; he rearranged the stars, and even the birds are
appointed.”
He looked up in misery and pointed down at the front door of the bar, and
said huskily,
“The reason | miss him—the reason I'll miss him is he'll never come
through that door again.”
Then he really let it come.

The late edition of the Times carried the story on the front page.
The Herald Tribune didn’t carry it until Monday. Then, on the front page
of the second section, in a two-column spread, was a late Namuth photo-
graph of Pollock, bearded, with brow furrowed and cigarette hanging
from his mouth and, at the bottom of the page, an Edwardes photo of the
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

240

upside-down car. That same day, the Times referred again to Pollock's
death. The article began:

8 SUFFOLK DEATHS
SPUR CRASH STUDY
COUNTY POLICE SYSTEM
AND A SAFETY PROGRAM STRESSED
AFTER AUTO ACCIDENTS
THREE TEACHERS KILLED

JACKSON POLLOCK A VICTIM—

DISTRICT ATTORNEY
TAKES CHARGE OF INQUIRY
SOUTHAMPTON. L. 1., Aug. 12—District Attorney George W. Percy Jr.
assumed supervision today of an inquiry into two automobile accidents that took
eight lives Saturday night.
“They are not being treated as routine accident cases,’ Mr. Percy said. He
declined to explain further, saying only that his office was investigating the
activities of some of the individuals involved.
More broadly, Mr. Percy indicated that the fatalities might become a
dramatic argument for a county-wide police system for Suffolk County and for
an improved highway safety program.
Four persons were injured critically in the two accidents, and two more
persons in a third and separate crash Saturday afternoon. Among the dead were
Jackson Pollock, abstract painter, and three public school teachers in North-
port, L,I.
The police said Mr. Pollock was at the wheel of his convertible when it
failed to make a bend in Fireplace Road near his home on Springs Road, East
Hampton. The car left the highway, struck four trees and overturned...

The weekly East Hampton Star did not appear until Thursday
August 16. On its front page, in addition to Edwardes’ photograph of the
overturned Olds, was another called “A STILL LIFE”: two cans of Rhein-
gold beer, a hubcap, and Pollock’s right loafer, all nestled among the
leafy underbrush of the accident site. Beneath the picture was the caption:
 Post-mortem: 1956—

241

TRAGIC AFTERMATH of Saturday night’s automobile accident on the Springs

Road. The photographer took this picture half an hour after the crash. The
objects shown were not arranged, that is the way they fell. The Star publishes
this dramatic picture in the hope that it may further the safer driving campaign
being carried on by nation and state. Nassau and Suffolk counties are among the
worst offenders in this state with regard to automobile accidents.

Time, in its issue dated August 20—ironically, an issue of which

Pollock would very much have liked the cover subject, Duke Ellington—
listed Pollock among its current “Milestones.” He was there with the
other deaths: those of John Latouche, thirty-eight, lyricist; Archie Gal-
braith Cameron, sixty-one, Speaker of Australia’s House of Representa-
tives; John Carl Williams Hinshaw, sixty-two, a Republican on the House
Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee and the Joint Congressional
Committee on Atomic Energy; Dr. Mincho Neichevy, sixty-nine, Bulgaria’s
foreign minister; Ab Jenkins, seventy-three, auto racer; Grove Hiram
Patterson, seventy-four, editor of the Toledo Blade; Frieda Emma Johanna
Maria von Richthofen Weekley Lawrence Ravagli, seventy-seven, wife of
D. H. Lawrence until his death in 1930 and then (since 1950) of Ange-
lino Ravagli, Italian painter and ceramist—all these arranged according
to age at death, with Pollock falling between Latouche and Cameron thus:

DIED. Jackson Pollock, 44, bearded shock trooper of modern painting, who spread
his canvases on the floor, dribbled paint, sand and broken glass on them, smeared
and scratched them, named them with numbers, and became one of the art
world’s hottest sellers by 1949; at the wheel of his convertible in a side-road
crackup near East Hampton, N.Y.

Newsweek of the same date published the following item in its

“Transition” column:

Jackson Pollock, 44, abstract painter and famous student of Thomas Hart Benton,
whose technique of dripping paint onto a canvas laid flat on the floor was hailed
as “original” by some art critics, “unorganized” by others; in an auto crash near
East Hampton, N.Y., Aug. 11.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

242

One is reminded of the reaction of Thomas Hudson, the central char-

acter in Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream, when after reading about the
death of his sons in Time, he reads a similar item in Newsweek: “Newsweek
had the same facts. But reading the short item Thomas Hudson had the odd
sensation that the man who wrote it was sorry that the boys were dead.” If
one doesn’t really feel sorrow on the part of Newsweek, one does at least
experience greater neutrality, less editorializing than in Time.
Life (August 27) devoted most of a page to “Rebel Artist’s Tragic
Ending”—all but one column (given to an ad for Bluettes: “Your Hands
Tell Your Age—Only Household Gloves Keep Them Young”). At the
top of the page, reduced in size and substantially cropped, is the famous
picture of Pollock, thirty-seven and at his prime, standing in paint-splat-
tered denim before Number 9, 1948. Below this, in startling contrast,
is a photograph taken ten days before his death, in which his face
is swollen and “sports recent growth of shaggy beard.” And at the bot-
tom of the page—also in contrast, but to the 1948 painting—is Scent of
1955 (“Late canvas shows painstaking brushwork”). After a paragraph
of recapitulation (including reference to its August 8, 1949, issue), the
text reads:

...Pollock’s method made him famous. His big canvases now sell for as much
as $10,000 apiece—nearly every major U.S. gallery owns one—and his style
stirred a whole generation of young painters. His designs have found their
counterparts in many objects of everyday use, from fabric to linoleum. Shortly
before his death Pollock’s art began to be less chaotically abstract as he gave up
some of his dribbling and used carefully planned brush strokes.

There are two errors. First, no canvas by Pollock sold for $10,000.
The Metropolitan Museum had recently considered Autumn Rhythm at
that price and turned it down. The next year it would buy the painting for
three times the amount, but at Pollock’s death Ben Heller’s purchase of
One at $8,000 remained the highest price. Second, the statement “nearly
every major U.S. gallery owns one” is exaggerated. Even if we assume
 Post-mortem: 1956—

243

that by “gallery” Life means “museum,” the list would still be substantially
the same as that of the institutions presented on the first page of the “15
Years of Jackson Pollock” catalogue.
The Metropolitan’s delayed purchase of Autumn Rhythm had to be
fought for by Robert Beverly Hale, the same curator of American art who
had been accused by the Irascible Eighteen of being a reactionary ac-
complice of former Director Francis Henry Taylor. In fact Hale was by
now doing Pollockesque paintings of his own. However, despite the de-
gree of his present commitment, there is a story that he would not have
been able to persuade the new Director James Rorimer and the Board of
Trustees to make the purchase, if a group of school children had not at
that moment congregated in the alcove where the painting had been spe-
cially hung. The children evidently expressed a degree of interest and
response that made the trustees want to take another look. Finally, they
approved the $30,000 price, providing Pollock’s widow would take back
a previously purchased black-and-white and credit the museum $10,000.
She did, thus—with the Metropolitan’s help—establishing the initial
stage of posthumous Pollock prices. (About a dozen years later Heller
would sell One, the companion painting of Autumn Rhythm, for $350,-
000. The purchaser was Sidney Janis, who wanted a major Pollock to be
part of his own collection, then being given to the Museum of Modern
Art.)

... Details, details, and more details, some seemingly isolated phe-
nomena, others the effects of specific causes, and yet all the details, all the
facts, all the things, all the things as facts, all the drips, splatters, spots,
stains, all the cigarette butts, handprints, footprints, grains of sand, shells,
pebbles, bottlecaps, keys, tacks, nails, all these add up to a total flowing
image of time past, present, and future, an image bigger than the sum of its
parts, an image extending beyond the limits of the frame and beyond
death, an image of energy and its abstraction as money. ...
Dealers will scour the Hamptons, looking for cheap Pollocks. ...
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

244

The East Hampton Highway Department will make Fireplace Road

safer by somewhat straightening the bend and strengthening its shoulder. .
Autobiographies will be revised, giving retrospective emphasis to
Pollock. ...
Ruth Kligman will recover and take up with Bill de Kooning and
years later marry Carlos Sansegundo, another painter, and still later at-
tempt to publish her memoirs. The following item will appear in “Vita-
min G,” John Giorno’s satirical gossip column in the underground news-
paper Culture Hero:

It looks like everyone has started writing their memoirs. We met Joe LeSueur
on Second Avenue and he said that ... flamboyant Ruth Kligman Sanse-
gundo is breaking her 14 years of silence to write MY 7 MONTHS WITH JACKSON
POLLOCK by Ruth Klemen as told by Joe LeSueur. Joe said, “What I really want |
to call it is -------- |

LeSueur’s proposed title was witty but obscene. Years before, Frank O'Hara,
who died in 1966, had come up with an equally witty, but clean, epithet:
Death Car Girl. .
Lee Pollock and several of the artists closest to Jackson will cancel
their subscriptions to the Star and for some time continue to boycott the
paper. They will argue that Pollock and the many other artists by then
living in the East Hampton area were responsible for its vitality, chic, real
estate values, and tourist business and that therefore Pollock deserved
thanks rather than that “still-life” photographic editorial. And the Star
will respond by treating Pollock, his widow, and the art community in
general with more gentleness and respect. After his death this local paper
will carry story after story concerning Pollock exhibitions here and abroad;
and Krasner exhibitions; and the rigging necessary to remove large
Pollocks from the Hellers’ apartment and hoist them into public gal-
leries,; and showings of the Namuth film; and Peggy Guggenheim’s law-
suit against Mrs. Pollock and the Jackson Pollock Estate; and many
sympathetic stories about other artists in the community. ..
 Post-mortem: 1956—

245

And the editorial policies of Time and Life will change too and be-
come less condescending and flippant as now, with each passing year,
Pollock’s art becomes more safely established, more expensive. For ex-
ample, toward the end of 1959, Life (November 9, reported in the Star
November 12) published the first of a two-part series headlined “BAF-
FLING U.S. ART: WHAT IT IS ABOUT.” The entire first part, including ten
pages of color, was devoted to Pollock. However, as with the Star, the
change in editorial policy benefited other reputations besides that of
Pollock. Part Two would deal with de Kooning, Still, Rothko, and Kline.
And implicit Parts Three, Four, Five—week after week in Time as well as
Life—would deal with contemporaries of Pollock, so-called First-Genera-
tion American artists, and, through the booming activity of the sixties,
those of the Second and Third Generations as generations began to come
seemingly closer and closer together. By 1971 Time would run a full-page
ad in The New York Times announcing itself as “THE NEWSMAGAZINE
FOR ART LOVERS.”
No longer will it be enough for the art world to thank Pollock for
breaking the ice, running some esthetic risks, granting some esthetic per-
missions—in short, changing the history of painting. No, the world will
also have to thank him and his estate for instrumental roles in creating
a market and dragging dozens of artists, dealers, critics, and collectors into
it, where for the first time the American avant-garde can earn aliving.
Harold Rosenberg will write an article on “The Art Establishment” for
Esquire (January 1965). In it there is another “composite portrait,” this
one—a dozen years later—of the Action Widow:

Another recently emerged power is the artist’s widow. The widow is identified
with the painter's person, but she is also an owner of his art properties—in the
structure of the Establishment widows stand partway between artists and patron-
collectors, Commonly, the widow controls the entirety of her dead husband’s
unsold production: this enables her to affect prices by the rate at which she
releases his work on the market, to assist or sabotage retrospective exhibitions,
to grant or withhold documents or rights of reproduction needed by publishers
and authors. (Mrs. Jackson Pollock, besides being a painter in her own right,
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

246

is often credited with having almost single-handedly forced up prices for con-
temporary American abstract art after the death of her husband.) She is also in
4 position to authenticate or reject unsigned paintings or drawings in the hands
of others. Finally, she is the official source of the artist’s life story, as well as of
his private interpretation of that story. The result is that she is courted and her
views heeded by dealers, collectors, curators, historians, publishers, to say
nothing of lawyers and tax specialists. It is hard to think of anyone in the
Establishment who exceeds the widow in the number of powers concentrated
in the hands of a single person.

Rosenberg knows what an artist's widow is called upon to do. How-

ever, the idea that meetings with dealers, collectors, curators, historians,
lawyers, accountants, etc., might involve hundreds of painful impositions
seems, for the moment, to have escaped him. So does the idea that the
widow’s motivation for releasing the work slowly and reluctantly may
have something to do with love for the artist and his only living remains.
Several of us conferred about the disposition of the Pollock estate.
We advised Lee Pollock to release the paintings in a slow but regular ©
manner, beginning as soon as possible, so the proceeds could be invested
and so she could get back to her own work. She chose to release Pollock’s
paintings more slowly than we suggested. That decision was uncalculated.
It was based upon commitment to the work. It was based upon love, not
power politics.
In the late sixties, Dr. Joseph Henderson and Dr. Violet de Laszlo will
sell Pollock’s drawings made during the periods of therapy with them, thus
raising many questions, ethical and legal, about “privileged communica-
tion,” culminating with the publication of Wysuph’s monograph and the
circulation of the eighty-three drawings sold by Henderson to Maxwell
Galleries. ...

When one writes about Pollock there is the hope—only that—of

moving liquidly between past, present, and future. The writer becomes
jealous of the simultaneity with which Pollock had been able to present
 Post-mortem: 1956—

247

different moments in time. The writer, too, would like to interweave layers
of experience, layers of life and death. True, he can use press clippings as
Pollock used cigarette butts and photographs as he used handprints. The
writer can skip a space here and there as the painter leaves portions of the
canvas uncovered. He can reveal and conceal with words as the artist does
with paint. And yet, and yet in the end, the two media are not interchange-
able. The writer must deal with the linearity of words:
It is again close to midnight Saturday August 11. Ossorio and
Greenberg have by now succeeded in telephoning Jackson’s brother Sandy
and his mother in Deep River, Connecticut, who will inform the other
brothers. However, Ossorio and Greenberg have had no luck in reaching
Lee Pollock. According to her itinerary she should by now have been in
Venice. They did not know that during her initial two weeks in Paris she
had run into the Gimpels, who urged her to come with them to their
country place at Ménerbes in the Midi, as they would not be returning to
London before her planned departure. From Ménerbes, Kay Gimpel called
Peggy Guggenheim to have her get a hotel room for Lee Pollock. It was
clear immediately that there would be no welcome in Venice. Peggy said
the place was filled with tourists visiting the Biennale—there were no
rooms to be had, nothing. The words were definite, final as a door slam-
ming.
Lee Pollock decided to go back to Paris. There, until she could get a
room at the Quai Voltaire, she was staying with the Jenkinses again, when
Greenberg called them to find out where she had gone. He delivered his
sad message to Paul who delivered it to Lee.
The next hours were blurred and hectic. The Jenkinses called Ameri-
can friends in Paris to tell them about Jackson’s death and to ask for
their help in getting Lee on a plane at the peak of the tourist season.
Among the friends they reached was Helen Frankenthaler who came over
immediately. To prepare Lee for the plane ride and to kill the hours be-
fore departure, she and Paul Jenkins took Lee for a walk, stopping for
cognac at several cafés.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

248

Aboard the plane, the hostess gave her a sedative and described her
situation to the man next to her. But despite everyone’s attentions, despite
the brandy and the sedative, she could not sleep. Questions ran through her
mind concerning the exact circumstances of Jackson’s death. Intuitively
she knew just which bad bend in the road Clem meant when he had
spoken to Paul. But now she wondered if Jackson had been drinking, if
that girl had been with him, and, perhaps most of all, if she herself should
ever have gone to Europe. Would Jackson be alive if she hadn’t left? That
was the most tormenting question, the one that would gnaw at her during
this plane ride—and for months and years to come.
Patsy Southgate (then married to Peter Matthiessen and, like her
husband, an old and close friend of the Pollocks), Lee’s nephew Ronald
Stein, and Alfonso Ossorio drove from East Hampton to meet Lee at
Idlewild Airport. Ben Heller came from New York to help speed her
through customs. And other close friends and neighbors of the Pollocks
cleaned the house, checked the studio, went through drawers, cupboards,
closets, everything, wanting not to leave a trace of “that girl”—already re-
duced to anonymity, an interchangeable prop.
In the village of East Hampton, Hans Namuth visited the Yardley
and Williams funeral parlor intending to see Jackson for the last time,
as he would not be able to attend the funeral because of a job commit-
ment in California. After a quick look at him with Frederick Williams,
Namuth thought of photographing Jackson. Cameras, tripod, lighting
equipment were all in the trunk of his car parked outside. However,
Williams refused to let him take pictures without the consent of the
widow. Namuth explained that she was just returning, that there’d be
no opportunity to ask her before the funeral, but that if he could take
the pictures and leave the film there, he would try to get the permission
later, at a more convenient time. Again the mortician refused. To this
day Namuth regrets not getting final photographs of Pollock: “Even in
death his head was beautiful.”
When Lee Pollock got off the plane her eyes were red and sore from
crying, her face tense. She was exhausted. She looked as if she had aged
 Post-mortem: 1956—

249

four years in the four weeks or so she had been gone. During the ride
back to Springs, she asked Ossorio some of the questions she had been
asking herself. He was relieved he could say that he, too, had just re-
turned from Europe, that he hadn’t seen Jackson since June but had ex-
pected to the night of the accident, that he knew nothing. He, like Stein,
kept bringing the conversation back to the arrangements for Jackson’s
funeral—these were what had to be dealt with now.
Lee Pollock’s ideas about these arrangements had become surpris-
ingly clear during those long hours on the plane when she had been
unable to sleep or eat or read a magazine, when with eyes shut—wrapped
in the privacy of that darkness and the privacy, too, of the motors’ roar
blocking out all other sound—she had been thinking about what Jackson
would have wanted, remembering things he had said, as once again the
past moved into the present and future and the present slipped back into
the past.... For one thing, she was sure he would have wanted a church
ceremony, just as he had almost eleven years before, when they were
married. She was also sure he would have wanted to be buried in Springs
where he had lived for these eleven years, the longest period anywhere,
except for New York City during the nightmare years of the Depression
and World War II.
“We used to visit the Green River Cemetery on walks .. . and Jackson
... expressed a desire to be buried there.”
One by one, during that evening and the following day, the details fell
into place. The funeral service would be held on Wednesday in the Springs
Chapel, then the burial at Green River. A boulder or two, such as those
Jackson had dragged behind the house — “he had a thing for boulders”
—would mark the grave. Ossorio and Dragon offered to put up Jackson’s
mother and some brothers at The Creeks. Other close friends agreed to
put up other relatives of Jackson and Lee and friends of theirs from out-of-
town. Lee’s sister Ruth would stay with her in Springs. There, at the
Pollock house, after the burial would be a reception. Friends were already
volunteering to provide hams, turkeys, cheeses, salads, cakes, drinks. ...
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

250

Lee Pollock spoke to Clem Greenberg about delivering a eulogy. He

refused—on what would be described years later as “moral grounds.”
However, the then-unexplained refusal was the first of several shocks
centering around the funeral, breaches as deep as the grave.
Another occurred after the funeral, at the reading of the will. In it,
as Lee Pollock knew, Jackson gave everything to her, nothing to his
family. What came as a surprise was a letter he had attached to the will,
providing that his mother and brothers could each borrow one painting.
The words in that letter must have fallen like salt in everyone’s wounds.
It is not surprising that none of the family ever borrowed a painting.
Ossorio says,* “His whole family was mean about his work; they did not
take it with the seriousness it deserved. Only his brother Sandy was sym-
pathetic.” Yet one wonders if Jackson really remembered just how sympa-
thetic Sandy had been. Did he remember that Sandy had treated him more
like a son than a brother and that his wife Arloie had completely accepted
Sandy’s love for Jackson and had put up with so much?.Or had that re- |
lationship with Sandy been soured by parental overtones? Perhaps Jack-
son’s ambivalence toward father figures would also explain his feelings
about Charles—and, to a lesser extent, Frank—who had taken care of
him when he came to New York. Even Jay, of all the brothers the one
with whom Jackson had the least contact, did own two early paintings by
Jackson and had offered to trade a collection of Navaho rugs and blankets
for one of his later works. ... Unanswerable questions flood our minds
now, just as thoughts and memories must have flooded theirs during the
reading of the will.

Wednesday, August 15, 1956, is clear and hot. By four the parking
area next to the Springs Chapel is crowded with cars, many from New
York City, and the chapel itself is half-full. Here are the year-round
neighbors of the Pollocks, the native shopkeepers and mechanics as well
as the exurban painters and writers; and here also are the summer people,
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 Post-mortem: 1956-

251

the collectors, the dealers, the critics, the curators—all the familiar faces
but sadder than usual—the women wearing dark dresses, the men wearing
ties and jackets. Several of the museum people are from the Modern. With
some bitterness they talk about the irony that has changed a Pollock
“artist in midcareer” exhibition, planned for the end of the year, into a
memorial show.
By four-thirty Lee Pollock and the Pollock family have, as she
wished, been seated in separate front pews, and the chapel is full. The
Reverend George Nicholson reads from the Bible, recites some of the
basic facts concerning the life of Pollock, whom he hardly knew, and
the service is over. There are comments about its impersonal nature,
questions about the lack of a eulogy or at least a passage from, say,
Thomas or Joyce or Melville, someone whose work was close to the
spirit of Pollock. But with distance—distance the Reverend had and we
didn’t—his selection seems very appropriate: the Phillips translation of
the declaration of St. Paul in Romans, Chapter 8, beginning

In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing

compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole
creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into
their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses
to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has
been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will
be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that
magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God!

Some drive to the cemetery, others walk the short distance. There
again Pollock’s family and friends assemble, and again the Reverend reads.
Fifteen years later, he writes: *

It seemed to me that at that moment when the art world had collected around
that grave, on that beautiful day, all our skills & philosophies added up to a
fragmentary & sorry collection. Like Plato’s cave we were men living in a

* Letter to the author dated Apr. 22, 1971.

 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

252

shadowy illusory world of sounds & sights—like dogs in an art gallery—sniffing

around at corners.
No, I didn’t know J. Pollock. But in the Epistle to the Romans Chapt. 8
there is more than a hint of glory and greatness—always in short supply.

Shaded by a tall white oak, a boulder marks the head of the grave.
Even more than the tree, the stone makes a direct powerful statement
about endurance. Like the tree, it looks as if it has grown out of the
ground, but it looks too as if it has been there longer, much longer, pet-
haps forever.

The present becomes the future: it will take a year for ivy and moss
to cover the ground scars and to creep over portions of the headstone,
joining it more gently to the earth.
By then, after a lot of looking, Lee Pollock and the painter John Little
will have found a much larger boulder to mark the grave, and the Pol-
locks’ friend Jeff Potter will have hauled it by tractor to the cemetery.
The headstone is about the same length as the grave and set at right ©
angles to it. In profile it suggests a whale’s head emerging from the
sea. Placed on the stone is a bronze plaque bearing only Pollock’s signa-
ture and dates.
By then there will have been “An Evening for Jackson Pollock at
The Club.” There, on East 14th Street at nine-thirty Friday, November 30,
many of his friends and admirers gathered to speak with some of the per-
sonal passion that was lacking at the funeral. The Club’s postcard an-
nounced that “James Brooks, Willem de Kooning, Clement Greenberg,
Rube Kadish, Frederick Kiesler, Franz Kline, Corrado di Marca-Relli and
others will speak” and that Harold Rosenberg would be chairman. Though
the announcement suggested a panel discussion, the evening had a much
more informal character, with a great deal of give-and-take between
Pollock’s close friends at the front of the room and others, some equally
close, seated further back in the audience.... Kadish spoke about their
schooling in California, their early ideas about art, and Jackson’s love
 Post-mortem: 1956-

253

of rocks, stones, elemental shapes. He told the story of fishing the block
of sandstone from the bed of the Los Angeles River... . Brooks recalled
the years on the Project when he was particularly close to Jackson’s
brothers and then the years when Jackson used to stay with him and his
wife at 46 East 8th Street and finally the purchase in 1949 ofa place in
Montauk from which, on Fridays for the next five summers or so, the
Brookses would drive to East Hampton to take care of their shopping and
laundry and sometimes to see a movie and almost always to have dinner
with the Pollocks. But Brooks himself hardly remembers what he said
that night at The Club: “I don’t suppose any of us really said anything.
What can you say about a man you knew and loved and admired? I felt
the enormous scale of his personality and his art.” Brooks’s commitment
to Pollock was just as strong and more fully expressed a decade later when
he wrote:”*

Jackson’s break into the irrational was the most violent of any of the artists’,
and his exploration of the unconscious, the most daring and persistent. A highly
responsive draftsmanship swept his work through a world of revelations and
frights, and he was always past the point of no return.
Perhaps there was no immediate Pollock school of painters because his
work acted in a very different way—as a destroyer and a liberator over a wide
spectrum, fertilizing seemingly opposite expressions by its disgust with the
threadbare and by its strong assertion of life.

Grace Hartigan repeated de Kooning’s remark about Jackson’s breaking

the ice. Greenberg responded, “Broke the ice for whom?” suggesting that
he thought de Kooning was not part of the-same tradition as Pollock but
more closely identified with Cubism. De Kooning explained that he had
used a typically American phrase about a typically American guy, that he
had not meant that Pollock’s esthetic leadership was unique or exclusive
but part of a moment in history, and that what Pollock had opened up
was the recognition of American artists and a market for their work. ...
* See Bibliography No. 127.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

254

In another exchange Newman announced dramatically, “Jackson lives!”

and de Kooning replied, “What do you mean? I saw him buried in
Springs.” ... There was so much talk about Jackson as an artist that May
Rosenberg spoke from the floor to remind everyone that Jackson had been
a man as well, a man who loved children, animals, plants—all aspects of
nature, and games, and cooking, and tinkering with automobiles.... In
short, throughout the evening two opposing feelings were expressed
strongly: first, that this should be a proper memorial, and second, that
there should be neither sloppy sentimentalizing nor premature myth-
making. Of the announced speakers Conrad Marca-Relli didn’t appear,
and Franz Kline was the only one of them who never said a word; he
was silent as Lee Pollock.
By then—again, within the year following Pollock’s death—Louis
Guglielmi, a New York painter who summered in nearby Amagansett,
will have died. His widow remembers, “When friends came to help, I said,
‘Put him in that cemetery where Pollock was buried.’ And in subsequent
years so many others—artists, writers, friends—will be buried in Green
River Cemetery: Stuart Davis; Wilfred Zogbaum; Frank O'Hara; Fred-
erick Kiesler; A. J. Liebling; George Cooke, a journalist and friend of
Pollock’s who requested a keg-shaped tombstone (since replaced by a more
conventional one).... By 1966 Ad Reinhardt would freshen up an old
joke, “The place is getting so famous that people are dying to go there,”
and in an interview at about the same time would say, “Happenings were
being replaced by funeral services. That’s the latest thing. That’s the latest
place where you can see artists in any quantity. There’s no other way to
see them. You know, I don’t think artists go to openings, certainly not to
the Museum of Modern Art....”* By 1967 Reinhardt himself will be
buried in Green River Cemetery, at fifty-three, a comparatively ripe age
for this generation of artists. And by 1970 Ben Heller's wife, Judy, forty-
one, will die in yet another automobile accident and be buried there. ...
* See Bibliography No. 179.
 Post-mortem: 1956—

But it is August 15, 1956. On one side of the grave stands Stella
McClure Pollock, age eighty-one, flanked by two of her sons, Charles
and Sanford. Although she carries a cane and has placed it in front of
her, there is no weight on it now. Erect and expressionless, she listens
to the words of the minister. (A dozen years later, Charles Pollock will
write:* “...I am aware that others—besides yourself—had been puz-
zled by my mother’s composure at Jack’s funeral. That puzzlement
seems to me to stem from a mistaken belief that deep emotion must be
visible.”)
On the other side, Lee Krasner Pollock, having stood alone, leans
now On two friends as she sobs. Sherry Lord and Peter Matthiessen hold
Jackson’s dogs, Gyp and Ahab. As the coffin is lowered slowly into the
earth, the dogs began to strain at their leashes. That physical straining,
felt and passionate, may have been the eulogy we wanted to hear. Surely
many of us were released by it and knew it was something Jackson would
have understood; knew this as later, back at his house, we knew he would
have understood our drinking.
For many of us the drinking was not “social” in the ordinary sense
but in a much more profound sense, that of Jackson’s Celtic ancestors
who had established the wake as a way of dealing with death. This eve-
ning we did not drink just to ease the tension, we did not stop after one
or two, we drank on and on wanting somehow to drown our communal
pain and to join Jackson in oblivion.

Early in the year following the funeral, the president of Grove Press,
Barney Rosset, who had bought the Motherwell house in East Hampton,
published the first number of Evergreen Review. During its early years
this would be an extremely vital publication, presenting some of the most

* Letter to the author, dated Oct. 27, 1968.

 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

256

daring young American writers along with those of the European avant-
garde. Indeed, in the late fifties, this magazine was a publishing equivalent
of galleries which had, in the early forties, asked Pollock to participate
in mixed European and American group shows. Evergreen Review No. 3
(1957) is typical, except for the number of threads which connect it with
Jackson Pollock. On the cover is Namuth’s Harper’s Bazaar photograph
of Pollock on the running board of his beat-up Model A Ford. The lead
piece is Camus’s “Reflections on the Guillotine.” This is followed by three
poems by William Carlos Williams and three by Frank O’Hara. O’Hara’s
poem “A Step Away from Them” contains the lines:

... First
Bunny {V.R. Lang] died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?

Next is a story by Patsy Southgate. ... Without going through the entire
table of contents, there are more poems (e.g., Gregory Corso, Barbara .
Guest, Gary Snyder). There is a section “From an Abandoned Work” by
Samuel Beckett. There is the biographical note on Pollock by Greenberg
(from which we quoted early in this book). It introduces four more photo-
graphs of Pollock by Namuth. There is an essay and three prose “snap-
shots” by Robbe-Grillet. There is a story by Ionesco.
A few issues later (No. 6, 1958) O’Hara interviewed Franz Kline,
who referred several times to his dead friend:

... When Pollock talked about painting he didn’t usurp anything that wasn’t
himself. He didn’t want to change anything, he wasn’t using any outworn at-
titudes about it, he was always himself. He just wanted to be in it because he
loved it...
If you're a painter, you're not alone. There’s no way to be alone. You
think and you care and you're with all the people who care, including the
young people who don't know they do yet. Tomlin in his late paintings knew
 Post-mortem: 1956-

257

this. Jackson always knew it: that if you meant it enough when you did it, it
will mean that much....
Like with Jackson: you don’t paint the way someone, by observing your
life, thinks you have to paint, you paint the way you have to in order to give,
that's life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing,
but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving. The question
about knowing will naturally be wrong. When you've finished giving, the look
surprises you as well as anyone else....

Also in Evergreen Review No. 6 is the “Ode to Jackson Pollock” by

Mike McClure. Many of its lines read like powerfully compressed biog-
raphy—for example, “You made your history. Of pain.” Later in the
poem, McClure dares to use the word “heroic.”
And Tony Smith recalls: * “At the funeral, someone said, ‘He was just
like the rest of us.’ Well, it wasn’t true. He had more of the hero about
him, and everyone knew it.”
Yes, Pollock’s was an heroic American success story. Unarmed, un-
willing to become a thing, awkwardly he took on mass media, and like
so many American artists of his generation he died young in the process.
It would remain for artists of another generation to accept the role of
thing, of machine, of artist as entertainer, in one vast cool electronic enter-
tainment; to resist thus the fateful coupling of their own self-destructive-
ness and society’s cannibalism.
Much has been written about the direct influence of Pollock on
younger artists who assimilated the implications of his work—for example,
the Color Field painters. Yet where the resemblance isn’t as obvious, his
influence may have been at least as profound: in his exemplary and endur-
ing reminder that “new needs demand new technics.”
A year after Pollock’s death, Robert Rauschenberg will demonstrate
his control in Factum, two duplicate dripped canvases intended to be hung
side by side; but he will then go on to new adventures in “combine draw-
* See Bibliography No. 172.
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

258

ings,” electronically programmed imagery, dance.... Andy Warhol will

exploit commercial silk-screen processes in endlessly dazzling serial images
of soup cans, Coke bottles, famous faces, electric chairs; he will direct multi-
track movies; he will say, “Machines have less problems. I’d like to be a
machine, wouldn’t you?”... Claes Oldenburg will write his Store Days
journal: “Lately I have begun to understand action painting that old
thing in a new vital and peculiar sense—as corny as the scratches on a
NY wall and by parodying its corn I have (miracle) come back to its
authenticity! I feel as if Pollock is sitting on my shoulder, or rather
crouching in my pants!” In 1963 Oldenburg will create a motel Bedroom
Ensemble environment that is monumental in both its size and its false-
ness. The room will contain simulated zebra headboard, pillows, couch;
simulated leopard coat on the couch; simulated burl veneer dressers and
night tables on which are lamps with simulated marble shades; and, on
the walls, simulated Pollocks of framed fabric.... Roy Lichtenstein will
create his monuments—in Benday—from cartoon images, details of paint
drips, thirties decor.... Allan Kaprow, like Oldenburg a pioneer of —
happenings, will write (Art News, October 1964):

According to the myth, the modern artist is the archetypal victim who ts
“suicided by society” (Artaud). In the present sequel, the artist is entirely re-.
sponsible for his life and death; there are no villains any more. There are only
cultured reactionaries, sensitive and respected older radicals, rising up in in-
dignation to remind you that Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Pollock died on the
Cross....

... And Jim Dine, yet another originator of happenings, will describe his
first, The Smiling Workman:

...1 had a flat built. It was a three-panel flat with two sides and one flat.
There was a table with three jars of paint and two brushes on it, and the canvas
was painted white. 1 came around it with one light on me. 1 was all in red with a
big, black mouth: all my face and head were red, and I had a red smock on, down
to the floor. I painted “I love what I’m doing” in orange and blue. When I got to
 Post-mortem: 1956—

259

“what I’m doing,” it was going very fast, and | picked up one of the jars and drank
the paint, and then 1 poured the other two jars of paint over my head, quickly,
and dove... through the canvas....

But Pollock’s impact was not restricted to Americans nor to plastic

artists. It was felt by important writers here and abroad. For example, in
1962, Michel Butor’s Mobile, a “study for the representation of the United
States,” was published by Editions Gallimard. Janet Flanner (Genét)
described it in a New Yorker “Letter from Paris” as “undoubtedly the
oddest, most fragmentary, yet stimulating journey-record ever compiled
from so much humdrum mileage in our vast land.” The book is a structural
collage of personal journal entries, commercial brochures, historical docu-
ments, present and past voices of all kinds. It is at once fragmentary and
continuous, abstract and concrete. It is dedicated “To the Memory of
Jackson Pollock.”
In a foreword to the second edition (1969) of The Anxious Object,
Rosenberg will write:

... painting is no longer a haven for self-defeating contemplatives but a

glamorous arena in which performers of talent may rival the celebrity of senators
or TV stars.
Given these transformations, inner and outer, anxiety as a psychological
State is today no more typical of artists than of doctors, truck drivers or physicists
(though it is typical of all of them). Noting the comfortable prospects for
painters and sculptors, some critics have concluded that the disturbance of art
4s a phenomenon of the past; it is a mood, they tell us, that belongs to the
decade following the war. Anxious painting in this view is the kin of Existential-
ism and the Theatre of the Absurd. It is an aspect of the life style of dusty lofts,
blue jeans, the Cedar Tavern (at its old address), no sales, tumescent paint
letting go in drips. Today, this stereotype continues, anxiety is no longer a
reality in art, which is at last properly concerned with its own development. To
mention anxiety is to arouse suspicion of nostalgsa or of a vested interest in the
past, if not of a reactionary reversion to the middle-class notion of genius suf-
fering in a garret.
In this capsule wisdom the problem of contemporary civilization is mis-
 Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible

260

taken for an episode in the history of fashion. Only the grossest materialism,
such as pervades American cultural journalism, could equate poverty with
anxiety, high income with serenity. Psychologically, Action painters twenty
years ago were no more anxious than Pop artists or kinetic geometers are today.
All indications are that they were probably much \ess anxious. They were re-
signed to being who they were and where they were. Spending most of their
time with other artists, they led a far more relaxed and vivacious social life
than the lions rampant of today’s art world. Most important, in Action Painting
the act of painting is a catharsis—theoretically at least, tt is able to reach the
deepest knots of the artist’s personality and to loosen them. By contrast, in the
recent cool modes of painting and constructing, process prevails, and the un-
excited artist performs the necessary steps without upsetting his normal condi-
tion of uneasiness.

Within another context, that of a story called “The Show”—il-

lustrated with Ernst-like collages of old engravings—Donald Barthelme
will write (The New Yorker, August 8, 1970):

It is difficult to keep the public interested.

The public demands new wonders piled on new wonders.
Often we don’t know where our next marvel is coming from.
The supply of strange ideas is not endless.
The development of new wonders is not like the production of canned goods.

But even if this applies, however ironically, to any one artist (War-
hol?), the work produced by that artist does take its place in the endless
history of art and therefore in the endless history of life... .

Toward the end of World War II there had been a moment in

which Lee and Jackson Pollock thanked God that they were painters
rather than writers. Then all the writers were seemingly being devoured
by America—more specifically, Hollywood—or destroying themselves in
the struggle not to be devoured. In Hollywood, never having completed a
successful film script, Nathanael West had died in an automobile accident
and Scott Fitzgerald had drunk himself to death, and William Faulkner,
 Post-mortem: 1956—

261

drinking just as hard, was writing tough movie dialogue in order to do

his other writing in Mississippi.... Of the best fiction writers, only
Hemingway was dealing with Hollywood at long distance, writing his
own script and starring in it, but paying the same terrible price as his
colleagues—in alcoholism and creative frustration. Yes, during World
War II and for a short time thereafter, the new generation of painters had
seemed comparatively lucky and free, unbothered by mass media. But now,
as we look back on the lives of the Abstract Expressionists, as we think
about the suicides of Gorky and Rothko, the car accident of Pollock and
the truck accident of David Smith, the premature deaths of Tomlin, Kline,
Baziotes, Reinhardt, Newman, the heavy drinking (at‘once, self-destructive
and -protective) of most of these artists and several others who survive,
it becomes impossibly naive to use words like “accident” and “pre-
mature.” As with the brilliant but vulnerable writers of the previous gen-
eration, at the same time as we appreciate the uniqueness of their gifts,
we must face the typicalness of their fates in a society which wastes lives
and automobiles with equal callousness. This is not to say that Pollock and
the others were “suicided by society” but that a self-destructive society
nourished his (and their) self-destructiveness. Pollock was not murdered;
he did not murder himself; but in his death, as in his life, he had accomplices.
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 Selective Bibliography

(following substantially the structure of the bibliography in No. 10 below, with addi-
tional categories and with additions and deletions within categories)
POLLOCK STATEMENTS, WRITINGS, 9: O'Connor, Francis V. “The Genesis of
AND INTBRVIBWS (arranged chron- Jackson Pollock: 1912 to 1943.” Un-
ologically) published Ph.D. dissertation, The
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,
. (Answers to a questionnaire.) Arts &
1965.
Architecture, LXI, February 1944, p.
14. . Jackson Pollock. New York:
The Museum of Modern Art, 1967.
. (Statement.) in Janis, Sidney. Ab-
stract & Surrealist Art in America. . O'Hara, Frank. Jackson Pollock. (The
New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, Great American Artists Series.) New
1944, p. 112. York: George Braziller, 1959.
rev.: Folds, Thomas M., in College
. “My Painting,” posssbslities (New
Art Journal (New York), XX,
York), Winter 1947—48, pp. 78 ff.
Fall 1960, pp. 52 ff.
. “Unframed Space,” New Yorker,
12. Robertson, Bryan. Jackson Pollock.
XXVI, August 5, 1950, p. 16.
New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
Interview with Jackson and Lee
1960.
Pollock.
British ed.: London, Thames &
. (Narration for the film Jackson Pol- Hudson, 1960—German _ ed.:
lock made by Hans Namuth and Paul Cologne, DuMont Schauberg,
Falkenberg, 1951.) Typescript in the 1961.
Library, The Museum of Modern Art, rev.: Archer, W. G., in Studio
New York. (London), CLXI, April 1961, p.
. (Excerpts from an interview taped by 161; Frampton, Kenneth, in Arts
William Wright, Springs, Long Is- Review (London), XIII, June 3-
land, 1950.) Art in America (New 17, 1961, p. 2; Rosenberg, Harold,
York), LIII, | August-September in Art News (New York), LIX,
1965, pp. 111 ff. Entire interview in February 1961, pp. 35 ff; Tyler,
No. 10. Parker, Letter to the editor in re-
sponse to Rosenberg review, Art
. (Statements.) #s Rodman, Selden. News, LX, March 1961, p. 6;
Conversations with Artists. New Sweeney, J. J., in Herald-Tribune,
York: Devin-Adair, 1957. Pp. 76-87. January 1, 1961, p. 29; Times
(Statements: see also No. 13.) Literary Supplement (London),
February 3, 1961, p. 70.
MONOGRAPHS
. Henderson, Joseph L. “Jackson Pol- 13. Rose, Bernice. Jackson Pollock:
lock: A Psychological Commentary.” Works on Paper. New York: The
Unpublished paper, 1966; revised Museum of Modern Art in association
1968. See No. 14. with the Drawing Society, Inc.
 Selective Bibliography

264

1969. (Statements by Pollock pp. 16, 24. . Alfonso Ossorio. New York:
102.) Harry N. Abrams, 1973.
14, Wysuph, C. L. Jackson Pollock: 25. Goodrich, Lloyd, and Baur, John I. H.
Psychoanalytic Drawings. New York: American Art of Our Century. New
Horizon Press, 1970. York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961.
GENERAL WORKS 26. Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture:
15. Ashton, Dore. The Unknown Shore: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press,
A View of Contemporary Art. Boston 1961.
and Toronto: Little, Brown & Com- Zils Guggenheim, Peggy. Confessions of
pany, 1962. an Art Addict. New York: Macmil-
Baur, John I. H., see No. 25. lan, 1960.
. Benton, Thomas Hart. An Artist in rev. ed. of Out of This Century.
America, Third Edition. Columbia, New York: Dial, 1946.
Missouri: University of Missouri 28. Haftmann, Werner. Painting in the
Press, 1968. Twentieth Century. 2 vols. New
ie Blesh, Rudi. Modern Art USA, Men, York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960;
Rebellion, Conquest, 1900-1956. new and expanded ed., 1965.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. German eds.: Munich, Prestel Ver-
lag, 1954-55; rev. ed., 1957.
18. Candee, Marjorie Dent (ed.). “Pol-
lock, Jackson,” Current Biography 29: Hess, Thomas B. Abstract Painting.
Yearbook. New York: H. W. Wilson, New York: Viking, 1951.
1956. 30. Hunter, Sam. “Jackson Pollock: The
19. C(hoay), F(rangoise). “Pollock,” Maze and the Minotaur,” New World
Dictionary of Modern Painting, eds., Writing. (Ninth Mentor Selection.)
Carlton Lake and Robert Maillard. New York: New American Library,
3rd ed. New York: Tudor, 1964. 1956.
Tr. from the French Dictionnaire 31, . Modern American Painting
de la peinture moderne. Paris: and Sculpture. New York: Dell,
Hazan, 1955. 1959.
20. Dawson, Fielding. An Emotional 32: . “USA,” Art since 1945.
Memoir of Franz Kline. New York: New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
Pantheon Books, 1967. 1958.
Zi Friedman, B. H. School of New 33. Janis, Sidney. Abstract & Surrealist
York: Some Younger Artists. New Art in America, New York: Reynal
York: Grove Press, 1959. & Hitchcock, 1944.
22; and Guest, Barbara. Good- 34. Kootz, Samuel M. New Frontiers in
nough. Paris: The Pocket Museum American Painting. New York: Hast-
(Editions Georges Fall), 1962. ings House, 1943.
Zon Lee Krasner: paintings, draw- 35: McDarrah, Fred W. The Artist’s
ings and collages. London: White- World in Pictures. (Introduction by
chapel Gallery, 1965. Thomas B. Hess, commentary by
 Selective Bibliography

26S

Gloria Schoffel McDarrah.) New 45. Rosenberg, Harold. The Tradition of

York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1962. the New. New York: Horizon Press,
. McGinley, Phyllis. Times Three. New 1959.
York: The Viking Press, 1960, pp. 46. . Arshile Gorky: The Man,
69-70. the Time, the Idea. New York:
“Spectator’s Guide to Contempo- Horizon Press, 1962.
rary Art” appeared originally in 47. . The Anxious Object: Art
New Yorker, May 21, 1955, p. 114. Today and Its Audience. New York:
. Miller, Edwin Haviland, editor. The Horizon Press, 1966.
Artistic Legacy of Walt Whitman. Reprinted New York: The New
New York: New York University American Library, A Mentor Book,
Press, 1970. 1969, with “Foreword to the Second
Includes “The Radical Vision of Edition.”
Whitman and Pollock” by Miller. 48. . Artworks and Packages. New
. Motherwell, Robert, and Reinhardt, York: Horizon Press, 1969.
Ad, editors. Modern Artists in 49. . Act and the Actor: Making
America. New York: Wittenborn the Self. New York and Cleveland:
Schultz, Inc., 1952. The World Publishing Co., 1970.
Neuberger, Roy R., see No. 42. 50. Sandler, Irving. The Triumph of
. O'Connor, Francis V. Federal Support American Painting: A History of
for the Visual Arts: The New Deal Abstract Expressionism. New York:
and Now. Greenwich, Conn.: New Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1970.
York Graphic Society, 1969. Sil Seuphor, Michel. Dictionary of Ab-
. Pierre, Jose. “Surrealism, Jackson Stract Painting. New York: Paris
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123 . “How a Disturbed Genius Talked to 133: Kaprow, Allan. “The Legacy of Jack-
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234. Venice, Ala Napoleonica (Museo
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(The Museum of Modern Art Bul-
gives Le Tre Mani as sponsors,
letin, XXIV, No. 2, 1956-57.)
contains introductory remarks by
Text by Sam Hunter. Reprinted
Peggy Guggenheim and an essay,
in English and Portuguese in No.
“‘Guazzabugli’ di Jackson Pol-
242; in English and other lan-
lock,” by Bruno Alfieri; the sec-
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30’s/painting in new york. 1957.
Za. New York, Betty Parsons Gallery.
Jackson Pollock. November 26—
Edited by Patricia Passloff.
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236; with slight alterations in Unidos 4 IV Bienal do Museu de
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New American Painting, May and Portuguese, adapted from No.
28-September 8, 1959. 240.
236. Paris, Studio Paul Facchetti. Jackson 243. New York, The International Coun-
Pollock. March 7-31, 1952. Pp. 8. cil at the Museum of Modern Art.
Essays by Michel Tapié, “Jackson Jackson Pollock 1912-1956. March
Pollock avec nous,” and Alfonso 1, 1958—February 15, 1959.
 Selective Bibliography

27S

Translations of text by Sam Selz. Prefatory note by Paul Til-

Hunter, adapted from No. 240, in lich. “Jackson Pollock” by Frank
separate catalogues published in O'Hara (see No. 171).
each city: Rome, Galleria Na-
246. London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd.
zionale d’Arte Moderna, March
Jackson Pollock, Paintings, Draw-
1-30, 1958; Basel, Kunsthalle,
ings, and Watercolors from the Col-
April 19—May 26, 1958; Amster-
lection of Lee Krasner Pollock.
dam, Stedelijk Museum, June 6-
June 1961. Pp. 64.
July 7, 1958; Hamburg, Kunst-
Introduction and catalogue notes
verein, July 19—August 17, 1958
(joint catalogue with Basel Kunst-
by Lawrence Alloway. Reprinted
in various translations in Nos.
halle); Berlin, Hochschule fir
247-249; in Paletten (Stock-
Bildende. Kiinste, September 1-
holm), XXII, 1961, pp. 82-85.
October 1, 1958; London, White-
chapel Art Gallery, November 4- 247. Diisseldorf, Kunstverein fir die
December 14, 1958; Paris, Musée Rheinlande und Westfalen. Kunst-
National d’Art Moderne, January halle. Jackson Pollock. September
16-February 15, 1959 (shown 5—October 8, 1961. Pp. 55.
simultaneously with The New Preface by Karl-Heinz Hering.
American Painting; joint cata- Introduction and catalogue notes
logue, Jackson Pollock et la by Lawrence Alloway, German
nouvelle peinture américaine). translation of No. 246.
244. New York, The Museum of Modern 248. Zurich, Kunsthaus. Jackson Pollock.
Art. The New American Painting. October 24—-November 29, 1961.
May 28-September 8, 1959. Pp. 96. Pp. 59.
4 works by Pollock. Preface by Edvard Hiittinger.
Exhibition, selected by Dorothy Introduction and catalogue notes
C. Miller, as shown in eight Euro- by Lawrence Alloway, German
pean cities April -1958—March translation of No. 246.
1959 under the auspices of the
249. Rome, Marlborough Galleria d’Arte.
International Program of the Jackson Pollock. October-November
Museum of Modern Art. Cata-
1962. Pp. 12.
logue is a reprint of the one used Introduction by Lawrence Allo-
for the showing at the Tate Gal-
way, Italian translation of No. 246.
lery, London, February—March
Same exhibition shown in Milan,
1959, with the addition of color
Toninelli Arte Moderna, Novem-
plates and a selection of critical
ber—December 1962, for which a
response that appeared in Euro-
separate catalogue was published.
pean publications.
250. Stockholm, Moderna Museet. Jack-
245. New York, The Museum of Modern
son Pollock. February—April 1963.
Art (in collaboration with the
Pp. 34.
Baltimore Museum of Art). New
Introduction by K. G. Hultén.
Images of Man, 1959.
Edited and introduced by Peter 251. New York, The Jewish Museum.
 Selective Bibliography

276

black and white, December 25 257. Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
1963—February 5, 1964. New York School. The First Genera-
Catalogue by Ben Heller. Preface tion, Paintings of the 1940s and
by Alan R. Solomon, Introduction 1950s. July 16-August 1, 1965. Pp.
by Ben Heller. “Black or White,” 232. 8 works by Pollock.
by Robert Motherwell. Edited by Maurice Tuchman.
. New York, Marlborough-Gerson . College Park, University of Mary-
Gallery. Jackson Pollock. January- land Art Gallery. Federal Art Pa-
February 1964. Pp. 64. tronage 1933 to 1943. April 6—May
Brief introduction by Bryan 13, 1966. Pp. 60. 2 works by Pol-
Robertson, excerpt from No. 12. lock.
Text by Francis V. O'Connor.
253. Harvard University, Fogg Art Mu-
259. American Federation of Arts. Amers-
seum. Within the Easel Convention:
can Masters: Art Students League.
Sources of Abstract-Expressionism.
1967, circulated by A.F.A. Pp. 96-
May 7-June 7, 1964. Pp. 46. 3
97.
works by Pollock.
Note on Pollock by Thomas B.
Text by Ann Gabhart, Frieda
Hess.
Grayzel, Rosalind Krauss. Analy-
sis of Pollock’s works by Ann 260. New York, Finch College Museum
Gabhart. of Art. Betty Parsons’ Private Col-
lection. March 13—April 24, 1968.
254. New York, Art Students League. Acknowledgment by Elayne H. .
American Masters from Eakins to Varian. Text by Eugene Goossen.
Pollock. July 7—August 26, 1964,
pp. 42-43. 261. New York, The Museum of.Modern
Magic Mirror (1941) is illus- Art. The Art of the Real/USA
1948-1968. 1968.
trated.
Preface, acknowledgment, and text
Zs London, Tate Gallery. The Peggy by Eugene Goossen.
Guggenheim Collection. December 262. New York, Whitney Museum of
31, 1964—March 7, 1965. Pp. 99. American Art. The 1930's: Painting
11 works by Pollock. & Sculpture in America. October
Preface by Herbert Read. Intro- 15—December 1, 1968.
duction. by Peggy Guggenheim. Text by William C. Agee.
Catalogue notes by Ronald Alley. The Flame, 1937, and Birth,
256. Philadelphia, Institute of Contempo- 1937, in exhibition, the former
rary Art, University of Pennsylvania. illustrated in catalogue.
1943-1953: The Dectsive Years. 263. New York, The Solomon R. Gug-
January 14—March 1, 1965. genheim Museum. Works from the
Introduction by Samuel Adams Peggy Guggenheim Foundation.
Green. 1969. Pp. 146-159.
Night Dancer (green), 1944, is Introduction by Peggy Guggen-
illustrated. heim (Venice, July 1968).
 Selective Bibliography

277

264. New York, Marlborough-Gerson 269. Friedman, B. H. Circles. New York:

Gallery. Jackson Pollock: Black and Fleet Publishing Corp., 1962.
White. March 1969. Reprinted as I Need To Love.
Introduction by William S. New York: Macfadden Books,
Lieberman. “An Interview with 1963.
Lee Krasner Pollock,” by B. H. 270. Friedman, Sanford. A Haunted
Friedman. Woman. New York: E. P. Dutton
265. New York, The Museum of Modern & .Co., 1968.
Art. The New American Painting . Hayter, Stanley W. New Ways of
and Sculpture: The First Generation. Gravure. New York: Pantheon
June 18—October 5, 1969. Books, 1949.
Check List of the Exhibition, in-
cludes fifteen works by Pollock. Ze. Jung, C. G. The Basic Writings.
New York: The Modern Library,
266. New York, The Metropolitan Mu- 1959.
seum of Art. New York Painting
Edited with an Introduction by
and Sculpture: 1940-1970. October Violet Staub de Laszlo.
18, 1969-February 1, 1970.
Foreword by Thomas P. F. Hov- ZU3. . Man and His Symbols.
ing; “New York Painting and New York: Doubleday & Co.; Lon-
Sculpture: 1940-1970,” by Henry don: Aldus Books, Ltd., 1964.
Geldzahler; “The American Ac- Includes “Ancient Myths and
tion Painters,” by Harold Rosen- Modern Man,” by Joseph L.
berg; “The Abstract Sublime,” by Henderson and “Symbolism in the
Robert Rosenblum; “After Ab- Visual Arts,” by Aniela Jaffé, the
stract Expressionism,” by Clement latter of which refers specifically
Greenberg; “Arshile Gorky, Sur- to Pollock (p. 264).
realism, and the New American 274. Kaprow, Allan; Assemblage, En-
Painting,” by William Rubin; vironments G Happenings. New
“Shape as Form: Frank Stella's York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1966.
New Paintings,” by Michael 275. Kerouac, Jack. “The Art of Fiction”
Fried. (interview by Ted Berrigan), Parss
RELATED MATERIAL
Review, XI, 43, Summer 1968. Pp.
60-105.
(fiction and non-fiction by authors
whose works offer insights into 276. Kirby, Michael. Happenings. New
Pollock’s ambience) York: E. P, Dutton & Co., 1966.
267. Braider, Donald. The Palace Guard. Zils Kunitz, Stanley J. (ed.). Twentieth
New York: The Viking Press, 1958. Century Authors, First Supplement.
268. Breton, André. Manifestoes of Sur- New York: The H. W. Wilson Co.,
realism. Ann Arbor: The University 1955.
of Michigan Press, 1969. Includes autobiographical state-
Translated from the French by ment by Clement Greenberg.
Richard Seaver and Helen R. 278. Matthiessen, Peter. Race Rock. New
Lane. York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.
 Selective Bibliography

278

Zi: Ponge, Francis. “Prose Sketches,” Art by Morton Feldman. Narration by

and Literature, 12, Spring 1967. Pp. Jackson Pollock, 1951.
225-252. Translated from the 10 minutes. 16mm. Color. Sound.
French by Lane Dunlop. Distributed by Film Images divi-
sion of Radim Films, Inc., 17
280. Tabak, May Natalie. But Not For
West 60th Street, New York,
Love. New York: Horizon Press,
N.Y. 10023.
1960.
An earlier black-and-white film
281. . “Small Change,” Kenyon of Pollock, without sound, is
Review, XXX, 122, 5, 1968, pp. owned by the producers but not
627-51. distributed.
282. Thompson, D'Arcy. On Growth and PUZZLE
Form, Revised Edition. Cambridge 285. Convergence by Jackson Pollock.
University Press, 1948. Produced by Springbok Editions di-
vision of Hallmark Cards, October
283. Williams, Tennessee. Dragon Coun-
1964. Initially bute no longer dis-
try. “In the Bar of the Tokyo Hotel.”
tributed with leaflet containing
New York: New Directions Publish-
photographs and statement by Hans
ing Corp., 1969.
Namuth (substantially what appears
FILM in No. 163 above) as well as quota-
284. Jackson Pollock. Produced by Hans tions from Pollock’s own statements.
Namuth and Paul Falkenberg Music —END—
 Index

Abel, Lionel, 69, 111 Armory Show, 16, 18, 30

“Abstract and Surrealist Art’ show, 75 Arp, Jean (or Hans), xii, 51-52, 78-79,
Abstract Expressionism, xi-xii, 16, 64, 78, 100, 109
109, 112-113, 135, 154, 194, 197, Art(s) Digest, xii, 60-61, 117, 188, 212
213, 261 Art Foundation, 151
Abstract Objectionism, 109 Art in America (periodical) , 175
“Abstract Painting and Sculpture in Amer- Art Institute of Chicago, 171
ica” exhibit, 170-171 Art News, 53, 61, 124, 129, 146, 148, 151,
Abstract Surrealism, 100 155, 166, 169, 188, 195, 201, 207,
Abstractionism, 35, 58 211
Accabonac Creek series, 94 Art of This Century gallery, 52-58, 66, 82,
Action Painting, 136, 138, 191-204 108, 121, 188
Albers, Josef, 188 first show (1943), 58-60, 63, 71
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New second show (1945), 75-76
York, 199 third show (1946) , 83-84
Alchemy, 120 fourth show (1947), 93-95, 97, 115
Alcopley, Lewin, 110 (See also Peggy Guggenheim)
Alfieri, Bruno, 157-158, 160 Art Students League, 6, 49, 78-83, 87-88,
Alvarez, A., 3” 108, 162
American Abstract Artists, 108 “American Masters from Eakins to Pol-
“American and French Paintings” show, lock” show, 172
McMillen Gallery, 49, 53-54, 64, 72, mural painting classes, 24-25, 30
127 “75th Anniversary Exhibition,” 172
“American Artists Paint the City,” Venice (See also Thomas Hart Benton)
Biennale, 210 Artists’ Union, 54, 70, 107
American Federation of Arts, 175 Arts, 212
“American Masters from Eakins to Pollock” Arts & Architecture, 62, 79, 184, 207
show, 172 Ashbery, John, 112
American Mercury, The, 6 Ashton, Sir Leigh, 124-125
American Society of Magazine Photogra- Associated American Artists Gallery, 174,
phers’ Picture Annual, 161 178
“American Vanguard Art for Paris Exhibi- Atelier 17 (school of graphics) , 72-74
tion,” 188, 200 Autumn Rhythm, xx, 127, 142, 194, 212,
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, 157, 173 242-243
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 50 Avant-garde art, 16-17, 56, 72, 100
Arabesque (Number 13, 1948), 128, 150 Avery, Milton, 63
Architecture, xvii, 12, 142-143, 203-204
Archives of American Art, 36, 111 Balzac, Honoré de, 169
Arendt, Hannah, 111 Barnet, Will, 31
“Armenians, The,” 31 Baroque art, 21,91
Barr, Alfred H., Jr., 52, 109, 135, 151, Blue Unconscious, The, 95, 157
155, 160 Bluecher, Heinrich, 111
Barrett, William, 111 Blume, Peter, 172
Barthelme, Donald, 260 Bodenheim, Maxwell, 69
Baudelaire, Charles, 15, 237 Bonnard, Pierre, 53, 102
Baynes, Mrs. Cary, 40 Boston Institute of Modern Art, 124
Baziotes, William, 26, 55, 57, 78, 84, 100, Bourgeois, Louise, 109
108-109, 112, 123, 134-135, 142, Brach, Paul, xiv, xviii, 112
146, 152-153, 188, 193, 213, 261 Braider, Donald, xvii, 209
Beckmann, Max, 47-48 Brancusi, Constantin, 102
Bennington College, retrospective show, Braque, Georges, 15, 53, 118, 123
200 Brenson, Theodore, 159
Ben-Shmuel, Aaron, 111 Breton, André, 51-52, 55, 106, 158
Benton, Rita, 32, 40 Bridgehampton, New York, 209, 225
Benton, Thomas Hart, 82, 116, 228 Brooklyn Museum, 34
autobiography, 26-27 Brooks, James, xv, 82-83, 109-110, 113,
City Scenes, 20 152, 188, 194, 238, 252-253
The Lord is My Shepherd, 19 Flight mural, 56
murals, 29 Brown, Donald, 10
My American Epic in Paint, 19 Bruce, Lenny, 196
Susanna and the Elders, 20 Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 173
teacher and friend, 18-36, 39-40, 60, Bucholz Gallery, 47
117, 162, 239 Bultman, Fritz, xvii, 71-72, 88, 152
Berger, John, 115 Burchfield, Charles, 152
Biala, Janice, 109 Burlin, Paul, 124
Bing, Alexander, 185 Busa, Peter, 29, 112
Binyon, Laurence, 86 Butor, Michel, 259
Bird Effort, 130
Birth, 44, 53-54 Cage, John, 100, 109, 111, 174, 232
Bishop, Isabel, 172 Calas, Nicholas, 109, 159
Black-and-White Show (1951), 148, 181- Calder, Alexander, 55, 65, 111, 116, 121-
188, 190, 200, 208-209 122, 165-166
Blake, Peter, 111, 142-143, 150,155 “California School,” 3—4
Blakelock, Ralph, 61 “Calligraphic and Geometric’ exhibition,
Bloom, Hyman, 151, 154 159
Bloomingdale’s, Westchester Division of Campbell, Joseph, 111
New York Hospital, 40, 126 Carnegie Institute, “Pittsburgh Interna-
Blue Poles, xvii, xx, 189, 198, 201-203, tional,” 200, 210
206 Carone, Nicholas, 221
 Index

281

Cary, Joyce, 80 Connolly, Jean, 57-58, 80

Castelli, Leo, 111, 159, 173, 179, 188, 221, Contemporary Jewish Record, 103
223 Convergence, 190, 199, 201-202, 212
Cathedral, 118, 120, 125, 129 puzzle, 160-161
Catholic Church project, 203-204 Cooke, George, 254
Cavallon, Giorgio, xiii, xvii, 110, 151 Cooper, Douglas, 155
Cedar Street Tavern (NYC), xiv-xv, 75, Cooper Union, 67-68
110, 113-114, 188, 209, 216, 222, Copper bowls and plaques, 40
226-227, 229-232, 238-239, 259 Corbett, Edward, 193
Cézanne, Paul, 16, 102, 135,176 Corbino, John, 172
Chagall, Marc, 50, 55 Cornell, Joseph, 109
Chareau, Pierre, 100 Cotton Pickers, 39
Cherry, Herman, 111, 239 Covered Wagon, The, 21
Chesterton, G. K., 3 Covert, John, 17
Chicago Art Institute, 171 Craven, Thomas, 18
Chicago Arts Club, 174-175 Creative Art, 11
Chirico, Giorgio de, 50-51 Creeley, Robert, 216
Chouinard Art School, 28 Cubism, xiv, 15-16, 35, 47-51, 70, 84-
Cincinnati Art Museum show, 75 85, 95, 100-102, 135, 138, 146
Circumcision, 83,121 Culberg, Maurice, 171
Citron, Casper, 237 Culture Hero (underground newspaper),
City and Country School (NYC), 34, 87 244
Club, The, 31, 107-114, 147, 159, 201, cummings, e.e., 10, 14
229
“An Evening for Jackson Pollock,” 252- Dadaism, 51-52, 100
253 Dali, Salvador, 52, 54, 84-85, 123, 125
Friday night “lectures,” 108-109 Dancing Forms, 121
9th Street Show, 173 Darrow, Whitney, Jr., 25, 28, 30
Studio 35, 108-110 Davenport, Russell W., 124
Subjects of the Artist, 108, 110 Davis, Stuart, 17, 31, 53, 84, 116, 124,
Coates, Robert M., 58, 60, 78-79, 117- 135, 152, 254
119, 135-136, 200, 206 Davis, William N. M., 81,95
Cody, Wyoming, 3, 5, 162 Dawson, Fielding, 216, 229-230, 239
Collages, 51, 55-57 Dean, James, 196, 228
Color Field Painting, 119, 257 de Angeli, Carlo Frau, 191
Comet, 120 Deep, The, 190, 202, 206, 210, 223
Commentary magazine, 103 de Kooning, Elaine, 111-112, 129, 146,
Communism, 10, 12, 45 209
Conflict, 62 de Kooning, Willem, xv, xviii, xix, 49-50,
Connaway, Arloie, 32, 36-37 53-54, 109-113, 123, 134-135, 145-
(See also Arloie Connaway McCoy)
 Index

de Kooning, Willem (cont.) 85-100, 121-122, 150, 154-157, 160,

148, 151-155, 159, 188-189, 197, 162, 170, 174, 178-179, 183-185,
202, 209, 213, 221-222, 238-239, 188-189, 216-219, 232-236
245, 252-254 Accabonac Creek, 81
Attic, 145 art center, 72, 130
competition with Pollock, 145-148 death of Pollock, 237-238
in East Hampton, 179 Gardner's Bay, 93
shows, 174-175 Green River Cemetery, 249, 251-252,
de Laszlo, Dr. Violet Staub, 46, 126, 246 254
Demarest, Eben, Trust Fund, 121 Guild Hall exhibit, 130
Demuth, Charles, 135 home and studio at the Springs, xiv, 81,
Denby, Edwin, 111 107, 120, 132
Depression of the 1930's, 29, 33, 52, 69- East Hampton Star, 91, 159, 188, 215
70, 87 death of Pollock, 240-241, 244-245
de Staél, Nicolas, 159 East Orange, New Jersey, 20
Deutsch, Morton, 69 Easter and the Totem, 182, 190, 206
Devree, Howard, 76, 167, 188, 201 Echo, 199, 212
Dial, The (magazine) , 6, 14 Edwardes, Dave, 238-239
Diaz, Virginia, 53 Egan, Charles, 110
Dickinson, Emily, 102 Eight, The, 30
Diller, Burgoyne, 35, 112 E! Greco, 21
Dine, Jim, 258 Eluard, Paul, 106
Dove, Arthur G., 17, 18, 84, 116 Enchanted Forest, 118, 120
Dragon, Edward (Ted), 169, 171, 174- Engravings, 72-74
175, 178, 249 Ensor, James, 15
Drawings, 59, 72-73, 75 Ernst, Jimmy, 58, 109, 152
black-and-white, 174-175, 181-190 Ernst, Max, 52, 55, 57-58, 64, 84-85, 112
during psychiatric therapy, 41-44 Eskimo art, 91
Drexler, Arthur, 143 Esquire, 245
Dripping and splattering technique, 59, 95, Etchings, 74
98-100, 104-106, 116, 120, 122, 133 European art, 3, 15, 62, 78
Dubuffet, Jean, xiv, 85, 95-96, 159, 169- European exhibitions, 210
171, 186, 189, 191-192 Evans, Walker, 102
Duchamp, Marcel, 51-52, 55, 58, 164 Evergreen Review, 255-257
Duthuit, Georges, 124-125 “Exhibition of Contemporary American
Painting” at University of Illinois,
Eakins, Thomas, 19, 172 130
Earle Hotel (NYC), xv, xvii, 226-227 Exhibitions, 210, 244
Easel Project, 54 (See also under name of Gallery or Mu-
East Hampton, New York, xii, xiv, 80-83, seum)
Existentalism, 106, 196 Freilicher, Jane, 112
Expressionism, 16-17, 21, 35-36, 47-48, French Town, New Jersey, 38
ely L Friedman, Abby, xv, xvii
(See.also Abstract Expressionism) Full Fathom Five, 120
Eyes in the Heat, 95-97, 100, 121, 157
Galaxy, 130
Faison, S. Lane, Jr., 203, 207 Galerie de France, 188, 200
Falk, Gus, 110 Gatch, Lee, 151, 154
Falkenberg, Paul, 160, 162, 171, 173 Gauguin, Paul, 3, 16
Farber, Manny, 76-77 Geller, Bert, mural for Long Island
Faulkner, William, 260-261 home, 150-151
Fautrier, Jean, 189 Genauer, Emily, 128, 154, 207
Fauves, the, xiii, 16, 17, 70 German Bauhaus, 16
Federal Art Project (see WPA Federal Art Giacomerti, Alberto, xiv, 85, 148, 168
Project) Gimpel, Charles, 232, 247
Feininger, Lyonel, xii Gimpel, Kay, 247
Feldman, Morton, xviii, 173-174, 232, 235 Giorno, John, 244
Feragil Gallery (NYC), 34 Glarner, Fritz, 109
Ferber, Herbert, 109, 193 Glasco, Joe, 174
Ferren, John, 111-112 Glass, painting on, 163-164, 166, 177
“15 Americans” (1952) exhibit, 189, 192- Going West, 21
193 Goldberg, Michael, xviii
“15 Years of Jackson Pollock” at Janis Goldwater, Robert, 111, 113
Gallery, 210, 224, 243 Goodman, Paul, 111
Film on Pollock (Namuth and Falkenberg), Goodnough, Robert, 109-110, 167, 188,
xviii, 160-166, 175”, 183, 221-222 203
“First Papers of Surrealism” show, 55-56 Gorky, Arshile, xv, 31, 50, 63, 78, 84-85,
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 4, 260 134, 137, 146, 151, 154-155, 159,
Fitzsimmons, James, 188, 201, 207 169, 188, 193, 197, 213, 261
Flame, The, 36, 210, 212 The Betrothal, Il, 147
Flannagan, John, 31 Table Landscape, xiv
Flanner, Janet (Genér) , 259 Gothic, 75, 118, 120
Florence, Italy, Strozzi Palace, 130 Gottlieb, Adolph, 78, 84, 109, 112, 123,
46 East 8th St. (NYC) apartment, 54, 61, 134, 142, 152, 188, 197, 213
82-83 Gouache painting, 44, 59, 75-76, 84, 96,
Fosburg, James W., 124 121
Four Opposites, 207 Gould, Joe, 69
"14 Americans” (1946) exhibit, 193 Goya, 20, 140
Frankfurter, Alfred, 124-128, 151 Graham, John, 49-50, 52, 53-54, 72, 146
Frankenthaler, Helen, 137, 221, 247 System and Dialectics of Art, 49-50
 Index

284

Grand Canyon, 7 Hare, David, 55, 108-109, 142, 193

Graves, Morris, 63, 101-102, 123, 134- Harper's Bazaar, 63,.71, 187
135 Harris, Elwyn, 88, 216
Grayed Rainbow, 206 Hartigan, Grace, 112, 253
Greenberg, Clement, 54, 61, 63, 70, 76, Hayter, Stanley William, 17-18, 53, 72-75,
79, 83-84, 95-96, 100-104, 117-119, 80, 85, 100, 108
123-125, 128-129, 134, 136-139, New Ways of Gravure, 73-74
146, 159, 187-188, 199-200, 207- Helion, Jean, 63
209, 235 Heller, Ben, xi—xii, xiv-xv, xviii, 166, 179,
death of Pollock, 237-238, 247, 250, 199, 202, 242-244, 254
252-253 Heller, Dr. Edwin H., 126-127, 164
Greene, Theodore, 124-125 Heller, Judy, xv, 254
Greenwich House (NYC), 18, 35-36 Hemingway, Ernest, 242, 261
Grippe, Peter, 109-110 Henderson, Dr. Joseph L., 40-47, 126,
Gris, Juan, 101-102 246
Guardians of the Secret, 59, 61 “Jackson Pollock: A Psychological Com-
Guest, Barbara, 112 mentary” (1968), 41
Guggenheim, Peggy, 52-53, 55, 57-58, 78, Herter, Albert, 179
82, 93-95, 99, 108, 146, 157, 171, Hess, Thomas B., 49n, 61, 111, 146-148,
212, 215, 233, 247 166, 168, 207
collection shown in Europe, 130, 173 Abstract Painting: Background and
Confessions of an Art Addict, 64 American Phase, 147, 168
contract with Pollock, 58, 81 Hirsch, Joseph, 153
mural painted for, 62-63, 94, 99, 150 Hodges, Alice, 183
Out of This Century, 64, 83 Hofmann, Hans, 64-66, 70-72, 75, 78,
return to Europe, 93-94, 108 101, 104, 108-109, 134, 136-137,
suit against Pollock estate, 244 146, 152, 188 ;
“Surrealism and Abstraction” show, 173 Holtzman, Harry, 31, 109, 111-112
at Venice Biennale, 121, 130, 247 Hopper, Edward, 84, 116
(See also Art of This Century gallery) Horizon (British magazine), 101, 104
Guggenheim, Solomon R., 52 Horn, Axel, 25, 37-38
Guggenheim Fellowship, 99 Hubbard, Dr. Elizabeth Wright, 170
Guggenheim Museum, 52, 55 Hulsenbeck, Richard, 109
Guglielmi, Louis, 254 Hunter, Sam, 128
Guston, Philip, xviii, 9, 10, 26, 37, 39, 46, Huxley, Aldous, 124-125
84, 111-112, 188, 194, 213, 222-223
Iglehart, Robert, 108
Hague, Raoul, 31 Impressionism, 15-17, 68, 97, 138-
Hale, Robert Beverly, 152, 243 139 :
Hals, Franz, 19 Indian art, 6, 44, 91,99
 Index

285

Inness, George, 172 Kanovitz, Howard, xviii

Interiors, 143 Kansas City, 33, 40
“Intrasubjectives, The,” exhibition, 134- Kaprow, Allan, 164, 258
135 Kees, Weldon, 109, 152
“Irascible Eighteen,” 152-153, 213-214, Kerouac, Jack, 196
243 Key, The, 95, 100, 104
Ives, Charles, xvi Kiesler, Frederick, 56, 111, 159, 193, 252,
254
Jackson, Martha, 233 Kiesler, Lillian, 183
James, Henry, 205 Klein, Ralph, 220
Janis, Sydney, Gallery, xiv, 64, 66, 75, 159, Kligman, Ruth, 232-238
180, 188, 194, 223 Kline, Franz, xi, xviii, 110, 112, 114, 137-
Abstract & Surrealist Art in America, 64, 138, 159, 173, 180, 188, 194, 197,
66, 78 209, 215-216, 222, 229-232, 245,
“American Vanguard” show, 188, 200 256-257, 261
collection given to Museum of Modern death of Pollock, 239, 252, 254
Art, 243 Knaths, Karl, 153
“15 Years of Jackson Pollock” show, Knox, Seymour H., 199
210, 224, 243 Kootz, Sam, Gallery, 115-116, 134-137,
1952 show, 205, 207 142, 146, 153, 159
1954 show, 205-208 “The Intrasubjectives” show, 134-135
Pollock’s move to, 188, 199-200 New Frontiers in American Painting, 78
“Young Painters in U.S. and France,” Kotin, Al, 111
159 Krasner, Lee, xi, 49-50, 53, 56-57, 64-65,
Janson, H. W., 124 129-130, 156, 189, 194
Japan, Pollock’s paintings shown, 173, 200 art training, 67-69
Jazz music, 88, 226 collages, 220
Jenkins, Paul, 233, 247 family background, 66-68
Jewell, Edward Alden, 60 first meeting with Pollock, 54
Journal of Liberty (mimeograph sheets), marriage to Jackson Pollock, 81-82
10 paintings, 66-70, 78, 82, 179-180, 185
Joyce, James, 10, 181 in Provincetown, 71
Jules, Mervin, 37-38 show at Parsons Gallery, 179-180, 185,
Jung, Carl, 40, 42 220
WPA Federal Art Project, 70
Kadish, Barbara, 80 (See also Pollock, Lee Krasner)
Kadish, Reuben, 9-10, 34, 37, 72, 74-75, Krishnamurti, 9
80, 252-253 Kroll, Leon, 69, 152
Kamrowski, Jerome, 88-89 Kuhn, Walt, 53
Kandinsky, Vasily, 15, 101-102, 135 Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, 84, 152-154
 Index

LaFarge, John, 172 Louchheim, Aline, 155, 158

Landscape with Rider, 36 Lucifer, 120
Lane, James, 53
Lansford, Alonzo, 117, 119 McBride, Henry, 144
Lanskoy, André, 159 McClure, Mike, 257
Lao-tzu, 150 McCoy, Arloie Connaway, 32, 36-37
“Large Scale Paintings” show, 99 McCoy, Sandy (Sanford Pollock), 4, 37-39,
Lassaw, Ibram, 109-110, 194, 238 45-47, 56, 103, 127, 185, 203, 247,
Laurens, Henri, xii 250, 255
Laurent, Robert, 30 Macdonald-Wright, Stanton, 17-18
Lavannoux, Maurice, 203 Maclver, Loren, 188
Lavender Mist, xx, 127, 167, 198 McLuhan, Marshall, 123
Lebrun, Rico, 151, 153-154 McMillen Gallery show, 49, 53-54, 64,
Lechay, James, 171 Pek ony,
Leen, Nina, 153 McNeil, George, 112
Léger, Fernand, 55, 102 Macy, Happy, 178
Leslie, Alfred, xviii, 112 Magazine of Art, 50, 52, 150
LeSueur, Joe, 244 Magic Lantern, 118, 120
Levi, Julian, 90 Male and Female, 59-60, 62, 84, 182, 200
Lewenthal, Reeves, 174 Male and Female in Search for a Symbol, 60
Lewis, Norman, 109 Manet, Edouard, 15
Lewis, Sinclair, 90 Manheim, Ralph, 119-120
Lewitin, Landes, 110 Marble Collegiate Church (NYC), 82
Lichtenstein, Roy, 258 Marca-Relli, Conrad (Corrado di), 110,
Lieberman, William S., 73 214-215, 224, 233-234, 237-238,
Liebling, A. J., 254 252, 254
Life magazine, 104, 139, 144-145, 153, Marin, John, 17-18, 116, 119, 135, 151-
188, 191, 213-214, 222, 242-245 152, 154-155, 168
1948 article, 123-125, 133 Marini, Marino, 111
1949 article, 130-134, 140, 145 Mark, Dr. Grant, 192
Lippold, Richard, 109 Marot, Helen, 34, 38, 40, 43-44, 47, 76
Lipton, Seymour, 195 Marsicano, Nicholas, 111
Little, John, 65-66, 72, 75, 116, 122-123, Martha's Vineyard, 26-27, 33, 36, 39
154, 238, 252 Maryland show (1951), 174
Little, Josephine, 122 Masked Image, 44
Little King, The, 83 Masson, André, 52, 55, 74, 78, 85
Liturgical Arts, 203 Mathieu, Georges, 129, 191
Lord, Sheridan, 221, 225, 255 Matisse, Henri, 15-16, 53, 58, 69, 102, 148,
Los Angeles, 9 171, 206
Manual Arts High School, 9-13, 97, 188 Mattisse, Pierre, Gallery, 55, 169, 174
 Index

287

Matta (Roberto Matta Echaurren), 52, 55, Motherwell, Robert, 3%, 55-57, 62-63, 84,
58, 63, 84-85, 159, 188 100, 108-109, 112, 134, 138, 152,
Matter, Herbert, 65-66, 71, 121-122, 143, P8819 36 2130222. .255
162, 165 Muller, Jan, 80
Matter, Mercedes, 65, 111-112, 121 Mumford, Lewis, 31
Matthiessen, Peter, xvii, 248, 255 Mural (for Peggy Guggenheim), 62-63,
Maurer, A. H., 17 94, 99,150
Maxwell Galleries, 246 “Murals in Modern Architecture. A Theatri-
Mayor, A. Hyatt, 124-125 cal Exercise Using Pollock’s Paintings
Melville, Herman, 91 and Sculpture,” 142-143, 155
Museum exhibitions, 210
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 124, 142,
(See also under name of Museum)
152, 166
Museum of Modern Art, 47, 52, 54, 69,
“American Painting Today 1950” ex-
109, 123, 143, 151, 154, 160, 175-
hibition, 152-153
178, 254
Autumn Rhythm purchased, 242-243
“Abstract Painting and Sculpture in
“75th Anniversary Exhibition by 75
America” exhibit, 170-171
Artists Associated with the Art Stu-
“Calligraphic and Geometric” exhibit,
dents League,” 172 159
Metzger, Edith, 234-236 “15 Americans” (1952), 189, 192-193
Mexican Muralists, 28-30, 44 “14 Americans” (1946), 193
Michaux, Henri, 191 Janis collection, 243
Michelangelo, 21-22 “Large Scale Painting” show, 99
Milan (Italy) exhibitions, 130, 160 Pollock film, 174
Miller, Dan, 88, 132, 216-219 purchases of Pollock's paintings, 64, 71,
Miller, Dorothy, 193-194 120, 124, 129, 157, 198
Milliken, William M., 153 “Sculpture by Painters” exhibit, 130
Mir, Joan, xiv, 52, 54, 58, 62, 76, 78-79, “12 Americans” (1956), 194
85, 101-102, 123, 201 “Twelve Contemporary Painters,” 75
Mitchell, Joan, 112 Museum of Natural History, 91
Moby Dick (retitled Pasiphaé) , 94 Museum of Non-Objective Painting, 55
Modigliani, Amadeo, 53 Myers, John, 141
“Momentum” group, 171
Mondrian, Piet, xii—xiii, 15, 31, 35, 55, 58, Nakian, Reuben, 31
119, 133 Namuth, Hans, 160-166, 170-171, 188,
Montauk, New York, 83, 121 191, 221-222, 248
Moon-Woman, The, 121 photographs of Pollock, 239, 256
Moore, Marianne, 102 Namuth-Falkenberg documentary on
Morowitz, Harold, 115 Pollock, xviii, 160-166, 175n, 183,
Mortimer, Raymond, 124 221-222
 Index

288

Nation, 57-58, 61, 76, 79, 83-84, 95-96, Number 2 (triptych),200

103-104, 118-119, 207 Number 2, 1949, 157
National Academy of Design, 68-69 Number 2, 1951, 187
National Gallery of Canada, 164 Number 5 (1948), 129
Navaretta, E. A., 110 Number 7 (Out of the Web), 141
Nest, The, 120 Number 8, 1950, 159
Neuberger, Roy, 142 Number 8, 1951, 192
“New Decade” (1955) exhibit at the Number 9, 1948, 188, 242
Whitney, 210 (See also Summertime)
New Images of Man, 190 Number 9 (1951), 188
New Republic, 76 Number 10 (1949), 142
New School for Social Research murals, 29 Number 10 (1952), 201
New Workers School (NYC), 29 (See also Convergence)
New York Herald Tribune, 154, 207, 211, Number 11 (1948), 128
235-236, 239 Number 11 (1949), xi—xii
New York School, 159 Number 11 (1952), 201
New York Sun, 144 (See also Blue Poles)
New York Times, The, 60, 76, 91, 128, Number 12 (1948), 132-133, 159
155, 167, 188, 196, 206, 211, 239- Number 12 (1952), 190, 201-202
240 Number 13, 1948 (Arabesque) , 128, 150
New York World-Telegram, 128 Number 13, 1949, 159
New Yorker, The, 25, 58, 60, 78, 117-118, Number 14 (1949), 144-145
135, 155, 158, 200, 207, 259-260 Number 14, 1951, 191
Newman, Annalee, 224 Number 17 (1949), 132-133, 191
Newman, Barnett, 89, 108-110, 147, 152- Number 19, 1951, 191
153, 180, 191, 197, 201, 224, 254, 271 Number 25, 1951, 200
Newsweek, 241-242 Number 29 (painting-collage on glass)
Nicholson, Rev. George, 251-252 (1950), 163-164, 166, 194
Niemeyer, Oscar, 100 Number 30 (1950), 166-167
Night Pasture, 36 (See also Autumn Rhythm)
Night Sounds, 75 Number 31 (1950), 166
Oth Street Show (1951), 173 Number 32 (1950), 166-167, 182
Nivola, Constantino, 154
Northwest coast Indian art exhibit, 89 Ocean Greyness, 190, 206-207
Number One, 129 O'Hara, Frank, xviii, 112, 163-164, 166,
Number 1 (Lavender Mist), xx, 127, 167, 190, 202, 206, 244, 254, 256
198 O'Keeffe, Georgia, 17-18, 84
Number 1, 1948, 120, 122, 157, 198 Oldenburg, Claes, 258
Number 1, 1949, 173 Olsen, Dr. Fred, 198-199, 202
Number 1, 1951, 173 One, 127, 142, 166-167, 198-199, 242
 Index

289

Orozco, José Clemente, 29-30, 41, 44, 47 Pascin, Jules, 212

Prometheus fresco, 29 Pasiphaé, 94, 200
Ortega y Gasset, José, 135 Pavia, Philip, 31, 110-111, 113, 146-148
Ossorio, Alfonso, 91, 129-130, 143, 150, Perard, Victor, 68
165, 167, 169, 178-180, 203 Peridot Gallery, “Sculpture by Painters,” 173
catalogue introduction by, 185-187 Perls, Dr. Frederick, 111
correspondence with Pollock, 169-171, Petersens, Vita and Gustave, 122
173-175, 178, 192 Phoenix, Arizona, 4, 6
death of Pollock, 237-238, 247-249 Phosphorescence, 120
home in East Hampton, 188-189, 235 Picasso, 15-16, 41, 44-45, 47, 52-53, 57,
Paris show, 191-193 60, 62-63, 78, 84-85, 101-102, 118,
purchased Number 10, 142 158, 183, 206
show at Parsons, 185-186 Cubism, 15-16
Otis Art Institute, 6 Dream and Lie of Franco, The, 44
Out of the Web, 212 Guernica, 41, 44, 48, 183
Ma Jolie, 124
“Parallel Trends in Vanguard Art in U.S. “Pittsburgh International” exhibit, 200, 210
and France,” 159 Plaut, James S., 124
Paris, 53, 132, 157, 189 Pleissner, Ogden, 152
one-man show (1952), 191-192 Pollet, Joseph, 111
show at Studio Paul Facchetti, 178, 185, Pollock, Alma, 116
191-192, 200 Pollock, Charles (Cecil), 4—6, 11-12, 17,
Véhémences Confrontées at Galerie 28-29, 32-36, 39, 45-46, 58, 91, 127,
Nina Dausset, 173-174 250, 255
Paris School, 53, 69-70, 76, 159 at Art Students League, 18-19, 27-28, 32
Parker, Charlie “Bird,” 195-196 correspondence with, 22—23
Parsons, Betty, gallery, 89, 129, 146, 159, Pollock, Elizabeth, 32, 36
162, 171, 178, 185, 191-193 Pollock, Frank (Leslie), 4, 11-12, 32,
1948 show, 115-130, 132 250, 255
1949 shows, 127-128, 141-142 Pollock, Jackson
1950 show, 166-170, 182 art training, 17-48, 156, 162, 188, 194
1951 (Black-and-White Show), 148, automobile accidents, 189, 215-216
181-188, 190, 200, 208-209 birth, 3, 5, 162
catalogue of Pollock’s works, 185 boyhood and youth, 3-14, 156, 252-253
Lee Krasner show (1951), 179-180, 185 death and burial, 3, 26, 236-255
“Murals in Modern Architecture” exhi- education, 9-14
bition, 142-143, 155 family background, 3-8, 23-24
on Pollock, 180-181 marriage, 81-82
termination of contract, 193-194 Pollock, Jay (Marvin), 4, 32, 82, 116,
_ Partisan Review, 62, 103, 135, 187, 199 ZIOV2Z99.
 Index

290

Pollock, Lee (Krasner), 122, 137, 146, Psychiatric therapy, xv, 8, 38-40, 43-47,
148, 151, 155-156, 161, 170, 174, 73,220
206, 209, 216, 220-222, 226 Purdy, Donald Roy, 53
death of Pollock, 247-255 Putzel, Howard, 53, 58, 72, 78-79, 146
disposition of Pollock’s works, 116,
245-246 Rauchenberg, Robert, xviii, 164, 257-258
at East Hampton, 86-106 Ray, Man, 51
(See also East Hampton) Read, Herbert, 52
first show at Parsons Gallery, 179-180 Realism, 17, 18, 30, 35, 72
“hieroglyphs,” 93, 179 Redmond, Roland L., 152
trip to Europe, 232-233 Redon, Odilon, 15
Pollock, LeRoy (father), 4-6, 23, 28, 103- Reflections of the Big Dipper, 120
104, 126 Regionalism, 35
death of, 32—33 Reinhardt, Ad, 57, 109, 111-112, 134, 152,
Pollock, Sanford (LeRoy), 4, 7, 12, 23, 188, 254, 261
32-33, 36-37 Rembrandr, 19, 21
(See also McCoy, Sandy) Renaissance, 18, 20-22
Pollock, Stella May (McClure), 4-5, 23- Resnick, Milton, 111
24, 28, 32-33, 56-57, 72, 127, 247, Reynal, Jeanne, 71
250, 255 Richenburg, Robert, 111
Ponge, Francis, 105-106 Riley, Maude, 60-61
Porter, Fairfield, 188 Ritchie, Andrew Carnduff, 159
Portfolio (magazine) , 162 Rivera, Diego, 12, 23, 28-29

Portinari, Candido, 100 Rivers, Larry, xviii, 112, 221

Portrait and a Dream, 183, 185, 190, 206, Riverside, California, 9

Robbins, Daniel, 142
223
Portrait of H.M., 76 Robertson, Byran, 165, 202-203
possibilities statement, 99-101, 120, 133, Rockefeller, Nelson, 202

157, 196 Rockefeller Center, New York City, 31

Post-Cubism, 95, 101 Rodman, Selden, 221
Post-Impressionism, 15, 17, 68 Roelants, Jan, 111

Potter, Penny and Jeffrey, 122, 165 Rorimer, James, 243

Pottery, 30-31 Rosati, James, 111
Pousette-Dart, Richard, 78, 109, 152 Rose, Bernice, 74
Pratt, Caroline, 34, 38 Rosenberg, David, 69
Preston, Stuart, 144, 206-207 Rosenberg, Harold, 38, 69-70, 80, 109-
Price, Frederic Newlin, 34 111, 134-139, 146, 159, 195-198,
Prism, 120 200, 205, 245-246, 252, 259-260
Provincetown, 71—72 Rosenberg, May, 80, 82, 254
 Index

291

Rosenborg, Ralph, 109 Shahn, Ben, 102, 175

Rosset, Barney, 255 She-Wolf, The, 63-64, 66, 181
Roszak, Theodore, 193 Shimmering Substance, 95-97
Rothko, Mark, 64, 78, 84, 89, 100, 108, Shooting Star, 118, 120
135, 152-153, 193-194, 197, 201, Siegel, Eli, 69
213, 224, 245, 261 Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 11, 26, 28-30,
Rouault, Georges, 123 37-38
Roueché, Berton, 155 “Experimental workshop,” 97
Rousseau, Henri, 15 67 Gallery, 78
Rubens, Peter Paul, xii, 21 Sketchbooks of the thirties, 21, 82, 182
Rubin, William, 91 Sleeping Effort, 206-207
Russell, Morgan, 17, 188 Sloan, John, 30, 85
Ryder, Albert, 21, 34, 36, 61 Smith, David, 50, 98, 100-101, 104,
109, 261
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 34 Smith, Tony, xvii, 88-89, 92, 108, 134,
Sample, Paul, 152 139, 146, 153, 163, 170, 174, 180,
San Diego, California, 5 185, 199, 202-204, 257
San Francisco, “Third Annual Exhibition of Soby, James Thrall, 58, 102, 124
Contemporary Painting,” 125 Social Realists, 35, 72
Sander, Ludwig, 111, 209 Soulages, Pierre, 159
Sanders, Joop, 111 Sounds in the Grass, 130
Sandler, Irving, 78, 111-112 Sounds in the Grass series, 94
Sansegundo, Carlos, 244 Southgate, Patsy, 248, 256
Santa Ynez, California, 11 Soutine, Chaim, 97
Sao Paulo biennial show, 175 Spaeth, Eloise, 203
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 106 Speicher, Eugene, 153
Sawyer, Charles, 124 Spivak, Max, 70
Scent, 190, 213, 221, 242 “Spring Salon for Young Artists” show, 57
Schapiro, Meyer, 124-125 Springs, East Hampton (see East Hampton,
Schon, Erward, 21 New York)
School of Paris (see Paris School) Stable Gallery, 220
Schuyler, James, 112 Stamos, Theodoros, 84, 109, 123, 152, 174
Schwankovsky, Frederick, 9-10, 12, 222 Stein, Ronald, 221, 248-249
Schwitters, Kurt, xii, 51 Steinberg, Leo, 212
Sculpture, 30-31, 33-34, 86, 88 Stella, Joseph, 17
“Sculpture by Painters” show, 130, 173 Stenographic Figure, 57-59, 200
Sea Change, 120 Stern, Daniel, 173
Search, 190, 210, 221 Sterne, Hedda, 109, 152°
Search for a Symbol, 60 Sterne, Maurice, 152
Seixas, Frank, 140 Stevens, Wallace, xvi
 Index

292

Stieglitz group, 18 Tokyo Independent Art Exhibition, 173

Still, Clyfford, 64, 89, 108, 147, 152-153, Tokyo International Art Exhibition, 200
171, 189, 193-194, 197, 221, 223- Tolegian, Manuel, 9-10, 22-23, 26, 31, 39
224, 245 Tomlin, Bradley Walker, xv, 84, 109-110,
“Studio 35” program, 108-112 124, 135, 152, 181, 188, 193, 214,
Stuempfig, Walter, 123 222-223, 257, 261
Subjects of the Artist school, 108, 110-111 Totem I, 75,84
Sullivan Institute, 220 Totem II, 75, 84
Summertime, 128, 131-132 Totem Lesson I, 76, 100
Surreal Cubism, 100 Totem Lesson II, 76, 100
Surrealism, 11, 15-16, 44, 49-85, 97, 100, Totemic images, 59, 75, 83
101, 106, 136, 146 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 3, 16
definition, 50-51 transition magazine, 10, 70
“First Papers of Surrealism” show, “12 Americans” show at Museum of Modern
55-56 Art, 194
Svevo, Italo, 86 “Twelve Contemparary Painters” at Museum
Sweeney, James Johnson, 52, 58-60, 63, 65, of Modern Art, 75
72, 94, 111, 121, 124-125, 203 Two, 84-85, 121
Symposium (magazine), 70 Tworkov, Jack, 107, 111-112, 188
Tyler, Parker, 69, 76, 150
Talmadge, Dick, 88, 216
Tanguy, Yves, 52,55, 84-85, 123 Unfounded, 120
Tapié, Michel, 174, 178, 191-192 University of Illinois, “Exhibition of Con-
Taylor, Francis Henry, 124-125, 152, 243 temporary American Painting,” 130
Tea Cup, The, 95, 100
Temporary Galleries, Municipal Art Vail, Lawrence, 57
Committee, 39 Valentin, Curt, 47
There Were Seven in Eight, 75, 202 Van Fossen, Ted, 88
“Third Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Van Gogh, Vincent, 3
Painting,” San Francisco, 125 Varese, Edgar, 111
Thomas, Dylan, xi, 49, 111 Venice Biennale, 121, 130, 247
Thompson, D'Arcy, 92 1950, 151, 154-157, 160, 168
Threshers, 34 U.S. Pavilion, 151, 154
Time magazine, 104, 117, 128, 139, 144— Vicente, Esteban, 111, 188
145, 155, 160, 168, 198, 211-214, Victorias, Philippines, 150
241-245 View magazine, 76
Tintoretto, 21 Viviano, Catherine, 174
Tobey, Mark, 84, 101-102, 135, 147, 152, Vogue magazine, 172
188, 193 Vortex, 120
Todd, Ruthven, 111 Vytlacil, Vaclav, 152
 Index

Wahl, Theodore, 31 Whitney Museum, 19, 169

Waley, Arthur, 150 “The New Decade” (1955), 210
War Services window display project, Williams, Tennessee, 71—72, 88
54-55 Williams College, retrospective show, 200
Ward, Eleanor, Stable Gallery, 220 Wols, Alfred, 189
Ward, Nancy, 209 Woman, 30
Warhol, Andy, 258, 260 Woodruff, Hale, 108
Watery Paths, 120 WPA (Works Progress Administration)
Warkins, Franklin C., 153-154 Federal Art Project, 34-36, 39, 45-47,
Weber, Max, 17, 84, 154, 171 54, 70, 87, 107, 188
WERI, interview with Pollock, 175-178 Wounded Animal, 61-62, 200
West, Nathanael, 260 Wright, William, 175-178
West Berlin exhibit of American art Wysuph, C. L., 42-43, 246
(1951), 175 Jackson Pollock: Psychoanalytic Draw-
Whistler vs. Ruskin, 81 ings (1970), 42
W bite Cockatoo, 128
White Light, 190, 210, 211
Yale University, 99
White on Black, 141
Yellow Triangle, 100
Whitney Annuals
“Young Painters in U.S. and France,” 159
1946 show, 84-85
“Younger American Painters” at the
1948, 121
Guggenheim, 210
1949, 144-145
1951, 173, 187
1952, 200 Zogbaum, Wilfred, 65-66, 154, 254
1954, 210 Zurich Kunsthaus, 173
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 LIBRARY DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Thin ~ =FGR
i

ma Avenue, SE
maui SS 1505) aaa dclibrary.org
~by B.H. Friedman
New foreword by the author
“A pioneering effort.. . Future writers on the subject will be inits debt.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“Friedman has captured the excitement of the artist at work—the tortuous
groping towards an idea and the sense of fulfillment in its ultimate crea-

best of all, it is lively.” —Chicago Tribune

“(The author] wisely lets his subject reveal himself as much as possible
through his letters to his friends and family, [among other sources].”
—Publishers Weekly
“[This book] dispels the gathering myths and reveals with clarity and ine
sight the man who put so much of himself into those alternately fierce and
lyrical paintings.”
—John |.H. Baur, Former Director, Whitney Museum of American Art

The complex and destructive painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) staked every-
thing on the principle of art as self-discovery. Nowhere is that quasi-mythical self
revealed with more compassion and insight than in this exemplary biography.
Friedman, a friend of Pollock's and active in the art world, shows him to be a
liant man tormented by his relationship to his family; an artist who worked hard—
through years of poverty to achieve his controversial painting technique; the first—
American painter to gain an international reputation for himself and for what has—
been variously called Action Painting or Abstract Expressionism; and a man who
struggled with alcoho! andthe tension between gentleness and violence.
Newly illustrated with seminal Pollock paintings, this book takes the reader in-
side the artworld of New Yorkk during the '40s and ‘50s, when Action on first
er---* Ban ne ak th ee Pen nl) be annement mann them ti -
of
his ha
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Cover pnoto © 1995 by! Amok Newman m ARLEN
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