Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  Summer on Montecito Drive; sleeping arrangements: ACM: On visits from Riverside, Arloie slept with Stella. Sitting in kitchen with Kadish: Kadish. Stella packing preserves: Kadish; MLP. Kadish working with Siqueiros: Kadish. Siqueiros jailed: Helm, pp. 91–92: For twelve months in 1930. He had been director general of all trade unions in the state of Jalisco, then general secretary of the national confederation of Mexican syndicates. Siqueiros experimenting with media: Helm, p. 93. Subject of mural: Kadish. “Syndicate of painters”: Kadish; see Helm, p. 91: There had been a Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, Sculptors & Engravers in Mexico, which had fallen apart due to internal rivalries. In this instance, the Spanish word for “syndicate” was used to mean “union.” Kadish signing mural: Kadish, q. in Potter, p. 49. Phil Guston and Sande assisted on it. Kadish introducing Jackson and Siqueiros; trip to Chouinard; Jackson reacted coolly: Kadish.

  Bentonesque refinement: Kadish. Doodle filling page: OC&T 389, III, p. 6; 391, III, p. 7. Orozco-like lights and darks: OC&T 421, III, p. 33. Swirling lines: OC&T 402, III, p. 17. Trip to Ensenada: Darrow. Olympiad: July 30–Aug. 14, 1932; Weaver, pp. 118–19. Clattering old Ford: Darrow. Sleeping in open: Darrow, in “Strokes of Genius.” Boots on dashboard; playing mouth harp: Friedman, p. 28. “Until the coyotes”: Darrow, q. in Potter, p. 43. Tobacco; Diamond matches: Friedman, p. 28. Eggs and bacon; beans: Darrow.

  Never stopping long: Darrow. Pad, ink sticks: Darrow, q. in Potter, p. 43. “He did a desert”: Darrow, in “Strokes of Genius.” “Liberally”: Darrow, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” pp. 42–43. Oil derricks: JP’s painting, Camp with Oil Rig, may have been inspired in part by JP’s visit to Texas that summer; but it was more directly a copy of a drawing by Benton, Oil Field, Texas Panhandle, dated 1926–27, in Marling; 1928, by Benton himself; Marling, fig. 4–1, p. 69. Plantation workers: Friedman, p. 28. Unloading bananas; “the negro”: JP to SMP, Sept. 1932. Glimpsing Benton sketches: JP to SMP, Sept. 1932: “… saw plenty of interesting country people and things. Arkansas and Tennessee I liked especially well.” JP may have confused Alabama and Arkansas—Darrow is not sure—as he did Indianapolis and Minneapolis on a previous trip.

  Ten dollars left: Darrow, q. in Potter, p. 43. “He was a very likeable”: Darrow, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” pp. 42–43. Cold reception from Elizabeth: JP to SMP, Sept. 17: “I’m starting out badly again.” Then JP recounts a dinner with Elizabeth but without Charles, clearly implying a skirmish, then reports positive news about the trip and the coming year. “A happy Italian”: JP to SMP, Sept. 17, 1932. Real-estate agency: EFP. “A stinking relic”; Charles and Elizabeth’s summer: Near Rockaway Beach; chronology prepared by CCP for EFP, Feb. 1975. Jackson regaining room: CCP. Spaghetti and wine; too poor for electricity: EFP.

  New term: Registration card for JP. Benton returning: JP to SMP, Sept. 17, 1932. Jackson monitor: Registration card for JP. “Pleased smile”: Horn. Males and females alternating: Horn. Standard group of models: Jules. “Tiger” Ed Bates: Horn calls him “Ed,” Jules calls him “Tiger Jack Bates.” “A beautifully”; Bates’s brother: Jules. Hank Clausen: Cherry; Clausen. Jackson posing models: Darrow, q. in Potter, p. 41. Holding same pose: Darrow, in “Strokes of Genius.” “The Arts of Life”: American, pp. 67–69. Publicity: For articles, see Braun and Branchick, pp. 36–37 n. 124. “I improved”: Artist, p. 249. Paying off debts: Artist, pp. 249–50. Rita exploiting market: Craven, “THB,” p. 37: Rita was “one of the few women of my acquaintance who understands paintings” and was “clever at selling pictures.”

  “Babbitts, Rotarians”: Allen, p. 201. Relief from Depression: Malcolm Cowley, “A Farewell to the Thirties,” The New Republic, Nov. 8, 1939, q. in Congdon, p. 499. American writers: Allen, p. 207. The Epic of America: Allen, p. 206; Adams, The Epic of America. “Much wider”: American, p. 156. “We were psychologically”: American, p. 164. “The most virile”: “U.S. Scene,” p. 25. Wood in Iowa: “U.S. Scene,” p. 26. Benton and Wood unacquainted: American, p. 152. Curry in Connecticut: “U.S. Scene,” p. 25; Curry’s most famous works were two turbulent paintings, Tornado and Baptism in Kansas.

  “Neither Wood”: American, p. 148. The movement probably derived its name from the fact that its three leaders all came from the same largely ignored region west of the Appalachians (American, p. 147); yet the three artists “made their discoveries and came to their conclusions separately,” according to Benton; American, p. 151. “What distinguished us from so many other American painters of our time was not a difference in training or aesthetic background but a desire to redirect what we had found in the art of Europe toward an art specifically representative of America”; American, p. 151. This search led the Regionalists to the same time period of European art history: Benton to the Italian Renaissance, Wood to the northern Renaissance; see Baigell, THB, p. 91.

  “American Wave” coined: Actually coined in 1931; Baigell, THB, p. 88. “A standardized”: Allen, p. 201. “His father took”: Burroughs, p. 46. “I cannot honestly”: Artist, pp. 76–77. Benton’s search for his past: Artist, p. 84: The travels began in the mountains of “Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, Missouri, and Arkansas.” “It is high time”: “Form and the Subject,” p. 308; American, p. 155. “Poised and quick”: Burroughs, p. 113. “The most genuinely American”: Edward Alden Jewell, “Orozco and Benton Paint Murals for New York”; Jewell, “American Painting,” p. 367. Benton’s defense: American, pp. 150, 156. “The arts of our pioneers”: Artist, pp. 26–27.

  “We can afford”: THB, “Form and the Subject,” p. 303. “Still-lifes”: THB, “Form and the Subject,” pp. 303, 307–08; “When the creative life is barren or starved, the mind tends to dignify insignificant actions with highsounding and impressive nomenclature.” Demagogic essence: THB, “Art and Nationalism,” pp. 233–34: “Those of us who have read much aesthetics realize finally that the verbal plays about the subject are undertaken only by philosophers who have nothing to say—also, that they are attended to only by those little professors and critics whose empty minds find their level in the subject.” “If it were left”: Interview with New York World-Telegram, excerpted in Art Digest, Apr. 15, 1941, p. 6, q. in Baigell, ed., p. 79. “There is hope”: THB, “Art vs. the Mellon Gallery,” p. 172. Benton would go on to condemn the “hothouses of international aesthetics” and even Picasso himself as a “high priest” of the “cult of art,” “rehasher of dead procedures,” and “the most luxuriant of the hothouse flowers”; THB, “Art and Nationalism,” pp. 233–34.

  “Incipient Fascism”: Baigell, “Beginnings,” pp. 59–61. McNeil helping found AAA: Susan C. Larsen, “The Quest for an American Abstract Tradition, 1927–1944,” in Lane and Larsen, eds., p. 36. “Poor art”: Q. by McNeil. “By a curious”: Kootz, p. 13. “While most rejected”: Kainen, int. by Landau, Jan. 22, 1979, q. in Landau, p. 50. Gellert or Lozowick: THB, “Art and Nationalism,” pp. 35–36. “Couldn’t paint anything”: American, p. 171. See THB, “Art and Nationalism,” pp. 35–36. “The Social Viewpoint”: Monroe, Art in America, p. 65. Social realism an alternative: Landau, p. 51.

  Craven Benton’s “hatchet man”: Pavia. Benton good copy: Burroughs, p. 99. “There are no artists”: Q. by McNeil. “Narrow-minded”: McNeil. Father Coughlin, a Catholic priest and radio evangelist, used the pulpit of the airwaves to voice his conservative political views. Martin Dies, congressman from Texas, was chairman of the House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, formed May 26, 1938. “Far be it”: Artist, p. 265. “That son-of-a-bitch”: Artist, p. 258. Jackson attacking Picasso: Pavia, q. in Potter, p. 36. “A very primitive”: Horn. “Oh, yeah?”: Q. by Jules. “Wop culture”: Pavia. “Outlandish statements”: Jules. “Yelling shambles”; “enraged Commie”: American, p. 171.

  Drop in enrollment: THB Classbooks, 1930–31, 1931–32, Art Students League Archives. “Menopause crowd”; enrollment near minimum; “faithful Bentonites”: Jules: Jules and Benton later had a falling-out over the portray
al of blacks in the latter’s murals. Klonis: Some drop-off in enrollment from the beginning of the month to the end was common. “New, naive”: Jules.

  “We had many ardent”: THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964. Jackson still posing: There is a portrait of him “low in the corner” of the Whitney mural, The Arts of the West; Horn, “JP,” p. 82. “He followed”; “he did not have”: THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964. Preparing panels: Jules. Another commission: Benton signed the contract in early December 1932. American, pp. 68–69: It was offered to him when his brushes were barely dry from the Whitney commission, completed in September. Pollock hoping to work on murals: Inferred from JP to LRP, Feb. 1932. “Jack would not”: THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964. Pollock making models: Darrow, q. in Potter, p. 37. Pavia: JP made these models in Laurent’s class. Indiana commission: American, p. 69. Pollock made member of League: Registration card for JP.

  Photograph of Roy: In possession of FLP (misdated in OC&T IV, p. 215). Blue Eyes: MLP. “Too many cold”: Q. by FLP. Friesinger, a leading heart specialist at the Vanderbilt University Hospital, confirms the adverse effects of cold weather on endocarditis. Roy returning to camp; symptoms returning: MJP to CCP, Jan. 30, 1933. Stella visiting friend: MLP. Contacting Stella; recognizing seriousness; “it seemed”: MLP. French Hospital: 531 College Street; MLP. Roy deteriorating: MLP. “Los Angeles has sure been hard hit”: SMP to JP, CCP, and EFP, Jan. 1933. Marie informing Frank: MLP. 102 degree temperature; Roy taken to hospital: 1200 North State Street; MLP. Dr. Rynin: MLP. “Malignant Anaconditis”: MJP to CCP, Jan. 30, 1933. Jackson writing Roy; “damned hard work”: JP to LRP, Feb. 3, 1933. Tests: The laboratory tests at Los Angeles County General Hospital were made by Dr. Rynin’s wife, a laboratory technician; MLP. “Malignant endocarditis”: Friesinger: “Malignant” means “infectious” or “bacterial” endocarditis. The word has spawned the false rumor that Roy died of cancer; MLP; Potter, p. 46. “Leaking heart valve”: FLP. Causes: Friesinger. “It is a case”; “it is fatal”: MJP to CCP, 1933.

  Appropriateness in Roy’s illness: MJP to CCP, FLP, JP, and EFP, Mar. 6, 1933: “His unbounded strength became his weakness and downfall—an overtaxed and developed heart.” “My father died”: FLP. Inherent defect: Called subacute, or chronic, endocarditis. “I sometimes feel”: LRP to JP, Dec. 11, 1927. “We have not told Dad”: MJP to CCP, 1933. Summer arrangements: MJP to CPP, n.d. Roy planning to meet daughter-in-law: SMP to CCP, EFP, FLP, and JP, Mar. 17, 1933: “He wanted to see Elizabeth so much.” “The beautiful golden”; “sunshine fresh”; “drenching nightsweats”: SMP to CCP, EFP, FLP, and JP, Mar. 17, 1933. “Without a murmur”; “he enjoyed having”: MJP to CCP, FLP, JP, and EFP, Mar. 6, 1933.

  Inaugural; “what Roosevelt’s answer”; “the synthetic”: “President Hoover”; “the roles”; “The money changers”: Allen, p. 84. Roy searching airwaves; choir broadcast: SMP to CCP, EFP, FLP, and JP, Mar. 17, 1933. “Come, come”: Lyrics by William Clayton, old English tune, Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, p. 13. Roy complaining: SMP to CCP, EFP, FLP, and JP, Mar. 17, 1933. “Great pain”: MJP to CCP, FLP, JP, and EFP, Mar. 6, 1933. “[Was] the only thing”; Jay getting doctor; Stella holding Roy: SMP to CCP, EFP, FLP, and JP, Mar. 17, 1933. “Her parents had made fun”: SMP, q. by MLP. Stella not wanting Roy to live with disease; Roy in Stella’s arms; eight-thirty; Jay just arriving; “Mother”; Roy wanting to say more: SMP to CCP, EFP, FLP, and JP, Mar. 17, 1933. Stella not crying: MLP. “He passed away”: SMP to CCP, EFP, FLP, and JP, Mar. 17, 1933. “Dad passed”: MJP to CCP, FLP, JP, and EFP, Mar. 6, 1933.

  16. OUT OF THE VOID

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscript, records, and transcripts

  Alloway and MacNaughton, Adolph Gottlieb; Brown, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression; Burroughs, THB; Falk, ed., Who Was Who in American Art; Friedman, JP; Gruen, The Party’s Over Now; Hibbard, Michelangelo; Karp, The Center; McWilliams, Southern California Country; Melville, Moby-Dick; Moak, The Robert Laurent Memorial Exhibition; OC&T, JP; Potter, To a Violent Grave; Price, Ryder; Sloan, Gist of Art; Solomon, JP; Whitney Museum of American Art, 200 Years of American Sculpture.

  Ahron Ben-Shmuel, “Carving: A Sculptor’s Creed,” American Magazine of Art, 1938–39; Horace Brodsky, “Concerning Sculpture and Robert Laurent,” The Arts, May 1921; Rosamund Frost, “Laurent: Frames to Figures, Brittany to Brooklyn,” Art News, Apr. 1–14, 1941; Walter Gutman, “News and Gossip,” Creative Art, Jan. 1933; Axel Horn, “JP: The Hollow and the Bump,” Carleton Miscellany, Summer 1966; Sam Hunter, “JP,” Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, 1956–57.

  David Hale, “Ex-Fresnan, artist Manuel Tolegian, dead at age 72,” Fresno Bee, Sept. 4, 1983.

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

  Box Butte County, Nebr., marriage license and certificate, Recorder’s Office, Jan. 13, 1903; Chronology prepared by CCP for EFP, Feb. 1975, AAA; registration card for JP, Art Students League Archives.

  Tony Smith, int. by James T. Vallière, Aug. 1965, AAA; Manuel Tolegian, int. by Betty Hoag, Feb. 12, 1965, AAA.

  Interviews

  Margaret Louise Archbold; Paul Brach; Peter Busa; Joseph Delaney; Joseph DeMeio; Chaim Gross; Renee Gross; Isidore Grossman; William Homer; Ettabelle Horgan; Axel Horn; Mervin Jules; Reuben Kadish; Nathaniel Kaz; Stewart Klonis; Maria Piacenza Kron; George McNeil; E. Roger Miller; Alfonso Ossorio; Philip Pavia; CCP; EFP; FLP; MLP; SWP; Milton Resnick; Abraham Schlemowitz; David Slivka; Christopher Spingarn; Ralph Turnquist; Doris Wagner; Reginald Wilson.

  NOTES

  Law librarian: The librarian was Rita Benton’s brother, Louis Piacenza. “Tell Frank”: Louis Piacenza, q. by FLP. Reading telegram: CCP. “Moment of silence”: FLP. Telephoning and travel costly: CCP; FLP. Frank lamely suggests that they didn’t phone “because we didn’t have a phone.” Writing letters: CCP. “I really can’t”: JP to SMP, SLM, and MJP, Mar. 8, 1933. Cemetery: 1712 South Glendale Avenue. Archbolds at funeral: Archbold. Stella unshaken: MLP. Frank, asked about Stella’s reaction to JP’s death: It was “the first tragedy in her life.” Earthquake: At 5:55 P.M. Buildings collapsing: Weaver, p. 203. Manual Arts a victim: Turnquist. Extra eggs; lame walking: Weaver, p. 203. Hill feeling jolt: SMP to CCP, EFP, FLP, and JP, Mar. 17, 1933. CCP: No one in the family visited Roy’s crypt again. FLP: “He’s in a crypt, he’s not in the ground—not that he should be. And I’m ashamed to say I never visited it. Not that I could help at all.” But the boys didn’t have to wait until their father died to go home: they could have left as soon as they knew he had a fatal disease, when the banks were still open and loans could still be arranged.

  No money for travel: FLP to MLP, Apr. 12, 1933. Frank visiting Marie: FLP. Charles going to Chicago: CCP. “I can only wish”: JP to SMP, Mar. 25, 1933. Jackson refusing ride; “[Mother] still had”: FLP. “I’m going to school”: JP to LRP, Feb. 1932. Painting “jobs”; “struggle with the elements”: JP to LRP, Feb. 3, 1933. “Bad habits”: Pavia. Pavia, q. in Gruen, p. 264: “The big point about Jackson and the Art Students League was that he wanted to be a teacher there. But they wouldn’t let him because of his bad habits.” Kaz: “He was an intense guy, and he wanted to be Benton’s number one, right-hand man. But he just didn’t have the discipline.” Klonis: JP didn’t receive the teaching position because “his work was so unlike anything else done there that he was told he would not be able to attract students.” But at this time JP’s work was still faithfully Bentonesque. Klonis may be referring to a later application. “Just a bum”: JP to CCP, Summer 1932.

  Sloan’s class: JP enrolled January 3; registration card. Sloan anecdotal: Brown, p. 18. Sloan teaching Cubism: Alloway and MacNaughton, p. 14: see Sloan, Gist of Art. Preoccupation with methodology: Alloway and MacNaughton, p. 13. Sloan’s reaction to modern art so diminished the quality of his own work that Brown (p. 63) calls it “one of the tragedies of American art. … Sloan, set loose in a field where he was neither emoti
onally nor intellectually acclimated, was destroyed as an artistic personality.” “Benton tolerated”: Manuel Tolegian, q. by Araks. Sloan’s clothing: Manuel Tolegian, q. in Potter, p. 44.

  “Mason”: Marriage license and certificate, Box Butte County, Nebr., Recorder’s Office, Jan. 13, 1903. Fascination with earth-moving: Potter, p. 17. “Do what is best”: LRP to JP, Dec. 11, 1927. “A method”: JP to CCP, Summer 1932. “That’s the new”; “sculptoring I think”: JP to LRP, Feb. 1932: JP also tried to appeal to his father on the issue of politics: “Suppose you still get the Nation there. I thought the article by Ernest was very good the best of the bunch—‘If I were Constitutional Dictator’ I think—the one by Chase was good I think—It’s looking as tho we’re going to have to be enlisting for the capitalist government—the Manchurian business is begging to be envolved.”

  Martin’s modeling class: JP to CCP and FLP, Oct. 22, 1929. “Found a bit”: JP to CCP, Jan. 31, 1930. Block of stone: Aram Tolegian. “He originally”: Int. by Vallière, Aug. 1965: “I can remember very clearly his telling me that he came to New York to learn to sculpt like Michelangelo.” Kadish becoming a sculptor: Kadish: About 1950. Book on Michelangelo: Stark, int. by FVOC, Mar. 30, 1964, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 173 n. 7: JP said he sent Stark a book on photography in return but Stark never got it. Joining class at Greenwich House: JP may have gone to a formal class at the Greenwich House annex on Jones Street or just to Ben-Shmuel’s studio on Jane Street and served as his studio boy. “I have joined”: JP to LRP, Feb. 3, 1933. Description of Ben-Shmuel: Chaim Gross. Archie Levitt: Brach. Carving wooden forms: Ben-Shmuel, “Carving,” p. 502. “Monumental carver”: Ben-Shmuel, “Carving,” p. 504. Assisting Zorach: Chaim Gross. One work, Mother and Child, was carved 1927–30 from Spanish Florida Rosa marble. “Angry”: Chaim Gross; Grossman; Kaz. “Not a teacher”: Resnick: “Ben-Shmuel would dismiss the whole idea that he was a teacher. To him, teaching was ridiculous.”