Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  “Force account”: “The Reminiscences of Holger Cahill,” pp. 355–58, cited in McKinzie, pp. 84. Individual standards: Kamrowski: “If you were an assistant you had to check into the project supervisor. It was like punching a time-card.” McNeil: ‘We were each assigned a mural and left alone, which was simply magnificent.” “Kind of a martinet”: Dehner, LK, McCoy, and Miller, int. by Mattox, Mar. 1, 1972: JP, George Cox, Oliver Kerwood, and the others held this view of Goodman. Sixteenth Street studio: Mattox, int. by Dehner, LK, McCoy, and Miller, Mar. 1, 1972; it was near Sixth Avenue, on Sixteenth or Seventeenth Street, according to Mattox. “Inspections”; “some evidence”: Mattox.

  “Unskilled, intermediate”: McKinzie, p. 85. Objective works encouraged: Olin Dows to Frederic Knight, Sept. 1, 1936, RG121/119, cited in McKinzie, p. 42. Artists learned to “paint section”; Erica Beckh Rubenstein, “The Tax Payers’ Murals” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1944), cited in McKinzie, p. 55. Diller and Holtzman: Holtzman; McNeil.

  Sponsors required: JP was not alone in failing to secure a mural commission for one of his own designs. LK, q. in Bruce Glaser, “JP,” p. 36: “In order to get a work of art for some public building, somebody from the public had to say we want a painting of a certain kind. Unfortunately, art doesn’t work well when subjected to democratic processes. Predictably, the abstract artists were not much in demand.” Busa: “Every damn one of [Jackson’s] presentations was rejected. He never did get a mural to do.” “The story of Costume”: SLM to Kadish, July 16, 1935. History of aviation: Butler Air Terminal, La Guardia Airport, by James Brooks, assisted by Sande and others; Brooks.

  Goodman’s mural: FVOC, ”The Genesis of JP,” p. 142. Dehner, LK, McCoy, and Miller, int. by Mattox, Mar. 1, 1972: The original destination was Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. One thousand murals begun: Josephson, p. 382. Few abstract murals: McNeil: Only Gorky’s Newark Airport mural, Stuart Davis’s mural for WNYC, Ilya Bolotowsky’s mural for the Williamsburg housing project, and one by Byron Browne were completed. Because abstract artists knew nothing would ever come of their efforts, they diverted most of their time to their “own work.” “If and when”: SLM to Kadish, July 16, 1935. McKinzie, p. 27: Murals “comprised less than 3 percent of the items produced, but they commanded disproportionate attention. Government art became chiefly mural art in the public mind.”

  Concealing income: McNeil. Some artists assigned to the mural division showed up for work, then spent the day playing cards while the person to whom they were assigned did all the work: see Tabak, “Art Project,” in “Collage,” p. 28. Pilfering: Cherry. Mattox: When Smith went to Europe in 1935, Mattox took over his position; Dehner. Mattox at distribution center; “a lot of the artists”; “we took”; “mileage”: Mattox.

  “Force account” abolished: “The Reminiscences of Holger Cahill,” pp. 355–58, cited in McKinzie, p. 84: “Finding the relief chief [Hopkins] at a cocktail party sitting on the floor and leaning against the host’s fireplace, Cahill told him the decision was ‘perfectly silly.’” New regulations: FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 64, citing interview with Ahron Ben-Shmuel, Dec. 2, 1963; letters from Jack Tworkov, Apr. 17, 1964; Louis Block, May 20, 1964; Dorothy Miller, June 22, 1964; Jacob Kainen, Sept. 3, 1965. Ashton, p. 48: The system “permitted artists to work at their own speed.”

  Impact of WPA: LK, int. by Rose, July 31, 1966. Socializing at WPA offices: Cherry. Sense of community: Marca-Relli: “It brought all the artists together so we met each other and came to know each other.” Shielding others from rules: Ashton, p. 48. “There was a wonderful feeling”: Name withheld by request. “Like one big”: Ribak; see also McKinzie, p. 178. “Not unlike payday”: Friedman, p. 36. Those not on the project were marked with a stigma that would linger for decades. Afraid of being ostracized, John Little kept his well-paying job as a fabric designer secret throughout the period; Little. Barnett Newman confessed years later (q. in Ashton, p. 44): “I paid a severe price for not being on the project with the other guys; in their eyes I wasn’t a painter.”

  “Symbol [of] people’s”; “[bring] to the artist”: Edward Bruce, q. in William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969), q. in Ashton, p. 46. Other pay scales; sleeping in parks and subways: Ellis, p. 532. Works disappearing: Mattox: When paintings were sold, it was usually in bulk for about ten dollars a piece. Only $60 a month: McKinzie, p. 87. World-owes-me: Busa. Unemployed Artists Group: McKinzie, p. 14. Artists Union founded: Actually, PWAP was established in December 1933; the Artists Union adopted that name in February 1934; see Monroe, “The ’30s,” p. 66. Bureaucratic enemy: McKinzie, p. 85: “WPA’s inability to adjust to the habits of artists had something to do with the decision of many artists to organize unions to deal with the WPA.” “Deprived workers”: McKinzie, p. 86. Union popular: Mattox. No mere windfall: See Darrow, q. in Potter, p. 52.

  Benton offered job: Craven, p. 16; Burroughs, p. 123. Mural commission: Artist, p. 258. Authorized $16,000: Craven, p. 16. “I began to feel”: Artist, p. 261. SLM to Kadish, July 16, 1935: “There is a definate movement among artists to get out of New York into the midwest and west to develop regional art. (Wood-Iowa, Benton-Missouri, Curry-Kansas, ect.)” Rhetorical jousting: Burroughs, p. 123. Friends questioning Benton’s art: Mumford; Scott. Benton sulking: Burroughs, p. 10. Benton leaving: “Benton to Quit Hectic City for Missouri Calm.” “Had lost all”: Q. in New York Sun, Apr. 12, 1935, q. in Burroughs, p. 124.

  Resettlement Administration: CCP: McElvaine, p. 301. Benton wanting Charles: CCP. Charles’s work exhibited: “Mrs. T. H. Benton Collection One of Several in Which High Standard is Reached.” Reproduced: Look Down that Road, p. 17; South Carolina Harvest, p. 5. Mentioned: “Mrs. T. H. Benton Collection One of Several in Which High Standard is Reached”; notice of exhibition at the Ferargil Galleries. Works by Joseph Meert and Reginald Wilson, among others, were also listed, but not works by JP, even though he was represented in the exhibition. Elizabeth promoting Charles: SWP: “Elizabeth has always tried to market Charles’s work—as Charles says, ‘unsuccessfully.’” Stella’s talk of selling quilts: SMP to JP, CCP, and EFP, Jan. 1933. Eighth Street apartment handed over: Chronology prepared by CCP for EFP, Feb. 1975. Leaving Houston Street: Alone among JP’s friends, Peter Busa recalls that JP and Sande lived for a while prior to moving to Eighth Street in a cold-water flat on Greene Street. Allocating spaces at Eighth Street: ACM. EFP: “Sande gave up his own life. He, too, wanted to paint, but he spent all his time, when he wasn’t earning a living, acting as Jackson’s nursemaid.” Jackson thriving: Kamrowski: “Jackson’s life represents a remarkable series of contingencies, and having a brother who would keep the pad warm and still be there when he got back was crucial.”

  Making lithographs with Wahl; “just to get rid”: Wahl. OC&T, p. 132: JP made lithographs at the Art Students League between 1932 and 1935, when, as a member, he had access to the lithographic studio. In early 1933, however, he became involved with sculpture, first with Ben-Shmuel and Robert Laurent, then with Davis, and he would not have used the League facilities until the following fall, by which time he had stopped taking courses and visited the League only intermittently, preferring to spend his weekends at Davis’s place in the Poconos; O’Connor relies heavily on Klonis’s unreliable memory of these events. Pollock’s lithographs: OC&T 1055 IV, pp. 132–41. Martha’s Vineyard sketches: OC&T 385–86, III, p. 3. Watercolors: OC&T 932, 934, IV, pp. 18–19. Mississippi cotton pickers: The Cotton Pickers, OC&T 12, I, pp. 12–13: FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” pp. 62, 154–57. Vineyard Sound: OC&T 30, I, p. 25. Bather: OC&T, 919, IV, p. 5.

  Brooklyn Museum exhibition: FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 62: The show was the Eighth Exhibition of Watercolors, Pastels and Drawings by American and Foreign Artists, Feb. 1–28, 1935. The work is OC&T 935, IV, p. 20, size and medium not certain; no longer extant. The exhibition listed JP as represented by Ferargil Galleries; Curator, Department
of Painting and Sculpture, Brooklyn Museum, to FVOC, July 21, 1964, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 62. Lewd mural: Kron. Ryder exhibition: Twenty-six oils on exhibition in October and November. We disagree with O’Connor’s conclusion (“The Genesis of JP,” p. 169) that JP’s best Ryderesque works were painted after seeing this exhibition. Visits to Museum of the American Indian: Kadish; Lehman. Eight-inch bowl: OC&T 916, IV, p. 3. Nine-inch platter: OC&T 917, IV, p. 3. Ashtray: OC&T 920, IV, p. 6. Eighteen-inch plate: OC&T 918, IV, p. 4: Benton always believed that this constituted JP’s first use of the drip. THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964: The plate “has dripped pigment all over. Jack simply found, I suggest, that dripping produced a lively and spontaneous effect. It could well have been the result of an accidental drip of paint off the brush which ‘looked good’ and was followed up.” Seventeen-inch bowl: OC&T 919, IV, p. 5.

  Lehman in New York: Lehman. Frick: The Frick Collection opened to the public on December 14, 1935; Alfred M. Frankfurter, “Frick Art Gallery to Open to Public,” Art News, Dec. 14, 1935, in Diamonstein, ed., pp. 137–40. Expulsion from the Temple: See OC&T 409, III, p. 23; 436, III, p. 45. Sande urging Kadish: SLM to Kadish, July 16, 1935, q. in Ashton, pp. 33–34. Kadish and Goldstein arrive: During the winter of 1935–36: Ashton, p. 34. Camping out: Ashton, p. 34. Reaction to Mexicans: Despite their youthful disdain for the “much heralded Mexican Renaissance” (Ashton, p. 31), especially the work of Rivera, they could not hide their admiration for certain of the Mexican painters, Siqueiros, in particular. Orozcoesque mural proposals: Busa.

  WPA office: 110 King Street. Cafés and cafeterias: Village cafeterias, like the Waldorf and Stewart’s, and cafés, like the Jumble Shop; LK; Matter; SLM, int. by Shorthall, 1959. Gorky holding forth: Pavia; Pavia, q. by Potter, p. 61. Wax maquettes for Goodman: Mattox. “Making these Renaissance”; “things which were”: Mattox, int. by Dehner, LK, McCoy, and Miller, Mar. 1, 1972. Sessions of unknown number: Dehner. Small foundry: It was adjacent to the Tivoli movie theater; Dehner; Dehner, LK, McCoy, and Miller, int. by Mattox, Mar. 1, 1972: “I don’t remember that piece, but I would very much judge that that was one of the pieces [Jackson did], because it looks like similar things I saw there in the studio when I visited it.” Small, complex bronze piece: OC&T S/1, IV, p. 158. Later Orozcoesque experiments: Wilcox; confirmed in part by Harry Jackson.

  “I think the little”: THB to JP, n.d. “A genius”: Q. by Kron. “By 1934”: THB to FVOC, Apr. 4, 1964, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 153. Cotton Pickers: OC&T 936, IV, p. 20; exhibition dates: Feb. 3–21, 1937; this may be the same work as Threshers being exhibited under a new title. Cody, Wyoming: Potter, p. 50. “Had something”: CCP. “[He] told me”: Tworkov to FVOC, Apr. 17, 1964, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 78. Joseph Solman, q. in FVOC, ed., p. 118: John Lonergan (Diller’s colleague, a project supervisor) also admired JP’s work: “I recall Lonergan going out of his way to show me an early emotional abstraction, an oil on paper, of Jackson Pollock. He was truly excited by it.”

  19. AN ANTIDOTE TO REGIONALISM

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscripts, film, and transcript

  THB, An Artist in America (Artist); Goldman, Contemporary Mexican Painting in a Time of Change; Helm, Modern Mexican Painters; Kazin, Starting Out in the Thirties; O’Hara, JP; Rodriguez, A History of Mexican Mural Painting.

  Axel Horn, “JP: The Hollow and the Bump,” Carleton Miscellany, Summer 1966; Laurence P. Hurlburt, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop: New York 1936,” Art Journal, Spring 1976.

  “40,000 March Here in May Day Parade, Quietest in Years,” NYT, May 2, 1936.

  FVOC, “The Genesis of JP: 1912–1943” (Ph.D. thesis), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1965; Harold Lehman, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop” (lecture), Artists Union, N.Y.C., c. 1936.

  Man on Fire (PBS film), 1984.

  SLM, int. by CG, c. 1956.

  Interviews

  Peter Busa; August Goertz; Axel Horn; Mervin Jules; Reuben Kadish; Harold Lehman; ACM; CCP; Irving Sandler; Nene Schardt; Reginald Wilson.

  NOTES

  Dynamism and fecundity; Unimpressed by first meeting: Kadish. Trip to Buenos Aires: Helm, p. 92. Siqueiros had been barred from returning to Mexico. On May 1, 1929, he had participated in a violent workers’ demonstration and was thrown into jail. Having already been jailed in 1918 for military misconduct (Rodriguez, p. 373), he now served a second year in jail. On his release he was expelled from Mexico; Helm, p. 92. Buenos Aires stay: Helm, p. 93. Manifesto: Helm, p. 93. American Artists Congress; sponsored by Gershwin: Man on Fire, 1984. New “workshop”: Hurlburt, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” p. 238. “A laboratory”: The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop. “The naughty boy”: Horn, “JP,” p. 85. “Throw down”: Helm, p. 91. Siqueiros’s childhood; jailed at thirteen: Helm, p. 89. Revolutionary at fourteen: Helm, p. 90. “The ideal goal”: Manifesto issued by Syndicate of Revolutionary Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers of Mexico, 1923, q. in Goldman, p. 4. Not a heavy drinker: Lehman. “Uncontrollable excesses”: Helm, p. 91. “A man on fire”: Man on Fire, 1984. Siqueiros disarming: Horn. “The class war”: Siqueiros, q. by Busa. Charisma: Kadish: The word is Kadish’s. “Extremely simpático”: Lehman; Siquieros, in Man on Fire, 1984: “He was a very talented young man.” Arm wrestling; “twisting”: Busa.

  Siqueiros’s loft: CCP. Address of loft: OC&T IV, p. 219. Early boil: Kazin, pp. 32–33. Dozen artists: Hurlburt, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” p. 238. Young sculptors: Morris Schulman, Harold Ambellen, and Bernard Woltz; Lehman. “Core”: Hurlburt, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” p. 239. Hispanic artists: Luis Arenal, Antonio Pujol, Conrado Vasquez, José Gutiérrez, and Roberto Berdecio; Hurlburt, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” p. 238. “Comrade”: Siqueiros to JP, SLM, and Lehman, Dec. 1936. “Practicing artists”; workshop: Horn. “Outlandish”: CCP to FVOC, Nov. 10, 1966, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 23. “Torrential flow”: Horn, “JP,” p. 85. Duco: Specifically, pyroxilin, and first used by Siqueiros in 1933; Goldman, p. 11. “Il Duco”: Sandler. Art belonging to workers: Diego Rivera, q. in O’Hara, p. 14: Art should express “the new order of things … the logical place for this art, … belonging to the populace, was on the walls of public buildings.” “Lacquer had”; “it was like”; “failed experiments”; “almost instantly”: Horn, “JP,” p. 86. Industrial surfaces: Lehman.

  Painters like workers: Kadish. Silk-screening frame: The first recorded noncommercial use of the silk-screening process was in 1938 on an FAP; WPA workers soon formed the National Serigraph Society. Siqueiros portraits: Hurlburt, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” pp. 240–41. Siqueiros not working from drawings: Lehman. “Liberated” lazy Susan: Horn. “Striking halations”: Horn, “JP,” p. 86. Siqueiros “seizing” the image: A pattern of dripped paint was used to create the kinky hair, “heavily incrusted with pigment,” in a four-foot-high portrait of James Ford, the 1936 vice-presidential candidate of the U.S. Communist party; Lehman; see Hurlburt, ”The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” pp. 240–41. August Goertz: It was a follower of Siqueiros named Conrado Vasquez who initiated the drip technique in the Siqueiros workshop. Dripping paint in Horn’s apartment: Horn, who shared the apartment with Mervin Jules. “Aesthetic orthodoxies”; “conformist”: Artist, p. 267. Siqueiros’s modern tools; “putting out to pasture”: Horn, “JP,” p. 85. “Violation”; “accidental”; “scale”; “the whole ambience”: CCP to FVOC, Nov. 10, 1966, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 23. “Fairies”: Artist, p. 265. Jackson’s letter to Roy; “composition”: JP to LRP, Feb. 1932. “Lifted art”: JP to LRP, Feb. 3, 1933.

  Float: Horn. “As far as the working class”: Lehman. Description of float: Lehman; Hurlburt, ”The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” p. 239. “An essay”: Q. in Hurlburt, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” p. 239.

  Gift of Model A Ford: OC&T IV, p. 220. Differences put aside during parade: “40,000 March Here in May Day Parad
e”: The parade lasted for two and a half hours. The head of the parade left the starting point on the lower West Side a little after 9:00 A.M. and arrived at the reviewing stand at the north end of Union Square at 11:40 A.M. “As a special peace gesture ordered by Police Commissioner Valentine, the police guarded the route without their nightsticks.” Hitler look-alike; “shuffling line”; “all grades”: “40,000 March Here in May Day Parade.” Listening to speeches: Lehman. Photograph with Siqueiros: In possession of AAA.

  “He was always working”: Q. in Hurlburt, “The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop,” p. 239. At workshop less than two months: SLM, int. by CG, c. 1956. “I am at more unrest”: Siqueiros to JP, SLM, and Lehman, Dec. 1936. Trip to coal country: Kadish. “God damn”: Q. by Schardt. WPA artists leaving city: Wilson. Taking farmhouse: ACM; Wilson. “Dutch”: Pennsylvania Dutch—in other words, German. Arloie arriving: ACM.

  20. THIS UNNATURAL MASS OF HUMAN EMOTIONS

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscript, document, and records

  Ashton, The New York School Ashton; Yes, but … ; THB, An Artist in America (Artist); Burroughs, THB; Friedman, JP; Gruen, The Party’s Over Now; Mayhew, ed., Martha’s Vineyard; FVOC, ed., The New Deal Art Projects; OC&T, JP; Potter, To a Violent Grave; Solomon, JP.

  Axel Horn, “JP: The Hollow and the Bump,” Carleton Miscellany, Summer 1966; Gerald M. Monroe, “Artists as Militant Trade Union Workers During the Great Depression,” AAA Journal, 1974.

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

  Chronology prepared by CCP for EFP, Feb. 1975.

  Dockets Nos. 6414 and 6415, District Court 35, Dukes County, Mass.

  Interviews

  T. P. Benton; Peter Busa; Blanche Carstensen; Cecil Carstensen; Herman Cherry; Karen Del Pilar; B. H. Friedman; Ron Gorchov; Isidore Grossman; Joseph Henderson; Rebecca Hicks; Axel Horn; Reuben Kadish; Gerome Kamrowski; Nathaniel Kaz; Maria Piacenza Kron; Harold Lehman; Beatrice Ribak Mandelman; ACM; Jason McCoy; William McKim; Dale Maddux; Mercedes Matter; Charles Mattox; ABP; CCP; EFP; MLP; May Tabak Rosenberg; Nene Schardt; Araks Tolegian; Lester Trauch; Theodore Wahl; Steve Wheeler; Roger Wilcox; Reginald Wilson.