Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  Chicken coop “studio”: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel; Aram Tolegian. Sketches after masters: Solomon, p. 40. “He worked hard”: Q. by Araks Tolegian. Pollock teaching others to smoke; Mrs. Tolegian’s attitude: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel: His mother’s name was Haiganoush. Sight of coop: Aram Tolegian. Alma marrying Jay; Brown’s books: ABP. “Jack’s mother”: Q. by Araks Tolegian. Boys received by Stella: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel. Jules Langsner to FVOC, Mar. 18, 1964, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 23. Goldstein sleeping over: Ashton, p. 13.

  “Philosophy of religion”: LRP to JP, Sept. 19, 1928. Painting of Jesus: FLP. Cooters devout: Cooter. “I think your philosophy”: LRP to JP, Sept. 19, 1928. “The most celebrated”: John Steven McGroarty, 1921, q. in McWilliams, p. 249. “Shrine of fakers”: Austin F. Cross, in Ottawa, Canada, Evening Citizen, q. in McWilliams, p. 248. “Every religion”: Hoffman Birney, q. in McWilliams, p. 250. Population of elderly: Of the ten largest cities in the United States in 1930, Los Angeles had the second lowest percentage under age twenty and the highest percentage age forty-five and over; McWilliams, p. 229. Cults with curative powers: McWilliams, p. 257: “Invalidism and transiency have certainly been important factors stimulating cultism in the region.” “I am told”: Mrs. Charles Steward Daggett, 1895, q. in McWilliams, p. 249. “Ranked as a leading industry”: Louis Adamic, q. in Weaver, p. 94.

  Schwankovsky raised Episcopalian: Duncan. Buddhist: Kadish. Hindu; Rosicrucian: Lehman. Friend of Blavatsky: Lehman. “Diffus[ing] information”: Henry Steel Olcott, Sept. 7, 1875, q. in Campbell, p. 27. Description of Blavatsky: Campbell, pp. 4–6. Sinnett, “H.P.B.,” p. 554: She filled her stories “with expletives of all sorts, some witty and amusing, some unnecessarily violent.” Blavatsky’s imagination: Sinnett, p. 24: According to her sister, “at a young age,” Blavatsky could tell the “most incredible tales” with the “cool assurance and conviction of an eyewitness.” Nineteenth-century enthusiasms: Among these were Mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, Freemasonry, and Rosicrucianism; Campbell, p. 20. “The unity”; “single, primitive”: Campbell, p. 36. “Universal Over-Soul”: Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, pp. 14–17. Blavatsky borrowing material: Blavatsky claimed books such as Isis Unveiled were dictated by “somebody who knows all … My Master”; q. in Olcott, p. 214. William Emmette Coleman proved by textual analysis that the book was borrowed from more earthly sources: some one hundred early books on the occult; Campbell, p. 33. “Cycle of incarnation”: (1) The Body, or Rupa; (2) Vitality, or Prana-Jiva; (3) Astral Body, or Linga Sarira; (4) Animal Soul, or Kama-Rupa; (5) Human Soul, or Manas; (6) Spiritual Soul, or Buddhi, and (7) Spirit, or Atma; Campbell, p. 66. “Masters”; “Adepts”: Campbell, p. 24.

  Séance hoax: In Bennares, Blavatsky placed a wooden shrine, or “cabinet,” in the window that looked from her bedroom into an adjacent audience room; Campbell, p. 85. According to a press statement, “If letters, addressed to the Mahatmas, be placed in here and the doors closed for a few moments, the letters will be found to have disappeared, and replies written upon Chinese or Tibetan paper to have come mysteriously from the addressed Adepts”; q. in Murphet, p. 141. When Emma Coulomb, a dissatisfied assistant to Blavatsky, charged that the back of the cabinet could be opened and that the answers were written in Blavatsky’s hand on rice paper resembling her personal note paper (Campbell, pp. 57–58), the cabinet was destroyed; Campbell, p. 90.

  Annie Besant: Lutyens, pp. 13–14. As a young woman, Besant had fought for women’s rights (Williams, p. 30) and against the divinity of Christ, later taking up such causes as birth control and fair working conditions; Lutyens, p. 14; Campbell, p. 102. Asked to write a review of Blavatsky’s tome, The Secret Doctrine, she found in Theosophy the direction and purpose for which she had been searching. Leadbeater’s pederasty: Among Leadbeater’s more controversial views was a belief in masturbation as a cure for rampant sexuality and a precaution against sexual diseases. When he was discovered imparting his philosophy to several adolescents—with demonstrations—a major scandal ensued; Campbell, pp. 115–18; Lutyens, p. 13. Besant reluctantly agreed that Leadbeater be removed from the society, but within two years of becoming president, she reinstated him; Campbell, p. 118; Lutyens, p. 19. Membership of 45,000: Lutyens, p. 50.

  Many wealthy dilettantes joined Lady Emily Lutyens, wife of the architect, in all but abandoning their families to follow Krishnamurti; Lutyens, p. 80. Blavatsky also briefly enlisted the support of Thomas Edison, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce (Campbell, pp. 168–69), and both Kandinsky and Mondrian.

  As a young man, Wassily Kandinsky was enormously impressed with both Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner and Thought Forms by Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater (Campbell, p. 169) as “a theoretical framework, an ideology, for carrying painting beyond the realm of representation”; Hilton Kramer, in Head and Cranston, p. 353. The solution—incorporated in Kandinsky’s own book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published in 1910—was a joining of mysticism and art; Campbell, p. 169. Kandinsky was impressed by the society’s eagerness “to approach the problem of the spirit by way of an inner knowledge,” based on procedures derived from “ancient wisdom,” especially Oriental religions; Kandinsky, p. 32. He learned from Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, along with the books by Steiner, Besant, and Leadbeater, about correspondences between colors and sound and about the evolution of the universe from the intrinsic to the extrinsic as a model for the creation of art. “Technically,” he wrote, “every masterpiece is created as the cosmos was”; q. in Sihare, “Oriental Influence,” p. 85.

  Mondrian, too, was fascinated by Theosophy. Sihare, “Oriental Influence,” p. 249: “From 1914 onwards, Mondrian’s primary concern was the ideal representation of Spirit and Matter in his paintings. … Mostly guided by Oriental and Theosophical symbolism and the basic concept of duality in unity, he coined his own formulas.” Working both from the Theosophical appreciation of geometric shapes as religious symbols and from the notion that the artist, as a repository of both the male and the female, is in an ideal position to establish unity, Mondrian determined that vertical lines, black and white, and space symbolized the spirit; while horizontal lines, the primary colors, and form symbolized matter; Campbell, p. 171. By combining them in his de Stijl paintings, he created a material analogue for religious unity, a “harmonious representation of Spirit and Matter, the two aspects of the One”; Mondrian, q. in Sihare, “Oriental Influence,” p. 260.

  Magazine predicating “a new sixth sub-race”; “‘Theosophists all over”: Q. in McWilliams, pp. 255–56. “A great flying fish”: McWilliams, p. 255. The society was active in Southern California as early as 1900, when Katherine Tingley, a New England convert, established the Point Lorna Theosophical Community near San Diego; Campbell, pp. 131–40.

  “The new Messiah”: Lutyens, p. 254. “The Divine Spirit”; “the Literally Perfect”: Theosophist, Jan. 1926, q. in Lutyens, p. 259. Predicting “World Teacher”: Lutyens, pp. 11–12. Description of young Krishnamurti: Lutyens, pp. 3, 7, 22. “Most wonderful”: Clairvoyant Investigations by C. W Leadbeater and “The Lives of Alcyone,” some facts described by Ernest Wood; with notes by C. Jinaradasa (Adyar: privately printed, 1947), q. in Lutyens, p. 22. “The definite consecration”: Herald, Mar. 1926, q. in Lutyens, p. 242. On December 28, 1925, in an address to the Star Congress at Adyar, at 8:00 a.m., standing under a large banyan tree, Krishnamurti first spoke as the World Teacher. “Happiness through liberation”: Lecture, May 15, 1928, Hollywood Bowl; Lutyens, p. 276.

  Krishnamurti’s message: See Krishnamurti. Schwankovsky and Krishnamurti: Schwankovsky to FVOC, Mar. 16, 1964: “Krishnamurti … was a personal friend”; q. in FVOC, ”‘The Genesis of JP,” p. 15. World Teacher at Laguna Beach: Duncan. “‘The mouthpiece”: “Krishnamurti Relates Personal Ideas and Doctrines to Group of Young Philosophers,” MAW, May 20, 1930; see also Lehman; Friedman, p. 10; FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” pp. 15, 17. Jackson relying on others for information: Manuel Tolegian, int. by Hoag
, Feb. 12, 1965: “He did very little reading. Between you and me, he couldn’t read too well, or write. He never had the training.”

  “Was looking as a youngster”: Elizabeth Wright Hubbard to FVOC, May 14, 1964, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 33 n. 49. “Often speaking of Schwankovsky”: FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” pp. 33–34 n. 53, recalling interview with LK, Jan. 21, 1964. Kadish, int. by Vallière, n.d.: “Schwankovsky … both Jack and Phil [Guston] spoke of him. He touched both of them with a bit of mysticism.” Jackson writing Charles: An undated letter from Charles to JP establishes that JP discussed the issue in earlier letters to Charles. “Every thing it has to say”: JP to CCP, Jan. 31, 1930. JP used only lowercase letters in typing this letter to Charles. Friedman (p. 14) explains this as an imitation of e.e. cummings, to whose poetry he may have been introduced by Don Brown. But given the haphazardness of the margins, spacing, and punctuation, the complete absence of capitalization, the uniqueness of this letter (it is the only document JP is known to have typed), and the fact that JP clearly did not work from a draft, it seems far more likely that he simply had not mastered the use of the typewriter’s shift key.

  “If you make yourself”: Krishnamurti, “A Talk to Teachers at L.A.,” p. 6. In describing JP’s reaction to Theosophy and Krishnamurti, we haven’t limited ourselves to the two written sources that he mentioned in his letter to Charles: His awareness developed throughout his two years in Los Angeles and he learned far less from written sources than from what he heard from his teacher and friends as well as directly from Krishnamurti himself at Ojai. Where Krishnamurti’s ideas quoted in the text do not derive from Life in Freedom (LIF), yet find parallels in that 1928 book, this is noted. Krishnamurti, LIF, p. 60: “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 the painter, to fall in love with Truth and not with him who brings the Truth. Fall in love with yourself and then you will fall in love with every one.”

  “Through all time”: Collins, p. 77. “The moment you are really struggling”: Krishnamurti, “A Talk to Teachers at L.A.,” p. 8. Krishnamurti, LIF, pp. 41–42: “Because you have no true purpose in life there is chaos within you; there is misery without understanding, strife without purpose, struggle in ignorance. But when you have established the goal of the Beloved [Truth] in your heart and mind there is understanding in your life. … When you have established the Beloved in your heart, you are ready to face the open seas, where there are great storms, and the strong breezes which quicken life.” Also, p. 86: “Through contentment you do not find happiness, but a state of stagnation. If you would know true happiness there must first be that inward conflict, which will bring forth in you the flower of life.”

  “Which plows through mud”: Q. in J, “Krishnaji in America,” p. 17. “The appreciation”: Q. in “Reports of Talks by J. Krishnamurti,” p. 21. Krishnamurti, LIF, p. 56: “When my brother died, the experience it brought me was great, not the sorrow—sorrow is momentary and passes away, but the joy of experience remains”; and (p. 67) “If you would find that Truth you must put aside all those things upon which you have leaned for support and look within for that everlasting spring. It cannot be brought to you through any outward channel.”

  “I have often”: Krishnamurti, “The Noble Life,” ISB, June 1930, p. 20. “It is indeed”: J., “Krishnaji in America,” p. 17. Krishnamurti, LIF, p. 39: “Revolt is essential in order to escape from the narrowness of tradition, from the binding influences of belief, of theories. If you would understand the Truth, you must be in revolt so that you may escape from all these—from books, from theories, from gods, from superstitions—from everything which is not of your own.”

  “Each one”: Krishnamurti, “The Noble Life,” p. 22. Krishnamurti, LIF, p. 34: “As every human being is divine, so every individual in the world should be his own master, his own absolute ruler and guide.” “Self-perfection”: Krishnamurti, “A Talk to Teachers at L.A.,” p. 12. “To myself”: JP to CCP, Jan. 31, 1930. “The swift knowledge”: Krishnamurti, “The Noble Life,” p. 14. “Intellect”; “make a living link”; “does it flow”: Q. in “Reports of Talks by J. Krishnamurti,” pp. 7–8. Need to rebel: Krishnamurti, LIF, p. 48: “I have long been in revolt against all things, from the authority of others, from the instruction of others, from the knowledge of others.”

  10. A ROTTEN REBEL

  SOURCES

  See Chapter 9.

  NOTES

  “An heroic idealism”: “Krishnamurti Relates Personal Ideas and Doctrines to Group of Philosophers,” MAW, May 20, 1930. Intellectual left: Schwankovsky grew more conservative with time and ended up a rabid anti-Communist, much like Thomas Hart Benton. Theosophy’s political voice: Campbell, p. 119. “Not fit for heathen China”: Q. in Henstell, p. 50. Upton Sinclair: Henstell, p. 49; McWilliams, p. 290. The event took place in 1915. After Sinclair’s arrest, a man read from the Declaration of Independence and was arrested. A man then said, “We have not come here to incite violence,” and was arrested; q. in McWilliams, p. 290.

  The Nation removed; teachers labeled Bolsheviks; paid spies: McWilliams, p. 291. Criminal Syndicalism Act: Between 1919 and 1924, under the Act, 531 men were indicted, 264 tried, 164 convicted, and 128 sentenced to San Quentin State Prison for terms of one to fourteen years; McWilliams, pp. 290–91. Meetings broken up; “shove days”: McWilliams, pp. 290–92. “Unemployment is a crime”: Louis Adamic, q. in McWilliams, p. 292. More than 12,000 arrests: McWilliams, p. 292; actually, 12,202. McWilliams, pp. 292–93: “It was not the climate or the sunshine of Southern California that developed a strong undercurrent of liber-radical thought in the community, but rather the extraordinarily short-sighted and stupid activities of the power-drunk tycoons who ruled the city.”

  “Respect Upper-classmen”: MAW, Feb. 19, 1929. Brown’s poems: Don Brown, “More Truth Than Poetry: II. The Junior,” in “Manual Poets Display their Skill in Interesting Poems,” MAW, Sept. 18, 1928. Knute Rockne; Red Grange: Henstell, p. 118. “Week before big game”: “‘Beat Poly Week’ Started at Manual This Term,” MAW, Oct. 23, 1928. The school was L.A. Polytechnic High. “Student Body Overconfidence”: MAW, Nov. 6, 1928. Hiding under bleachers: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel. “Musical assembly”: “First Musical Assembly of Term Is Held,” MAW, Oct. 16, 1928. “High school slackers”: “Successful Rally in Auditorium Last Wed.,” MAW, Nov. 13, 1928. The assembly took place Nov. 7, 1928.

  Brochure February or March: Based on references in the brochures: to a former student president admired for his preference of art over athletics (this could only be David Dingle, president the previous term); to forefathers and a Constitution Day competition (there was a citywide competition for speakers to commemorate Constitution Day); to students who had been at Manual for only one term (JP had by this time attended Manual Arts for only one complete term); and to school elections (held at the beginning of each term). Small brochure: Variously called a brochure, a leaflet, and a pamphlet. MLP: It was a brochure, meaning that it consisted of a single page folded over. Early one morning: MLP. Lockers and mailboxes: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel; Kadish; Ashton, p. 14. “STUDENTS … We present”: OC&T IV, pp. 206–07. The course offerings were far from biased against art: In the fall semester, 1928–29, the school offered twenty-five art courses, sixteen phys. ed. courses, thirty-nine music courses, sixteen mechanical drawing courses. To graduate, the school required no fewer than forty periods of art appreciation (roughly two semesters) and no fewer than forty periods of music, plus no less than one-half year of practical art; MAW, Sept. 11, 1928.

  Goldstein the writer: Ashton, p. 14. Brown the writer: Confirmed as likely by ABP. Schwankovsky the writer: Suggested as likely by Kadish. The wording would argue for Brown as the principal writer—his hand is notable in phrases like ”unreasonable elevation,” “consequent degradation,” and “animated examples of physical p
rowess.” Schwankovsky is unlikely to have penned the line that attributes a school’s success to “adminstrative reputation.”

  Janitor pointing to Jackson: Solomon, p. 42. “STUDENTS … There is”: OC&T IV, p. 207. Jackson’s spelling errors: JP always had trouble with words ending in “ue” (“vouge” for “vogue,” “physic” for “physique” and, as an adult, “technic” for “technique”; he also had trouble with the compounding of words (such as “inrespect”); and he was an inveterate misspeller of words such as “honerable,” “anwsers,” and “gaint.” Debate on sports craze: “Interscholastic Athletics Is Forum Topic,” MAW, Nov. 11, 1928. The topic for debate on November 5, 1928: “Resolved: That interscholastic athletics are injurious to the student body as a whole.” “Biased and unjust”: Roku Sugahara, “Darts and Dashes,” MAW, Feb. 26, 1929.

  Pollock expelled: By the standards of the day, the Manual Arts student government was extraordinarily democratic and independent of faculty interference. Except for the auditor and treasurer, all officers were selected from the student body. When charges were brought—by a teacher or fellow student—courts were held, student counsel represented both accused and accuser, and a student jury determined the verdict. The principal could overturn jury determinations but seldom did. The school’s unusual system was considered a model by liberal educators around the country and was often cited in contemporary textbooks on civics and government; “Manual Cited as Fine Type of Self Govt,” MAW, May 7, 1929. Manuel Tolegian, int. by Hoag, Feb. 12, 1965: “He was a kind of rebellion against the order of the day, you know, in high school. [He] rebelled against teachers, rebelled against classes, until he was finally expelled from high school because he just wouldn’t attend any classes.”