Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  Greene disliking Jackson’s art: Greene. Bultman’s reaction: Bultman. “A kind of isolation”: Q. in Simon, “Concerning the Beginnings of the New York School,” p. 19. Graham feeling Jackson had betrayed modernism: Bultman. Graham’s drift to mysticism: See Herrera, “John Graham,” pp. 100–05. “Graham abandoned”: LK; see also Herrera, “John Graham,” p. 105: “But Lee Krasner, Pollock’s wife, says that Graham had always maintained that he lost interest in an artist once he had become recognized. … ‘I saw this acted [out] with Pollock,’ she affirmed.” “The web”; “ready to snare”: Baziotes. Kadish returned from India: FLP to JP, July 31, 1944. Resentment of Jackson’s success: “We weren’t in that circle,” Ernestine Lassaw says of Motherwell and JP. ”Those were people with a little more social savvy than we had.” Matta’s hilarious stories: Abel, pp. 91–92. “One sometimes wondered”: Motherwell, q. in “JP,“p. 30.

  Peggy’s lists of lovers: Porter. “With practically every man”: Weld, p. 52. “With the window-cleaner”: Tanya Stern, q. in Weld, p. 316. Sex with dogs: Rupert Barneby, q. in Weld, p. 316: It was rumored that when she met Macpherson, he asked to borrow her dog for a love session, and she said, “Not without me”; q. in Weld, p. 316. “Anything in pants”: LK. “She tried awfully hard”: Q. in Weld, p. 315. “Middle-aged”: David Hare, q. in Weld, p. 315. “Homosexual” approach to sex; “around them so much”: John Richardson, q. in Weld, p. 315. Lee out of town: PG, q. in Weld, p. 325. Peggy wanting proof of gratitude: LK, q. in Weld, p. 325. Jackson falling asleep: When Busa asked Peggy if she and JP ever slept together, she said JP fell asleep the one time they tried. Jackson vomiting: Busa. Jackson urinating: EFP. “He threw his drawers”; “very unsuccessful”: PG, q. in Weld, p. 325. Peggy’s fabricated triumphs: LK, q. in Weld, p. 316: “Affair after affair of hers is a Fantasyland. She had a fantasy of her sexiness.” “He probably did”: Matter. “Put a towel over her head”: Q. by Busa and Matter.

  “Athenians”: Weld, p. 309. “Pandemonium”: Julien Levy, q. in Weld, p. 315. “No one else around”: Q. in Weld, p. 315. Artists at war: The navy: Little, Zogbaum (Ernestine Lassaw); the army: Brooks, Bultman (Muriel Francis), McNeil, Mercer. Axel Horn and Clyfford Still did war-related work. Charlotte Brooks: James was “deferred twice from the army” in order to finish his Butler Air Terminal mural. “Those that were too old”: Q. in Weld, p. 315. Motherwell draft board incident: Heller, recalling Motherwell. Busa was deferred because of an “inner ear infection,” and Tolegian, says Araks, for a “perforated eardrum.” CG: James Agee and Cal Lowell were given conscientious objector status. “Hairdressers”: Ashton, p. 147. “Seen me in uniform”: Q. in Weld, p. 313. Sailors dragged in by Tyler: Tabak, “Parker Tyler,” in “A Collage,” p. 454. Sailors dragged in by Peggy: Weld, p. 317. MOMA streaker’s antics; “Used to frolic”: Busa.

  Group at George’s Tavern; “It wasn’t really a homosexual hangout”: Busa. Williams a Bultman family friend: Francis. “The big lie”: Q. by Busa. Little’s apartment; “sandy-haired”; Bennett a Hofmann student: Bennett. “Was very attracted”: Busa. Busa’s veracity: In nine hours of interviews with the authors, Busa demonstrated a startling, confessional openness and, unlike so many of JP’s friends, modestly understated his role in the artist’s life. “Kissed” Jackson: Name withheld in deference to the man’s widow. Later encounters: Carone; see chapter 43, ”The Last Act.” “[Jackson] liked men”: Q. by Gibbs. According to Sanford Friedman, Lee said similar things to him and Richard Howard. “I’m gonna fuck”: Q. by Little.

  Hubbard’s background: Elizabeth Wright Hubbard II; Merle Hubbard. Krasner persuaded Peggy to show Hofmann: Goodman; Kiesler; Lader, p. 240; Weld, p. 332. “She was convinced”: Q. in Weld, p. 332; see also Lader, p. 240. Paint tube incident: Zogbaum. Lee taking her easel to Kadish’s studio: Kadish; Solomon, p. 137. Setting up easel in Jackson’s old bedroom: LK. “I gave up the model”: Q. in Rose, “American Great,” p. 154. “The Cubist grid”: Rose, “American Great,” p. 154. “From the inside out”: Wallach, “Krasner’s Triumph,” p. 502. “Sitting on the easel”; “very frustrating”: Q. in Glueck, “Krasner and Pollock,” p. 59. One issue that Lee Krasner lied about in interviews (e.g., in Strokes of Genius) was the level of JP’s support for her work: “There must have been, right from the beginning, although never discussed, a mutual respect, because his ego wouldn’t have taken it and mine wouldn’t have. So the fact that we were together—I wasn’t challenged by it, that’s not the feeling I had, I was very exhilarated. He was terrific, you know. And I didn’t feel threatened by him.”

  “I don’t want you to paint”: Q. in Rose, “American Great” p. 121. Lee quitting: Zogbaum. Rosenberg: “When Jackson married her, or even before, he said there was to be no painting by her, and she stuck to it, because she was afraid.” But the evidence is that JP’s injunction was rarely if ever verbalized because it never had to be. “A good woman painter”: Q. by ACM. “I didn’t hide”: Q. in Rose, “American Great,” p. 121. “Nowhere in evidence”: Holtzman. Although no one seems to remember seeing Lee’s work in evidence, two photos taken at the time show that at least one major painting of Lee’s was hanging in the apartment, and grandly framed at that.

  Date of Benton’s visit: Dated in SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, June 16, 1944: “Benton dropped in a couple of weeks ago on his way to Martha’s Vineyard.” “The bell rang”: Q. in Nemser, p. 87. “Effusively”: Taylor, “LK.” Benton asking to see Lee’s work: Benton, q. by LK, q. in Wallach, “Out of JP’s Shadow.” “I knew what”; “gray slabs”: Q. in Nemser, p. 87. “I stood”; “The silence”: LK, q. in Taylor, “LK.” “A little awkward”: LK, q. in Nemser, p. 87. “Having a beer”; “a rough time”: LK, q. in Wallach, “Out of JP’s Shadow.” Jackson reworking Lee’s canvas; “total rage”: LK, int. by Emily Wasserman, Jan. 9, 1968, q. in Landau, “LK,” p. 232 n. 58. LK, q. by Landau: The incident took place “early in their relationship”; see also Kadish’s account of when and why she moved into his studio. “At that time”: Q. in Glueck, “Krasner and Pollock,” p. 59. Lee moving back into Kadish’s studio: Kadish.

  “He couldn’t stand”: Kadish. Dating of vacation: SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, June 16, 1944. Tennessee Williams, letter dated June 21, 1944, copy in possession of Bultman: They were in Provincetown by June 21. Renting studio to Steffen: SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, June 16, 1944. Ride to Provincetown: Little. See Solomon (p. 148) for conflicting account of the trip to Provincetown. Hofmann’s home: Del Deo; Mercer: Hofmann lived in two houses: one on Miller Hill Road, the second on Commercial Street with his wife, Miz. The two houses were near each other on the outskirts of town. Choosing works for Hofmann’s show: Little. Jackson painting with Bennett: The canvas is approximately six by thirty inches, in black enamel on a ground of red fading to orange. Although the paint in the work is brushed rather than dripped, it bears a strong resemblance—in color, format, and design—to some of JP’s later drip paintings. “Lee didn’t think”: Q. in Solomon, p. 149. Agreeing to move: Little. Description of new place: Del Deo. Location of new place: Del Deo; Gross. “Back road”; “only a sliver”: Del Deo. New Beach: Now called Herring Cove Beach; Del Deo.

  “Crew cut”: JP to SLM, ACM, and SLM, Summer 1944. Description of fishermen: Del Deo. Few civilians: Moffett, p. 94. Ernst expelled: Ossorio; see also Moffett, p. 94. Little: “The summer I was in Provincetown, the FBI came to Fritz [Bultman]‘s house at four A.M. for questioning. It seems old Hans [Hofmann] liked to paint in certain locations on the beach and they thought he was spying for the Germans, even though he was an American citizen. They gave him a rough time. Once, on the beach, they got so angry they took his painting off the easel and walked on it.” Few cars: Moffett, p. 94. “To bring good luck”: Del Deo. “Provincetown looks”: JP to SMP, ACM, and SLM, Summer 1944.

  “Sandwich boy”: Blaine, int. by Lader, q. in Lader, p. 249. Peggy reportedly planning to close gallery: JP to SMP, ACM, and SLM, Summer 1944; Lader, pp. 248–49. “Howard has quit”: JP to SMP,
ACM, and SLM, Summer 1944. Lee helping Hofmann with Kootz: Little. Lee’s studio in Hofmann’s house: Potter, p. 78. “I am nature”: Q. by Bultman; Lee later contradicted the seeming arrogance of JP’s statement “People think he means he’s God,” she told Wallach in 1981 (“Out of JP’s Shadow”). “He means he’s total. He’s undivided. He’s one with nature, instead of ‘That’s nature over there, and I’m here.’” “Repeat yourself”: Q. by LK. This incident is often misplaced during the first encounter between Hofmann and JP. Bultman’s memory that it took place the summer of 1944 is very specific, Lee’s memory that it took place earlier is muddled. Jackson throwing easel: Zogbaum, recalling Janet Hauck, whose husband, Fred, was standing next to Hofmann, in harm’s way. Miz’s reaction: Mercer: “I can feel her hostility brushing against me still. Miz’s attitude toward Pollock was set from that day on.”

  “Dropped in”; “living out of a suitcase”: Myers. Bennett and others doubt that he actually lived at any time with JP and Lee. Williams renting room: Bennett. Knaths: Del Deo. Biked over: LK, q. in Friedman, p. 72. Writing The Glass Menagerie: Since Williams completed the play that fall (Williams, p. 83), he must have been working on it that summer. “He used to carry me”: Williams, p. 56: Williams puts JP in Provincetown in the summer of 1940. In fact, there are a number of stories putting him there in summers other than 1944: Schardt says 1941, Bultman says 1943. Our research indicates that JP was there only once with Lee. JP did not know Lee in 1940 or 1941 and their whereabouts in the summer of 1943 are well documented. JP could have taken a brief vacation to Provincetown on his own in the summer of 1940 or 1941. But his unwillingness to go anywhere without Sande in those days makes such trips highly conjectural. Spoto (p. 109) notes that, in the first draft of his memoirs, Williams dated his meeting of Cannastra to the summer of 1945, but goes on to say that “by this time Cannastra had apparently moved to New York, and the evidence suggests that in fact their meeting took place … in 1941.” Cannastra did not graduate from the Harvard Law School until 1943 (Harvard Law School, p. 98), so Williams’s original dating was closer, although still off by one year.

  “A little bit heavier”: Williams, p. 56. Beck’s background; living Theater: Freedman, “Julian Beck.” “Other activities”; sex in the balcony: Bennett. “Lunatic fringe”; “a collection”: Williams, letter dated June 21, 1944, copy in possession of Bultman. “One of the aboriginal”; “beat”: Williams, p. 83. Setting out: Williams, p. 84. Jackson in group: Bennett. “He had a map”; “carefully”; “rocks off’: Williams, p. 84. Girl breaking leg in cemetery: Cabral: The girl’s name was Vivian. “That gay bunch”; Jackson arrested: Cabral. “Beautiful”: Williams, p. 83. “Poetic looking”; “extremely quiet”: Blaine. Cannastra’s stammer: Williams, p. 83. “Completely altered”: Blaine. “Frustrated artist”; “sexual problems”: Q. by Blaine.

  Provincetown bars: Del Deo. Jackson drinking heavily: Bennett. “Begging for a punch”: Bell. Swimming with Lee: SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, Aug. 18, 1944. Rolls of canvas unopened: LK, q. in Friedman, p. 72: “It was not what you would call a productive summer. We had shipped up some rolls of canvas. In September they were still unpacked—all we had to do was change the FROM to TO.” Lee stopping in Deep River: SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, Aug. 18, 1944. Family descending: JP to Wally and Ed Strautin, Aug. 25, 1944. Williams returning to Harvard with Cannastra: Williams, p. 83. Stolen headstones: Bennett. “Damn swell swimming”; “a goddamned bit”: JP to Wally and Ed Strautin, Aug. 25, 1944. Family rescue: Sande presumably came to the Cape because he knew JP was in bad shape and probably encouraged their mother to come for the same reason, although, from her correspondence, it seems unlikely that she was fully aware of JP’s problems. “A very strong woman”: Blaine: The woman was Jane Watrous. “Second thoughts”; “and went away”: Blaine. Cannastra beheaded: Williams, p. 84. Lynn Cannastra: “He committed suicide.”

  31. ESCAPE

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, and film

  Ashton, Yes, but …; Friedman, JP; Midtown Galleries, Philip Guston; Nemser, Art Talk; OC&T, JP; Potter, To a Violent Grave; Rose, LK; Weld, Peggy.

  “Carnegie Awards Prizes for 1945,” Limited Edition, Oct. 1945; DP&G, “Who was JP?” Art in America, May–June 1967, pp. 48–59; Grace Glueck, “Krasner and Pollock: Scenes from a Marriage,” Art News, Dec. 1981; CG, “Art,” Nation, Nov. 11, 1944; CG, “Art,” Nation, Apr. 7, 1945; “Passing Shows,” Art News, Apr. 1–14, 1945; Barbara Rose, “American Great: LK,” Vogue, June 1972; Maude Riley, “Baziotes’ Color,” Art Digest, Oct. 1, 1944; Maude Riley, “JP,” Art Digest, Apr. I, 1945; William Rubin, “JP and the Modern Tradition, Part I: 2. The AllOver Compositions and the Drip Technique,” Artforum, Feb. 1967; Parker Tyler, “Nature and Madness among the Younger Painters,” View, May 1945; James T. Vallière, “Daniel T. Miller,” Provincetown Review, Fall 1968.

  Howard Devree, “Among the New Exhibitions,” NYT, Mar. 25, 1945; Alfred Frankenstein, “World of Art and Artists,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 12, 1945; Joseph Liss, “Memories of Bonac Painters,” East Hampton Star, Aug. 18, 1983.

  Strokes of Genius: JP (film), Court Productious, 1984.

  Interviews

  Paul Brach; Charlotte Park Brooks; John Bunce; Peter Busa; Herman Cherry; Edward Cook; Dorothy Dehner; David Gibbs; CG; Axel Horn; Elizabeth Wright Hubbard II; Buffie Johnson; Barbara Kadish; Reuben Kadish; LK; Harold Lehman; John Little; ABP; FLP; MJP; MLP; May Tabak Rosenberg; David Slivka; Ruth Stein; Michael Stolbach.

  NOTES

  The season: See Friedman, p. 79. Hofmann dinner: Little; Friedman (p. 75) for dating. “Filthy dirty”: Reuben Kadish. There Were Seven in Eight: OC&T 124, I, pp. 122–23 (43” × 102”). Begun in spring: Little. Making etchings: Friedman, p. 75. Mecca for European artists: Hayter, q. in Potter, p. 79. Rose (p. 65 n. 39) claims that JP met Miró during the winter, citing interview with Miró in Miró in America (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982). But Kadish, who was extremely close to JP during this time, has no memory of such a meeting. Kadish working with Hayter: Reuben Kadish. “Molotov cocktail”: Dehner. “Filled with brio”: Johnson. Hayter joining them: Friedman, pp. 72–73. Friedman says JP met Hayter in 1943 when Kadish “returned from Mexico.” Kadish was in India part of 1943 and in California for a while thereafter. He didn’t return to New York until 1944. We have found no evidence to substantiate Friedman’s assertion that Hayter and JP met regularly “by appointment” from 1943 until 1950.

  White Horse Tavern: Hayter, q. in Potter, p. 79. Hotel Albert: Friedman, p. 75. Cedar Tavern: Dehner. “Source of inspiration”; “plumbed the depths”: Q. in Potter, p. 79. “Lost”: Reuben Kadish. “Spraying the stream”: Q. in Friedman, p. 80. Calling out Lee’s name: CG. Jackson slipping away: Kadish was only too ready to accompany JP on his nightly forays and, by his own admission, never, in twenty-five years of friendship, ventured to suggest that he’d had enough: “It wasn’t for me to tell him how to live his life.” Little, in an obdurate insistence on southern hospitality, would offer JP a drink whenever he walked by the door. Lee turning to Pollock family: See SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, Nov. 21, 1944, and July 9, 1945. Joseph Krassner ill: Ruth Stein: He died in November 1944 at “close to ninety.”

  Lee encouraging therapy: Little. “Thunderstorms”; “mother and father”; “enormous bosoms”; “Yes, sir”: Hubbard: “She said, ‘You have to treat the patient, not the disease.’ If three people had pneumonia, they might get three different remedies.” Hubbard’s history: Hubbard. College of Physicians and Surgeons: Class of 1921. Homeopathy: She later became president of the Homeopathic Society.

  Exhibition-quality paintings: Gothic, OC&T 103, I, pp. 98–99; Night Mist, OC&T 104, I, pp. 100–01; The Night Dancer, OC&T 105, I, p. 102; Night Ceremony, OC&T 106, I, p. 103. Etchings: Except for trial proofs, the plates created by JP at Atelier 17 remained unprinted until 1967 when editions were made under the supervision of William Lieberman of MOMA; see Friedman, p. 73. Kadish says Hayter was seldom in the worksh
op when JP was there and, in any event, never commented on JP’s efforts. This contradicts those commentators who claim that JP learned about composition or line from Hayter; see Friedman, pp. 73–74. Frustration with etching medium: Kadish: “Etching is not only reversed, but there’s something about the line you put down that ends up being quite different. The acid takes over, and the metal has something to say, so he didn’t have control, and that made him very impatient.”

  Baziotes exhibition: “Paintings and Drawings by William Baziotes: First One-Man Exhibition,” Oct. 3–21, 1941; Weld, p. 395. Postponed Giacometti exhibition: Weld, pp. 264–66. Motherwell exhibition: Oct. 24–Nov. 11, 1944, including oils, tempera, papiers collés, etchings, colored drawings, and drawings; Weld, pp. 396–97. “Spontaneously designed”: Riley, “Baziotes’ Color,” p. 12: She criticizes “a lack of workmanship” in the oil paintings. “Unadulterated talent”: CG, “Art,” p. 599: Greenberg writes that Baziotes’s pictures “were marred by his anxiety to resolve them … [and] the sheer love of elaboration,” while Motherwell lacked intensity and owed too much to Picasso. But the insistent balancing of the positive and the negative that marked Greenberg’s review of JP’s opening is gone. Solid sellers: Weld, p. 268. Receipts below $2,800: MJP to EFP and CCP, July 23, 1945.

  Series of horses: OC&T 115, I, pp. 110–11; 116, I, pp. 110–11; 118, I, pp. 112–13; 119, I, p. 113; 120, I, p. 113. Monochromatic background: OC&T 107, I, p. 104. Accents in pastels: OC&T 109, I, p. 105; Night Sounds, OC&T 111, I, pp. 106–07. Sgraffito: OC&T 108, I, pp. 104–05; 110, I, p. 106; 112, I, p. 108; 113, I, p. 108. Gangly horse: OC&T 110, I, p. 106. Totem Lesson 1: OC&T 121, I, pp. 114–15. Totem Lesson 2: OC&T 122, I, pp. 118–19. Two: OC&T 123, I, pp. 120–21. There Were Seven in Eight: OC&T 124, I, pp. 122–23. These works are often described as part of an evolution from the 1943 Surrealist masterpieces to the classic drip paintings; see Rubin, “JP,” p. 17. If there is such a thing as stylistic evolution in JP’s career (and he was never that consistent in his approach to his work), it is hard not to see these works as a step backward from the Guggenheim mural. Rubin writes that “the drawing in those pictures, while still representational, becomes increasingly galvanic and begins to unlock itself from the description of the totemic forms which, as we shall see later, body forth Pollock’s early dramas. The fragmentation of these forms, already quite advanced in Night Ceremony of 1944, leads to an almost autonomous rhythm of the line in certain gouaches and pastels of 1945 and early 1946. The larger paintings of that period, Circumcision (1946) and The Blue Unconscious (1946), though more descriptive in their forms, reveal a comparable progression toward compositional openness and linear autonomy. Though they retain an obvious hierarchy of larger and smaller forms, these paintings already tend to be distributed with considerably even density over the whole picture surface.” Rather than following some simple line of evolution and development, JP seems to be taking the subject matter of the Surrealist totemic paintings and, instead of covering up the image with arabesques, fracturing and splaying it into abstract shapes across the surface of the canvas, more or less as he did in the Guggenheim mural. See Riley, “Baziotes’ Color,” p. 12: “His paintings have to be taken one at a time. Complete readjustment must be made in turning from one to the next. So that the antagonism seems also to exist between paintings.”