Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  Stella seldom visiting: CCP; Mori; Porter. “Low-down drudgery”: SMP, q. in Solomon, p. 26. Poring over printed matter; Henry Field catalogue: FLP: “In that catalogue, Field always told the history of the family and showed pictures of them.” Writing letters: Crippen. Stella staying indoors; garden: FLP. Trying new recipes: MLP. Best ingredients: FLP; MLP. Neglecting everyday chores: FLP. “An exquisite seamstress”: EFP. “My mother despised”: “Charles Pollock in Conversation,” p. 12.

  Pollock boys eating every meal at home: CCP. Medical care in Phoenix: Johnson, Jr., p. 87. Avoiding medical care: FLP: She didn’t even take Frank to the doctor when he cut his elbow “to the bone.” Avoiding school events: CCP. Boys kept from church: FLP. “Independent and adventurous”: SLM, int. by Shorthall, 1959. “Ran for his life”: FLP. “Made Mother nervous”: FLP. “Did you miss me”: Q. in Conaway, p. 72. Bull attacking buggy; Stella and JP thrown: Wilcox. Frank Pollock remembers that Stella experienced a “runaway” in Phoenix, but he doesn’t recall it was caused by a bull or that JP was in the buggy at the time. Stella with Jackson: McClure; Schardt. Jeremy Capillé (Stella’s grandaughter): “I used to have the feeling that Grandma was angry. Afterwards, as I got older, I realized that was just the way she was.” On one occasion, JP ran into the kitchen to tell his mother about a dogfight he had just seen. Stella asked, “You weren’t bitten, were you?” When JP said no and started to explain, she dismissed him abruptly. “All right-wash yourself”; story in Conaway, p. 28. “[Mother] wanted me”: Q. in Conaway, p. 79. “A very timid child”; “Evie”: Trowbridge.

  Sande playing “house”: Conaway, pp. 126–27. Scene recreated for camera: Photo in possession of Trowbridge. In 1946, JP painted a man and a woman—or a boy and a girl—sitting at a table drinking tea, and called it The Tea Cup: OC&T 150, I, p. 142. Ten years after leaving Phoenix, when Laxinetta asked him how he lost the tip of his finger, JP claimed he accidentally chopped it off himself while killing chickens; and in 1942, when his mother visited him in New York, he gave her a painting of a huge figure wielding a knife: Naked Man with Knife (OC&T 60, I, p. 47). ACM: Stella later claimed it was her favorite of his pictures. “Lee Krasner Pollock … always considered these pictures [Naked Man and Bird] related”; Rubin, “Pollock as Jungian illustrator, Part I,” p. 123.

  “A glutted market”: CCP to FVOC, Nov. 17, 1963, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 5. Development of long staple hybrid; demand: Johnson, Jr., p. 82. “Cotton-crazy”; small farmers squeezed out: SLM, int. by Shorthall, 1959. At about this time, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company began setting up test farms to develop hybrid long staple cotton. “Cotton grew well in the rich alluvial soils of the valley,” says Johnson, Jr. (p. 82), “and many farming fortunes were made on a scale never before seen in Phoenix.” “Hopelessly extravagant”: “Charles Pollock in Conversation,” p. 12. Argument: CCP. Talk of sending Frank to agricultural school; Stella sending for brochures: FLP. “Something different”: MJP. Possible ultimatum: CCP. Roy uninvolved: FLP; Schardt. Auction: FLP. Date of auction: Jan. 1918, according to Maricopa County, Ariz., land deed, cited in Solomon, pp. 26–27. Stella passing out watermelon; “it was the end”: FLP.

  6. ABANDONED

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscript, brochure, and documents

  McAlester and McAlester, A Field Guide to American Houses; McElvain, The Great Depression; McGie, The History of Butte County; Morison, The Oxford History of the American People.

  William S. Evans, Jr., “Ethnographic Notes on the Honey Lake Maidu,” Part I, Nev. State Occasional Papers, no. 3, Carson City: Nevada State Museum, May 1978; Francis A. Riddell, “Honey Lake Paiute Ethnography,” Part II, Nev. State Occasional Papers, no. 3, Carson City: Nevada State Museum, May 1978.

  Susanville Lassen Advocate, June 24, 1921.

  Loie Conaway, “The High Steps and the Low Steps,” (unpub. ms.), n.d.

  Brochure for Diamond Mountain Inn, c. 1913, printed by B. R. Holmes.

  Butte County Records, Feb. 11, 1918, p. 287; Butte County Records, Dec. 31, 1919, p. 442; Great Register of Lassen County, General Election, Nov. 3, 1920; Lassen County Deeds, Jan. 30, 1920, Book 6, p. 73; Lassen County Deeds, July 11, 1921, Book 8, p. 339.

  Interviews

  Patricia Bigler; Jeremy Capillé; David Dozier; Marjel Dozier; Margaret Eighme; Mary Ann Fast; Richard Fast; Edward Garza; Jerome Garza; Marjorie Keene; Joseph McGie; Evelyn Minsch McGinn; Donald McKinney; Gordon McMurphy; Ted Meriam; Hester Grimm Patrick; CCP; FLP; MJP; SWP; Jay Pullins; Tim Purdy; Francis Riddell; Wayne Somes; Gladys Swearingen; Araks Tolegian.

  NOTES

  “Something better”: FLP. Rise in Chico population; farming: Meriam. Churchgoing: Pullins. Diamond Match Company: Meriam. Trees and flowers: McGie, I, pp. 222, 224. Life of John Bidwell: McGie, I, pp. 33–35. Bidwell’s widow: McGie, I, p. 35. Her name was Annie Kennedy. Mrs. Bidwell’s treatment of Indians; funeral: Keene. Sacramento Avenue farm: The Pollocks purchased the farm on February 11, 1918, for about $4,000 (inferred from the $4 in revenue stamps) from W. S. Kilpatric and Irene H. Kilpatric; Butte County Records, Feb. 11, 1918, p. 287. Stella’s decision: FLP. Built at turn of century: Richard Fast. Craftsman movement: McAlester and McAlester, pp. 453–55. Description of house; failure to inspect property: FLP.

  “The dirty seven”: Patrick. “Charles looked like an artist”: Somes. Charles in rumpled jeans: Photo in possession of Patrick. Charles as dandy: FLP. Gray dress vest: CCP. “Charles always had”: SWP. Obsessed with breasts: Based on dozens of hours of interviews with Charles, Frank, and Jay. “Lovely ornamental borders”: Patrick. Photo of Jackson: In possession of McGinn. Stella hanging Charles’s art: FLP: “In Chico, Charles’s art was all around the house, paintings and things. Landscapes mostly.” Charles has no such recollection.

  Jay enlisting: MJP. Jay the athlete: FLP; MJP. “Pollock Tore Up Campus”: MJP. “Punk”; “squirt”; Jackson watching Jay box: FLP. “I was pretty competitive,” Jay recalls, anticipating JP’s later attitude toward his success as an artist, “and I was getting all this credit because I was a good football player or boxer, and yet I always had the feeling that it was somehow false.”

  Agricultural demonstrations: FLP. Growers’ cooperative: CCP. Alkaline strip: FLP. The land has since been made usable. “The water used to drain through here,” says Somes, a Pollock neighbor who still owns the adjoining property, “and it brought alkalies and salts up to the surface. In 1918 or 1920, they diverted the run-off to Mud Creek and that solved the problem.” FLP: Before buying the property, Roy hadn’t even taken the simple precaution of “checking with the neighbors, who could have warned him about the problem.” Pumpkins: McGie, II, p. 10. Roy’s job in rice fields: CCP; FLP.

  “I heard her say”: FLP: “I never heard of Jews before that time. I thought, who the hell are the Jews?” Although Stella seems to have brought a typical nineteenth-century anti-Semitism with her to northern California (“she was actually anti-Semitic in a sense,” says Frank), it was not a deep-seated prejudice—“she really didn’t know much about them.” She showed no antagonism when three of her five sons married Jewish women. Northerners: McGie: These winds passed through Chico from the Sacramento Valley to the San Joaquin Valley; they would last about three days, and then the winds would reverse, bringing rain.

  Jackson attending school: Bigler, attendance data technician, Chico Unified School District, to authors, Mar. 5, 1984. Description of Sacramento Avenue School: Somes; photo in possession of Patrick. “The Tartar”: Somes. Phelan Ranch: Phelan was a California state senator; Somes. Banana cream cake; jumping from trees: FLP; Somes. Ball games: Somes. Slingshots: FLP. Dragonflies forbidden target: Somes. “Once in a great while”: Meriam.

  Agriculture and war’s end: McElvain, p. 11; McGie, 1, p. 210: “When wartime Food Administrator Herbert Hoover allowed the price of wheat to be set at $2.20 a bushel, farmers increased wheat acreage by nearly 40 percent and output by almost 50 percent. This in turn meant chronic ‘overp
roduction’ in the 1920s, a massive agricultural depression during America’s ‘prosperity decade,’ and a further dislocation in the world economic structure.” Farm mortgages doubling: McElvain, p. 36: The figure was $3.3 billion in 1910; $6.7 billion in 1920. Decrease in farm income: McElvain, p. 21. Roy losing money: FLP.

  Roy unhappy in Chico; looking for new property: FLP. Sale of Chico farm: Butte County Records, Dec. 31, 1919, p. 442. The Pollocks sold the farm to Frank V. Wienner. Purchase of Janesville Hotel: Purdy to authors, Oct. 28, 1983: Lassen County Deeds, Book 6, p. 73. Collateral agreement with Rice: Purdy to authors, Oct. 28, 1983. Cherry trees: FLP. Sheep: FLP.

  Janesville population: McMurphy. Failed second trip for look at hotel: FLP; MJP. Hotel room rate: David Dozier. Weather in Janesville: Jerome Garza.

  Snow; trip to Janesville: FLP. Description of escarpment and Honey Lake: Jerome Garza: Honey Lake was all that remained of a huge inland sea called Lake Lahontan, which covered all of the valley in prehistoric times. General store: FLP. Post office; Odd Fellows Hall: McMurphy. Bank: Jerome Garza. Burl tree: McMurphy. Highway: Marjel Dozier: The highway ran from Doyle to Susanville. Houses cut off from each other: McMurphy. “We had very little communication”: Marjel Dozier.

  Sierra Nevadas, a barrier; town’s founding: Jerome Garza: The area was first settled by Isaac Roop in 1854. Janesville population: McMurphy and others regularly gossip about the town’s many maimings and murders. Marjel Dozier: The town was founded about 1860 and named after an early settler, Jane Christie Decious. Visit from neighbor family: FLP. “That was a family”: McMurphy. High fence: FLP; McMurphy: The steps were called a “style” and were used either to keep the children from climbing through the gate or to provide access during a heavy snow. Mrs. Drake and Miss Smith: FLP.

  Diamond Mountain Inn: Purdy: The hotel was built by Dennis Tanner. Even during the winter, JP could be trapped in the hotel for long periods if school was closed because of harsh snowfalls. McMurphy: “In February [1919], it cut loose with four feet of snow here. We were stranded on our home ranch and we didn’t go back to school for about three weeks.” Black Bart: McGie, I, p. 234. For details of Black Bart’s career, see McGie, I, pp. 223–38. Occasional salesmen: CCP; FLP. Permanent guests: FLP. Baxter Creek Irrigation Project: Purdy to authors, Oct. 28, 1983. Description of hotel: Purdy to authors, Oct. 28 1983; advertising brochure of about 1913. Elm leaves: Photo in possession of Purdy. Location of bar: CCP. Prohibition: Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition, ratified Jan. 1919, went into effect Jan. 1920. Kitchen, dining room, and bedroom for “the help”: CCP. Guest rooms: Frank says there were fifteen to twenty rooms; Purdy says there were twenty-two. Mélange of furnishings: FLP.

  Time of Bear Dance: Swearingen. Indians appearing in front of the hotel: FLP. Wadatkut: Riddell, p. 21. White man settling in valley: Riddell, p. 26: The man was Isaac Roop. Babakukua ridiculing shaman: Riddell, p. 24. Servants and farmhands: Jerome Garza. Marjel Dozier: “My grandmother was absolutely terrified of the Indians because they were very stealthy when they came to kill the whites.” In fact, the Wadatkut were largely peaceful. Jerome Garza: There had been a “massacre” (Pearson’s Massacre) in 1860 in which a white family was killed on the other side of Honey Lake, but that had been carried out by Indians from Nevada, not the local tribes. Location of Bear Dance: McMurphy. Number of participants: Swearingen, who is a Maidu princess and the granddaughter of the Maidu chief, or Hele, Joaquin, who officiated at the Bear Dance witnessed by the Pollock boys. Kasawinaid: Riddell, p. 39. The village name means “Takes his pants off” and refers to the actions of a local rancher who chased two Indians girls; the name is recent but the village probably had been inhabited since prehistory. Granite boulders: McKinney notes the similarity of these boulders in the Janesville burial ground and the boulders that JP would later try to sculpt in Los Angeles and pile in his backyard in Springs. Pollocks watching: FLP. Bear Dance: Swearingen; Evans, Jr., pp. 23–24, 33–39. Stella cutting herself: FLP: “She damn near lost her life.” Nora Jack: FLP. Legends: Riddell, p. 91. She told them how Diamond Mountain had been much taller once, and on top was a spring where old people could bathe and regain their youth. One day the Coyote god suggested that old people should die. The Wolf god, who wanted to keep the spring open, objected. A terrible argument ensued during which the Coyote god became angry and kicked the side of the mountain so hard that the top half toppled over, forming nearby Bald Mountain, and the water from the spring spilled out into the valley, forming Honey Lake. The spring was gone and the last of its water soon dried up. Death became inevitable. “Feasting, dancing”: McGie, p. 23. Pollock church attendance: CCP; FLP; MJP.

  Jay’s job in Altebertus; stopping in Janesville: MJP. “Cat” Grimm: Patrick: His given name was Quentin. Charles’s job in Westwood; not stopping in Janesville: CCP. Frank’s job with Dr. May; “dropped in from somewhere”; Roy isolated and irritable; daily schedule; Stella’s daily schedule: FLP. Guthrie’s business proposition; Roy spending time with surveyors: FLP.

  Dining room’s local following: FLP. Mortgage payments: The Pollocks purchased the hotel with a $6,000 mortgage (Lassen County Deeds, Jan. 30, 1920, Book 6, p. 73) and sold it with a $5,890 mortgage: Lassen County Deeds, July 21, 1921, Book 8, p. 339. Automotive revolution: McElvain, p. 18: From 1919 to 1929, the number of automobiles in the U.S. rose from less than 7 million to more than 23 million. Fate of Diamond Mountain Inn: Purdy: The hotel closed down in the late 1920s and was abandoned by the time it burned down in 1931. Uncle Frank and family arriving: CCP; FLP; MJP. Roy admiring brother: FLP. Description of Rose Fivecoats: FLP. She may have been of Indian origin. Charles’s arrival: Susanville Lassen Advocate, June 24, 1921: “Three of L. R. Pollock’s boys came home from Chico where they attended school.” Charles in Westwood: CCP.

  Description of Betty Nelson: MJP. “A conspicuous nose”: FLP. Betty’s breasts: CCP; FLP; MJP: She was of either Swedish or Norwegian descent. FLP: Uncle Frank had adopted her as a homeless six-year-old in order to rescue her from an alcoholic and ne’er-do-well father; see also Les McClure to Miss Queree, n.d.

  Roy caught drinking; Roy’s time not accounted for; Political discussion at hotel: CCP. Presidential contest: Morison, pp. 880–83. Roy’s support for Debs: CCP. Sheep incident: FLP: “Mother would have sided with her boys. She would have accepted our story that we had nothing to do with the sheep. And even if we had, it wouldn’t justify giving us a beating.” Roy joining surveyors: FLP. Stella registering for Roy: Great Register of Lassen County, General Election, Nov. 3, 1920.

  7. LOST IN THE DESERT

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscripts, brochure, documents, and transcript

  Branstetter, Pioneer Hunters of the Rim; McGie, History of Butte County; OC&T, JP; Russell, Orland’s Colorful Past; Wigmore, The Story of The Land of Orland.

  “Arizona: Apache Trail,” Tonto Trails, Summer 1983–Winter 1984; “Charles Pollock in Conversation with Terence Maloon, Peter Rippon, and Sylvia Pollock,” Artscribe, Sept. 1977: Dial, July–Dec. 1922; Arthur M. Hind, “Some Remarks on Recent English Painting by Arthur M. Hind,” International Studio, Jan. 1925; Norman Mead, “Kohl’s Ranch,” Tonto Trails, Summer 1983–Winter 1984; Norman Mead, “Welcome to Tonto Country,” Tonto Trails, Summer 1983–Winter 1984: Tracy Mead, “The Salado: Mysterious Cliff Dwellers of the Tonto Basin,” Tonto Trails, Summer 1983–Winter 1984.

  “Boy Was Faithful to his Canine Companion,” Orland Unit, Sept. 6, 1921; Orland Unit, Aug. 23, 1921; Lassen Advocate, July 15, 1921; Lassen Advocate, Aug. 26, 1921; Lassen Advocate, Sept. 2, 1921.

  Donnelly Lee Casto, “JP: A Biographical Study of the Man and a Critical Evaluation of His Work” (M.A. thesis), Tempe: Arizona State University, 1964; Loie Conaway, “The High Steps and the Low Steps” (unpub. ms.), n.d.

  Frederick Stansbury Clough, The Stansbury House, Chico, California, Chico: Appelman Press, 1976.

  Glenn County Records, July 11, 1921, p. 414; Glenn County Records, Jan. 6, 1923, p. 76; L
assen County Deeds, July 11, 1921, Book 8, p. 339; Phoenix Public School Records, 1923–24; Walnut Grove Elementary School Teacher’s Register, Sept. 4, 1922–May 23, 1923.

  SLM, int. by Kathleen Shorthall for Life, 1959, Time/Life Archives.

  Interviews

  Myrtle Branstetter; Peter Busa; Carroll Carr; Stuart Cleek; Robert Cooter; William Fellersen; Helen Finch; Dorothy Hitt; Wesley Johnson, Sr.; Wesley Johnson, Jr.; Reuben Kadish; Marjorie Keene; Ruth Kligman; Minabelle Laughlin; Conrad Marca-Relli; ACM; Evelyn Minsch McGinn; John Bernard Myers; CCP; FLP; MJP; MLP; Charles Porter; Patsy Southgate; LeRoy Tucker; Evelyn Porter Trowbridge; Otto Wackerman; Roger Wilcox.

  NOTES

  “L. R. Pollock traded”: Lassen Advocate, July 15, 1921. On August 26, 1921, the Advocate reported, “Mr. Gearhart, new proprietor of the hotel property has taken possession of that place” and, on September 2, 1921, that “The Pollocks, former proprietors of the hotel, left Tuesday (August 30th) for Orland, their new home.” Sale of Janesville property: Lassen County Deeds, July 11, 1921, Book 8, p. 339: The Pollocks bought the Orland farm from A. R. and Rose B. Gearhart for ten dollars and sold them the Janesville hotel for the same amount. Trip to Orland: FLP. “F. Pollock”: Orland Unit, Sept. 6, 1921.

  Location of Orland farm: Today the farm is on the northeast corner of the intersection of Route 32 and Road P. Handsome house: Fellersen. Barn, windmill, orchard: FLP. Eighteen acres: Glenn County Records, July 11, 1921, p. 414. The Pollocks purchased the south lot of number 5, subdivision number 14, which consisted of 17.5775 acres. “One of the better houses”: Fellersen. Once active; Frank, tending farm; “hay for sale”; monthly check: FLP.

  Land around Orland: Keene: ”You wouldn’t believe how barren and vacant this land was.” Water from mountains: Russell, p. 32: In 1906, local farmers requested the construction of a project under the Reclamation Act of 1903. The secretary of the interior approved the project on December 18, and a location was chosen about three miles north of the confluence of Stony Creek and Little Stony Creek. “Irrigation water from the project, one of the oldest federal reclamation projects in the country, began on April, 8, 1911.” Dry winters: Wigmore, p. 55. Paving Streets: Wigmore, p. 54. “Blocks of ice”: Keene. Swimming pool: Keene; Wigmore, p. 51. Farmers talking: Wigmore, p. 51. Birch family: Cleek. Petersen: Fellersen: Petersen, who employed Frank occasionally, died after the Pollocks left Orland.