Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  “Lurking uneasiness”: Artist, p. 36. Becoming violent with alcohol: Burroughs, p. 191. Both Benton and JP were heavy drinkers: “It was obvious from the very beginning that Pollock was a born artist,” Benton told Leonard Lyons. ”The only thing I taught him was how to drink a fifth a day”; q. in the Lyon’s Den, Oct. 15, 1965, q. in Burroughs, p. 118. When drinking, each also had the same unusual urge to relieve himself in public. Burroughs (p. 97) quotes a friend: “I never saw him use a bathroom in my life. … At any party, he’d just walk to the door or stand in the doorway to relieve himself.”

  Attracted to unsophisticated boys: John Rixey, son of a Virginia tidewater aristocrat, and Benton’s best friend in Washington, D.C., was the exception; Intimate, p. 83. “Uncultivated”: Artist, p. 45. “Thrown among boys”: Artist, p. 45. Disappearing: See Burroughs. Hayden; “A very young”: Artist, p. 80. “Fixed up”: Artist, p. 134; see American, p. 61. Westerners Benton’s favorites: Whitney Darrow, Jr., who graduated from Princeton, and whose father worked for Scribner’s in New York: “Mine was not a background that interested him.” “He was inclined to ignore”: Burroughs, p. 113. “Benton didn’t think”: Edith Symonds, q. in Potter, p. 37. “Tom hated women”: Q. in Burroughs, p. 79.

  Benton growing circumspect: T. P. Benton: “Careless.” “Beauty” of Italian boys; “who wouldn’t”: Q. by Emerson. Rage against “pansies”: Artist, p. 266: “A very real danger to the cultured institutions of the country lies in the homosexuals’ control of policy.” Recoiling at contact with men: McKim: “Tom could hardly stand to have another man touch him.” Virulent attacks: “For the most part, the fairies are so deeply involved in their own peculiar sensibilities, so intent on their own jealousies, hysterical animosities, and nursed preferences that they cannot appreciate contemporary forces until these have been consecrated by general acceptance”; Artist, p. 265. Benton distinguished between homosexuality—the persuasion—and homosexualism—the culture, damning the latter; Artist, p. 266. In fact, he claimed to admire a man so overwhelmed by lust that he was “ready to jump anything from a steer to a kitchen mechanic”; Artist, p. 265. “Tom, you’re protesting”: Mildred Small, q. by Burroughs.

  Friends: Asked about the rumors that Benton had homosexual leanings, Blanche Carstensen said, “Well, some of us wondered about that, yes.” Son: T. P Benton: “I guess eventually my father is going to be established as a man of homosexual leanings. There’s no way to stop it.” Biographer: Burroughs: “Tom was bisexual.” An anonymous family friend, q. in Burroughs, p. 192: Benton’s father always feared that “‘there was something wrong with him, that he must be a homosexual if he wanted to become an artist.’ … [Tom] was always afraid people would think this because of his size and his profession.”

  Pollock and Benton’s relationship: See also Friedman, p. 19. “Down to the last”: Kaz. “Tailed after Benton”: Holtzman, q. in Solomon, p. 56. “A western artist”: Artist, p. 261. “Frontier family”: Q. by Darrow. Milking cows: Jackson. Wild stallions, wolves: Rose, “Painters of a Flaming Vision,” p. 334. Buffalo: CCP. “High-heel boots”; “it was no costume”: Wilson. “Jackson always walked”: Pavia, q. in Gruen, p. 262. “Only California”: THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964: “Jack was a brooder, so he undoubtedly had partially mystical tendencies. Don’t all young artists? But I never saw any evidence of this attachment to a mystical cult. Of course he would have known that I might ridicule such an attachment. But he was too open, too frank a young man to play any kind of double personality game.” “He was highly”: Kamrowski. “Egos were not”: Artist, p. 45. Benton’s introspection: Craven, p. 7: In Paris, “The brash Missourian lost his assurance and drifted toward despondency,” and later (p. 20) was “quiet [and] contemplative.” Making art masculine: See Symonds, q. in Potter, p. 37.

  Progressive educators: Historian Charles Beard, philosophers Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, and James Harvard Robinson, and economist Alvin Johnson; see Johnson, Pioneer’s Progress. Home of the New School: Although Frank Lloyd Wright was considered as the architect for the building (Johnson, p. 320), the design was awarded to Joseph Urban, an immigrant to New York from Vienna and the Secession movement (see Robinson and Bletter, p. 19) who had designed palaces for the Khedive of Egypt (Johnson, p. 320) but had made his living and his reputation in this country designing sets for the Boston and Metropolitan opera companies as well as the Ziegfeld Follies; Braun and Branchick, p. 16. In his hands, the New School attempted to convey, like Benton’s murals, the force of technology; Dr. Johnson would call its streamlined facade, with its alternating bands of brick and glass, “straightforward, rational and unafraid” and pronounce it fully within “the spirit of the New School”; Prospectus for The New School for Social Research, 66–72 West Twelfth Street, New York City, q. in Braun and Branchick, p. 17.

  Orozco appointment protested: Notably by Ralph Pierson, who argued that the school should not commission a foreign artist without also commissioning an American, and Lewis Mumford, a longtime Benton friend and supporter (see Johnson, p. 328); Mumford had long championed Benton as a muralist; Mumford, “THB.” “An authentic American”: Johnson, p. 328. Boardroom: The recessed lights circling the entire boardroom ensured an even illumination while the streamlined yet rich Art Deco design promised an appropriate setting for the colorful mural that Benton had in mind; Braun and Branchick, p. 17. Dining room: Burroughs, p. 103.

  Benton’s methods: Braun and Branchick, p. 69: “[Benton’s] methods were elaborate, time-consuming, and self-consciously disciplined, in a deliberate emulation of Renaissance methods.” Painting was, in Benton’s view, not a matter of spontaneity: “Real form demands an obvious imposition of will on the elements of the mind”; “Form and the Subject,” pp. 303–08. In adapting his “rolly-polly” style to the painting of murals, of course, Benton was denying not just the European abstraction of his youth, but the prevailing notion—derived largely from the thinly painted, softly colored, simply composed, and elegiac murals of Puvis de Chavannes (Braun and Branchick, p. 31)—that a mural should defer to its surrounding architecture.

  “He had a bureau”: Jules. “Walking tours” into the “hinterland”: American, p. 60: The states visited were Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, and California. “I learned to produce them with great rapidity and I often ended a trip with three or four sketch books. Not every drawing was successful, nor was this important, for the very making of it would cut a memory impression and thus help build up the general image of America which I was now searching for”; American, p. 60. “General image”: American, p. 60.

  Changing West panel: Braun and Branchick, p. 46. The primary challenge was to bring this disparate imagery, encompassing a whole continent and a whole nation, into a single mural cycle. Benton, American, p. 63: “This was solved by composing each subject so that some parts of the periphery of its design were left open. … In some areas of the mural where these differences [between pictorial units] were so great that peripheral jointures were too difficult to make, sections of the moulding that framed the mural were injected into the mural design itself. Separations such as this are often found in the illustrated pages of nineteenth-century magazines and books.” In separating some of his images this way, Benton arranged the strips of architectural molding, using both curved and straight pieces, into a variety of pleasing shapes, often formally related to the shapes they frame.

  Trip to Bethlehem Steel: Johnson, p. 329. Rita, T. P. and Caroline Pratt: Braun and Branchick, p. 21, citing Deborah Solomon. Elizabeth: Braun and Branchick, p. 21, citing CCP to Emily Braun, Dec. 14, 1984. Max Eastman, Peggy Reynolds, Alvin Johnson, and Benton: “Benton,” Time, Jan. 5, 1931, p. 32. Jackson’s “action posing”: THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964.

  Tintoretto-like bas-reliefs: American, p. 46: Benton had read in 1919 of Tintoretto’s use of bas-reliefs for his Last Supper in Santa Maria della Salute. A 400-year-old text: Cennini, The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini or A Treatise on Painting; American; p. 64. Advan
tages of tempera: Branchick; Braun and Branchick, p. 68. Other users of tempera were Reginald Marsh, Boardman Robinson, and Denys Wortman; Braun and Branchick, p. 68. Demands of tempera: It requires a relatively smooth, white surface, and Benton didn’t prepare his surface as carefully as he should have. He picked the number of coats of gesso (seven) out of his head, didn’t wait long enough for each coat to dry, and didn’t sand between each coat; Branchick. Assisted by Cherry: Cherry isn’t certain this was the mural cycle he worked on, but, given the dates of his time in New York, this is the only one he could have worked on. Preparations: American, p. 64; Branchick. Without assistance: THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964: “I had no assistance on the mural except for moving the panels about.” Use of distemper: American, p. 42. Benton (American, p. 58) used distemper poorly: “I made the mistake of using too heavy a glue solution, with the consequence that most of the paintings cracked so badly that they were not worth preserving.”

  “Incalculable energy”: Craven, p. 19, who called Benton’s art “fundamentally an intellectual performance.” “Bigboned”: Braun and Branchick, p. 4Q. “Master designer”: Craven, p. 19. Matthew Baigell, p. 87: Benton “clearly ran the risk of stereotyping behavior patterns, types of activity, and landscapes. His paintings could become a kind of impressionistic journalism, savoring the typical features of the subject being painted but not exploring the individual psychology, motivation, or even context in which it occurred.” Stephen Polcari, “JP and THB,” p. 120: “Despite the American Culture subject matter, the three-dimensional space, modeled forms, and his often-stated antagonism to modern European art, Benton shared modern painting’s emphasis on abstract two-dimensional patterning and allover design.” Polcari (p. 121) compares the overlapping images in America Today—the way “they spill over into one another at a portion of their boundaries”—to Analytical Cubist passage. CCP: “The influence [on JP’s work] has nothing to do with [Benton’s] subject matter, or with Benton’s color. It has altogether to do with Benton’s method of diagramming the underlying structure of western painting.” Jackson uncomfortable with concentrated work: Elizabeth Pollock, noting Charles’s laborious process, says the Benton-derived process “took hours of work. You couldn’t imagine Jackson doing anything like that.”

  “I was given”: Artist, p. 332. THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964: “I made friends with my students at the League. They came to our apartment. My wife met most of them.” Jackson’s unique access: Darrow; Delaney; CCP. THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964: “Jack became somewhat closer than the rest because he used to ‘baby sit’ for our young son.” Tolegian sometimes accompanied JP to the Bentons’, but the hospitality extended to him was at first largely derivative. T. P. pensive: Field: Although introspective, T. P. was also athletic and performed well on his high school football and track teams. Pollock taciturn: Schardt: JP was “extremely shy and troubled, and he was torn when he was working with Benton.” Telling stories to T. P.; “the spooky mythology”: Artist, p. 338. Boy’s idol: Artist, p. 332.

  Jackson working for Rita: Kron; Eleanor Piacenza. “Little tasks”: Kron. Fifty cents a night: SLM, int. by CG, c. 1956. Five dollars a day: Kron. Rita taking advantage: Eleanor Piacenza: “Rita used people to her advantage. She would use these kids to babysit, wash the kitchen floor, come down to the Vineyard and open up the house.” But Rita could be very generous to her surrogate children. Araks Tolegian recalls that Manuel received anonymous gifts of milk outside his door every morning during his early years in New York. Later he discovered that Rita had arranged to have the milk delivered to him. Rita’s Italian background: Eleanor Piacenza; Santos Piacenza: Their father, Ettore, returned to Italy “after about twenty years because he wanted to die in the old country.” Burroughs, p. 4: Rita arrived in America with her two brothers in 1912. Loose clothes: FLP. Hair: Kron. Hair bouncing, hips swinging: Emerson. “Beam-shaking”: McWhirter, “Tom Benton,” p. 66. Spaghetti for fifty: Jules; Santos Piacenza. “Mother of the world”: Emerson.

  Benton teaching Rita; “slim”; “wore a red hat”: Artist, p. 48. Lizzie’s prejudice against Rita’s background: Burroughs, p. 4. Burroughs, p. 64: “According to relatives, his mother didn’t want or expect him to marry.” In 1912, Lizzie Benton became so ill that Tom was forced to travel to her bedside in Neosho. This precipitated an almost instant recovery, whereupon she joined Tom on his return to New York, leaving M. E. behind. Burroughs, pp. 47–48: “Even if she told some friends that she left the Colonel because he was so ‘lazy,’ others were clearly of the opinion that she left him because her children, especially Tom, had moved to the East.” “Were certain”: Artist, p. 48. Marriage; honeymoon: Burroughs, p. 64. “Mommie”: Q. in Burroughs, p. 145. “Mama”: Q. in Burroughs, p. 25; correspondence between THB and Elizabeth Benton.

  Verbal skirmishes between Tom and Rita: Jackson. Most of these arguments centered on Benton’s refusal to play the family man. The fact that he took his marital duties lightly—“The bonds of marriage did not lay [sic] very heavily on my back,” he later wrote (Artist, p. 75)—didn’t seem to bother her terribly. Kron: “I think Rita liked the idea of being Mrs. Thomas Hart Benton. The satisfaction she got out of that was more than she got out of the relationship.” But she couldn’t forgive her husband for giving their children the same short shrift: “He’s the worst husband and worst father that ever lived,” Rita complained to one Vineyard neighbor (q. in Burroughs, p. 95) about Benton’s long sketching trips, which left her stranded with a small child. Emerson: As an adult, Rita was constantly torn between her devotion to Benton and her devotion to the children. “Goddammit, woman”: Q. by Jackson. “Don’t be vulgar”; “Italian men”: Q. by Kron.

  “Tom was Rita’s man”: Q. in Burroughs, p. 172. “Put everything in Rita’s hands”: Jackson. Rita’s bargaining: Burroughs, p. 79. Designing hats and posing: Burroughs, p. 64. Doing Tom’s chores: Burroughs, p. 108. Promoting Tom: Kron: “She was very instrumental in promoting and pushing Tom. He wouldn’t have done it himself.” Emerson: “Rita is largely responsible for Tom’s success.” Craven, “THB,” p. 37: Rita was not only “one of the few women of my acquaintance who understands paintings” but one who proved “clever at selling paintings.” When Benton made a generous slip, promising some friend a gift of his own work, Rita quickly became his “watchdog, determined Tom would not give it away”; Mary Manners, q. in Burroughs, p. 97. “In a business”: Emerson. Boy hero named “Jack Sass”; “wild stallions”; “we received”; “explored”; “Jack Sass” was Jackson Pollock: Artist, pp. 338–39.

  14. THE OLD LOVE

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscript, brochures, documents, records, and transcripts

  Allen, Since Yesterday; Ashton, Yes, but … ; THB, An American in Art (American); An Artist in America (Artist); Braun and Branchick, THB; Burroughs, THB; Congdon, The Thirties; Craven, THB; Friedman, JP; Hall, The Well of Loneliness; Honeyman, The Willson Family Tree; OC&T, JP; Potter, To a Violent Grave; Powell, Publications of the Bureau of Ethnology, vol. I; Wall, Iowa; Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

  Gerald Clarke, “The Miracle of ‘32,” Time, Oct. 17, 1983; Robert Goodnough, “Pollock Paints a Picture,” Art News, May 1951; Axel Horn, “JP: The Hollow and the Bump,” Carleton Miscellany, Summer 1966; “No One Has Starved,” Fortune, Sept. 1932; William Rubin, “JP and the Modern Tradition, Part I: 1. The Myths and the Paintings,” Artforum, Feb. 1967.

  FVOC, “The Genesis of JP: 1912 to 1943 (Ph.D. thesis), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1965.

  Los Angeles Museum Catalogues of Art Exhibits, A–Z, 1931–32, Los Angeles: Los Angeles Museum, 1921–32; Southwest Museum Handbook, 1931, Los Angeles: Southwest Museum, 1931.

  Chronology prepared by CCP for EFP, Feb. 1975, AAA.

  THB Classbooks, 1929–30, 1930–31, 1931–32, Art Students League Archives; registration cards for Whitney Darrow, Jr., JP, and Manuel Tolegian, Art Students League Archives.

  THB, int. by Kathleen Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959, for Life, Time/Life Archi
ves; Manuel Tolegian, int. by Betty Hoag, Feb. 12, 1965, AAA.

  Interviews

  Ward Bennett; Fritz Bultman; Peter Busa; Reginald Cabral; Lawrence Campbell; Jeremy Capillé; Nicholas Carone; Herman Cherry; Whitney Darrow, Jr.; Joseph Delaney; Sanford Friedman; Violet de Laszlo; Ruth Emerson; Sanford Friedman; David Gibbs; Axel Horn; Ora Horton; Buffie Johnson; Mervin Jules; Reuben Kadish; Gerome Kamrowski; Nathaniel Kaz; Craig Klyver; LK; Maria Piacenza Kron; Berthe Pacifico Laxineta; Harold Lehman; Conrad Marca-Relli; ACM; John Bernard Myers; Philip Pavia; David Peretz; Eleanor Piacenza; ABP; CCP; EFP; FLP; MLP; Neal Primm; Harry Rand; Charles Rozaire; Grant Rusk; Araks Tolegian; Steve Wheeler; Roger Wilcox; Reginald Wilson.

  NOTES

  Desire for Rita: JP may have accompanied Rita to Martha’s Vineyard to help prepare the Benton’s summer house at Chilmark. “Inherent restlessness”: Burroughs, p. 95. “The Bonds”: Artist, p. 75. Students urged to travel: THB to FVOC, Apr. 26, 1965, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 40. Pennsylvania truck; “I just went”: Manuel Tolegian, int. by Hoag, Feb. 12, 1965. Cleveland streetcar: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel. Two million on the roads: Congdon, p. 102. “In search”: “No One Has Starved,” p. 28. Tolegian “terrified” of robbery: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel. People murdered for little: Sevareid, p. 45. Remainder of Tolegian’s trip: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel; JP to CCP and FLP, n.d. “I got thrown”: JP to CCP and FLP, n.d. “Experienced the most marvelous”: JP to CCP, June 10, 1931. JP, int. by Goodnough (“Pollock Paints a Picture,” p. 38): “You get a wonderful view of the country from the top of a freight car.”