“Things couldn’t have”; financial details: JP to Reuben Kadish, Feb. 8, 1946. Monthly deduction: Glueck, “Krasner and Pollock,” p. 60; contrary to other accounts (Friedman, p. 81; PG, pp. 264–65; Potter, p. 86), the 1945 contract was negotiated almost a year before the loan for the house, not at the same time; the terms of the loan were added to the 1945 contract in 1946. Paintings as collateral: Wallach, “LK”; Glueck, “Met Acquires early Pollock”: Pasiphaë was the only painting specifically mentioned in the agreement; the other two were apparently to be designated later. In an interview with the authors, Lee said that three paintings in addition to Pasiphaë were put up as collateral, but her earlier memory is more credible. Date of transaction: Weld, p. 343: Signed Feb. 19. “Hell of a lot”: JP to Reuben Kadish, Feb. 8, 1946.
April show: The show ran at Art of This Century from April 2 to April 20. “Moving out”; “Joe Meert”: JP to Louis Bunce, June 2, 1946. “Jackson Pollock is one”: “Reviews and Previews,” p. 63. “Surface virtuosity”: Wolf, “Fifty-Seventh Street in Review,” p. 16. “Transitional”: CG, “Art,” Apr. 13, 1946, p. 445. “Out of My Head”: Aaron Bohrod, “Surrealism and Sex à la Guggenheim,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, q. in Weld, p. 346. “An urge on wheels”: Bullock, “Stripped Down to Sex.” “Boudoir Bohemia”; book under every arm: “Boudoir Sex,” Art Digest, Apr. 15, 1946, q. in Weld, p. 347. Friedman: Peggy’s family bought up copies of the book and destroyed them.
Fauna and flora: Epstein and Barlow, pp. 76, 87, 94–95, 101. Ducks and terns: Ted Hults. Freshwater springs: Epstein and Barlow, p. 149. Marshlands: Epstein and Barlow, pp. 85, 88–89, 180. “Loved to go out”: Q. in DP&G. “Who Was JP?” p. 51. Beaches rebuilt: Epstein and Barlow, p. 92. Bonac fishermen: Richard and Allene Talmage, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959. Birds: Epstein and Barlow, p. 98. Beach plums: Epstein and Barlow, p. 183. Pitch pines; cranberry and blueberry patches: Epstein and Barlow, p. 86. Garden; Gyp: LK. “His farm”: Wilcox. “[Jackson] was happy”: Q. in DP&G, “Who Was JP?” p. 51. “I’d rant and rave”; “cozy, domestic”: Q. in Glueck, “Krasner and Pollock,” p. 60. Rooting in the garden: JP, q. by LK in DP&G, “Who Was JP?” p. 51: “I’ll dig it and set it out if you’ll water and weed.” Lee’s easel folded: Rosenberg. Cherry saplings: Epstein and Barlow, p. 152. Walks to marshes and dunes: LK. “Or we would sit”: Q. in DP&G, “Who Was JP?” p. 51.
May 17: SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, June 13, 1946. Seventy-first birthday: SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, May 8, 1946; SMP to CCP, EFP, and Jeremy, June 13, 1946; Stella’s birthday was May 20; Sande’s thirty-seventh was on May 26.
The Water Bull: OC&T 149, I, pp. 141–42. The Tea Cup: OC&T 150, I, p. 142. Bird Effort: OC&T 153, I, p. 145. Yellow Triangle: OC&T 151, I, p. 143. The Key: OC&T 156, I, pp. 148–49. Pastels: See, e.g., Constellation, OC&T 154, I, p. 146. The Magic Mirror: OC&T 85, I, p. 68.
Painted bedrooms: JP to Ed and Wally Strautin, Oct. 2, 1945. Bathroom; porch: Wilcox. Hustek: Edward Hults: This happened in late fall 1946. Hustek put too much thinner in the paint and it peeled a year later. “Grand”: JP to Ed and Wally Strautin, Oct. 2, 1945. View blocked: LK. Help from Wilcox: Wilcox. New site: Edward Hults.
“No, no, I don’t want”: Q. by LK, q. in Namuth, n.p. “He wanted his studio”: Q. in Namuth, n.p. JP built cabinets and shelves and boarded up a window; Solomon, p. 168. Description of barn: Photos in Namuth, n.p.; Edward Hults; LK; Wilcox. The Blue Unconscious, a big canvas: OC&T 158, I, pp. 150–51: 84” × 56.” Images in Something of the Past: OC&T 160, I, p. 153.
The Key too big for bedroom: Wilcox. “[It] took up”: Q. in Namuth, n.p. Jackson turning paintings around: LK. Fragmentation in The Blue Unconscious: OC&T 159, I. p. 150. Jackson’s way of seeing: Carone. Motherwell made much the same point in “JP: An Artists’ Symposium, Part I,” p. 65: “Pollock was very interested that I, too, painted on the floor sometimes, and he had adopted the procedure for himself more consistently than I did. … [The procedure] allows one to crop, which in turn can lead ultimately to the allover picture.”
“Dumb and boring”: CG. Greenberg’s background: CG; Kunitz, ed., pp. 386–87. Greenberg looking in other directions: Greenberg’s goal was “to be remembered,” and even if he considered art criticism “the most ungrateful form of ‘elevated’ writing I know of,” at least there were very few people so far who had “done it well”; q. in Kunitz, ed., p. 387. “As for [Greenberg] becoming”: Barrett, p. 137. Session at the League: With Richard Leahy; Wheeler. Lectures at Hofmann school: Rosenberg. Gallery-going: Bultman; Rosenberg. Bultman says Pantuhoff and Greenberg went to a WPA class together at “the Academy.” Lee contemptuous of critics: Ronald Stein: “She was a mystic about art. Therefore she was contemptuous of anybody who would try to explain it in any way. Art was by definition inexplicable.” Skeptical about Greenberg’s intelligence: Bultman. “He’s helping us”: Q. by Myers. Inviting Greenberg: Wilcox says that it was Lee’s decision to invite Greenberg.
“Lee and I would sit”: CG, int. by Vallière, Mar. 20, 1968: Lee’s strategy was to agree with Greenberg except “when I didn’t like a picture enough—and usually she was right.” Description of Greenberg: See Gruen, p. 179. “She was damn significant”: CG. Myers: “Every one of his ideas for establishing his particular critical structure all came from Lee, every last one of them. I don’t care what anybody says, I know this is true.” “Warmed-over Hofmann”: Myers.
Greenberg’s certitude: For example, “The Chinese invented kitsch.” Immersion in Marxism: Barrett, p. 151. Revolutionary spirit: See Reise, “Greenberg and The Group,” p. 254. “Content is a morass”: Q. by Brach. “Picasso, Braque”: CG, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” p. 37: “To the exclusion of whatever is not necessarily implicated in these factors.” The following year (in “Towards a Newer Laocoön,” p. 305), he added that “The arts lie safe, now, each within its ‘legitimate’ boundaries, and free trade has been replaced by autarchy. Purity consists in the acceptance, willing acceptance, of the limitations of the medium of the specific art.” In 1947 (“Jean Dubuffet, JP,” p. 137), he wrote, “As is the case with almost all post-cubist painting of any real originality, it is the tension inherent in the constructed, recreated flatness of the surface that produces the strength of his art.” “Ours was an age”: Barrett, p. 152. “My generation”: CG.
Greenberg giving advice: Kramer: “In relation to the painters, he imagines himself in the role, of Ezra Pound editing ‘The Wasteland.’” Late July: Sometime between July 26 and 28. Something of the Past: Wilcox, who helped JP move the barn, recalls Blue Unconscious as already begun at that time; Lee recalls that Something of the Past was one of the first canvases JP started after the move to the barn. “Squinting”: Friedman, p. 137. “Jackson’s best”: CG. “Manifest destiny”: CG, “Art,” Apr. 7, 1945, p. 397. Reintroducing imagery: CG. Tense encounter: Little, recalling JP. “Do eight or ten”: In the mid-fifties, Greenberg would say, in a similar circumstance, “Paint me a show”; Jackson. “Critical clichés”: Lord. “Be nice to Clem”: Bultman, recalling JP. On another visit to Springs the same year (dating based on Greenberg’s description of the painting technique JP was using at the time and the presence of Bill Davis in the studio; CG, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959), while sitting around, talking, and having a few drinks in the studio (CG, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959), Greenberg told JP that a certain painting was wrong somehow and challenged JP to fix it. Without a word of protest, JP put the painting on the floor, reached for a tube of white paint, and started moving around the canvas.”
Janet Sobel’s show: Lader, pp. 313–14: Greenberg said he and JP saw Sobel’s work in 1944 at Peggy’s gallery. Lader assumes that Greenberg got the gallery wrong and that he was referring to Sobel’s April 1944 show at the Puma Gallery. Weld, p. 341: “Greenberg recalled how impressed Pollock had been by [Sobel’s] show in 1946” at Art of This Century. Given the relationship between Greenberg and Pollock, we think Weld is correct and that Lader incorrectly “corrected” Greenberg’s memory. In
an effort to substantiate Greenberg’s original recollection, Rubin refers to Sobel’s paintings in a group show at Art of This Century in “early 1944” (“JP and the Modern Tradition, Part III,” p. 30) although Lader’s exhaustive review (pp. 387–92, 452) of the exhibition catalogues and other records does not reveal any Sobel paintings at Art of This Century until the 1946 solo show. “Struck”: CG. Sobel’s career: See Rubin, Part III, p. 30. “Facial features”: Lader, p. 314. “Overall design”: CG, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959: Years later, Sobel would call Sidney Janis and say she, not Pollock, should have been considered the originator of Pollock’s style. Rubin (“JP and the Modern Tradition, Part III,” p. 30 n. 30) cites Greenberg in “‘American-Type Painting” for the proposition that JP admitted that Sobel’s pictures had made an impression on him. The references to Sobel were incorporated into the revision of Greenberg’s article for the publication of the 1961 Art and Culture (p. 218), but were not included in the original article (p. 187).
Earliest doodles: See, e.g., OC&T 389, III, p. 6; 391, III, p. 7; 400, III, p. 11; 420, III, p. 33; 441, III, p. 47; 456, III, p. 55; 457, III, p. 56; 465, III, p. 61. Abstract motifs on ceramics: OC&T 918, IV, p. 4; 920, IV, p. 6. Prescient experiment: OC&T 33, I, p. 28–29. Henderson abstract doodles: OC&T 505v, III, p. 86; 530, III, p. 101; 542, III, p. 110; 543, III, p. 111. Henderson semi-abstract doodles: OC&T 505r, III, p. 86; 512, III, p. 90; 518r, III, p. 93; 519v, III, p. 94; 522v, III, p. 97; 526, III, p. 99; 527, III, p. 100; 541, III, p. 110; 551, III, p. 115. For examples of the same type of drawing between roughly 1940 and 1944, see OC&T 575r, III, p. 126; 576r, III, p. 127; 576v, III, p. 127; 577r, III, p. 127; 577v, III, p. 127; 578r, III, p. 128; 579v, III, p. 129; 585v, III, p. 133; 586v, III, p. 133; 587r, III, p. 134; 601, III, p. 142; 603r, III, p. 144; 603v, III, p. 144; 604, III, p. 145; 606, III, p. 147; 609, III, p. 150; 612r, III, p. 152; 626, III, p. 160; 633, III, p. 165; 640, III, p. 171; 641, III, p. 172; 642, III, p. 172; 644r, III, p. 174; 646, III, p. 176; 648r, III, p. 177; 649, III, p. 178; 658r, III, p. 183; 660r, III, p. 184; 663, III, p. 186; 674, III, p. 193; 696, III, p. 205; 697, III, p. 206; 698, III, p. 207; 699, III, p. 208; 702, III, p. 210.
Jackson seeing Tobey’s show: Busa. “Exception”: JP to Louis Bunce, June 2, 1946; also Morris Graves. Both Greenberg and, later, William Rubin were determined to separate JP from Tobey. See CG, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959: According to Greenberg, JP had never seen a work by Tobey when he began his drip paintings. Few artists were interested in Tobey’s 1944 show in New York, Greenberg adds. When JP saw Tobey’s Tundra for the first time, in reproduction, he supposedly said Sobel did the same thing better. See also Greenberg, “‘American-Type’ Painting,” p. 187; and Rubin, “JP and the Modern Tradition, Part III,” p. 29: “Pollock arrived at his allover style quite without having seen the Tobeys we have been describing,” and (p. 27) “Pollock himself did not see this white writing [of Tobey’s] when it was shown in the Willard Gallery in 1944; the line of his integration of the allover style—developing cues from Impressionism, Cubism and Surrealism—in no way presupposes contact with Tobey. Tobey arrived at his allover pictures not via Surrealism but through Klee (his ‘doodling’ and Cubist-influenced grid compositions) and, more significantly, I believe, for his quality, through Oriental calligraphy.” Rubin presumably derived his notion that JP was unaware of Tobey’s work from Greenberg; both were unaware of JP’s letter to Bunce, which did not come to light until 1984, the year of Bunce’s death, and of Busa’s testimony that he and JP attended the exhibition together. Both critics were too eager to deny Jackson’s contact with Tobey, and thereby to deny his contact with a tradition (namely Oriental calligraphy) outside the modernist genealogy. Even more questionable is the effort to dismiss the “quality” of Tobey’s work because of such contact.
Canvas worked on with Bennett: Bennett; painting in Bennett’s possession, not included in OC&T. Experiments toward allover composition: See OC&T 723–25, III, pp. 226–28. Rest of the summer: LK, q. in Rose, p. 53. Eyes in the Heat: OC&T 162, I, pp. 156–57. Croaking Movement: OC&T 161, I, pp. 154–55. Earth Worms: OC&T 163, I, p. 158. Shimmering Substance: OC&T 164, I, pp. 158–59. Size of Croaking Movement: Actually 53½” by 43¼”. Size of Shimmering Substance: Actually 30⅛” by 24¼”. “That’s for Clem”: Q. by CG. “It is the tension”: CG, “Art,” Feb. 1, 1947, pp. 137, 139.
Schaefer’s taxi: Schaefer, int. by Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959. Flora and fauna: Epstein and Barlow, pp. 86, 74; goldenrod: Southern. June trip: June 26. Guggenheim closing gallery: Friedman, pp. 93–94. “Everything got to be”: PG, q. in Weld, p. 359. Jackson squeezed in: See Friedman, p. 94. Nursery View Cabins; Elm Tree Inn; “only bar”: Wilcox. Police driving Jackson home; “in the first years”: Talmage. “The kind of man”; “powerhouse”: Hempstead. Carpet-sculpting machine: Cole. “Go to the mailbox”: Q. by Cole. Wilcox history: Wilcox. Inventions: From mixing cleaning powder in paint so it could be easily washed off grocery store windows (his first) to a machine that silk-screened labels onto curved bottles. Neon light business: Wilcox worked with the developer of neon lighting, Georges Claude.
“I wasn’t about to have a child”: Q. by Gibbs; John Lee: She may have known at the time about JP’s brothers and thought his drinking ran in the family. Other friends admit that even if JP had been perfectly healthy, Lee probably would have refused. Gibbs: “She had absolutely no interest in motherhood.” In the thirties, during her modeling days, Lee had refused to have a child by Igor Pantuhoff, supposedly on the grounds that it would ruin her figure; see Rosenberg and Ruth Stein. In public, Lee always argued that she and Pantuhoff or she and JP were too poor to have children; see Friedman. “He was enough child”: Rosenberg.
Ride in MG: Potter, p. 185. Supposed affair with Maria Motherwell: Busa, John Cole, and Esteban and Harriet Vicente mistakenly assumed an affair took place. Wilcox, however, says it did not, that Maria was too devout a Catholic to have engaged in an affair. Her friend Mullican agrees and adds, “She took marriage very seriously. She was beautiful, and she enjoyed being beautiful, but she didn’t sleep around.” Holtzman, who knew her well, says, “I don’t think she would have been at all interested in Jackson.” “Lee forbid me”: Paraphrased from Motherwell, q. in Potter, p. 211. Given Motherwell’s account, this incident must have taken place in 1946. Jackson not liking Motherwell’s work: Hartigan. “Son of a bitch”: JP, q. by Kamrowski. “Phony”: Marca-Relli, recalling JP: “A lot of people felt that way about Motherwell.” Jackson receiving women coolly: Rosenberg: “He would come out of the house and carefully close the door behind him. Then we would sit on the steps in plain view of the road. There was not a single time I went in for a glass of water or anything. And it only happened when Lee wasn’t there.”
Series titles: These were JP’s own, according to Lee (q. in Johnson, “JP and Nature,” p. 259, citing interview with LK, Oct. 22, 1971). JP’s idea may have been that grouping his paintings would help establish an “identifiable image” in the public eye. During his summer stay at Louse Point, Mark Rothko had talked a great deal about the need to establish an identifiable image; see Liss, “Abstraction at Louse Point.”
Ride with Rosenbergs: Tabak, “War Games,” in “Collage,” p. 434. Thanksgiving; “[Jack and Lee]”: SMP to FLP, MLP, and Jonathan, Dec. 30, 1946. Holiday cut short: Tabak, “War Games,” in “Collage,” p. 434. “Hobo coffee”: See Kligman, p. 105. Clothing: LK, q. in Friedman, p. 87: “An outfit the likes of which you’ve never seen.” See also DP&G, “Who Was JP?” p. 51. “Incredible white light”: Q. by Lee. “But what he managed”: Q. in DP&G, “Who Was JP?” p. 51. Stella’s arrival: SMP to FLP, MLP, and Jonathan, Dec. 30, 1946.
33. MEMORIES ARRESTED IN SPACE
SOURCES
Books, articles, manuscript, and transcripts
Burroughs, THB; Carmean and Rathbone, American Art at MidCentury; Frank, JP; Friedman, JP; Goodman, Hans Hofmann; Hunter, Hans Hofmann; Kozloff, Renderings; Namuth, Pollock Painting; O’Doherty, American Mas
ters; OC&T, JP; O’Hara, JP; Potter, To a Violent Grave; Prawn and Rose, American Painting; Raskin and Appenzeller, Headache; Rodman, Conversations with Artists; Rose and Gawel, Migraine; Ryan, Sr., and Ryan, Jr., Headache and Head Pain; Saper, Headache Disorders; Waldberg, Max Ernst.
Charles D. Aring, “The Migrainous Scintillating Scotoma,” JAMA, Apr. 24, 1972; Robert Alan Aurthur, “Hitting the Boiling Point, Freakwise, at East Hampton,” Esquire, June 1972; Paul Brach, “Tandem Paint Krasner/Pollock,” Art in America, Mar. 1982; DP&G, ”Who Was JP?” Art in America, May–June 1967; B. H. Friedman, “An Interview with LK Pollock,” in Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, JP: Black and White; Robert Goodnough, “Pollock Paints a Picture,” Art News, May 1951; CG, “Art,” Nation, June 9, 1943; CG, “Art,” Nation, Apr. 13, 1946; CG, “Towards a Newer Laocoön,” Partisan Review, July–Aug. 1940; E. H. Hare, “Personal Observations on the Spectral March of Migraine,” Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 1966; K. S. Lashley, “Patterns of Cerebral Integration Indicated by the Scotomas of Migraine,” Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 1941; FVOC, “Hans Namuth’s Photographs of JP as Art Historical Documentation,” Art Journal, Fall 1979; Whitman Richards, “The Fortification Illusions of Migraine,” Scientific American, May 1971; David S. Rubin, “A Case for Content: JP’s Subject Matter was Automatic Gesture,” Arts, Mar. 1979; William Rubin, “JP and the Modern Tradition, Part I: 1. The Myths and the Paintings; 2. The AllOver Compositions and the Drip Technique,” Artforum, Feb. 1967; William Rubin, “JP and the Modern Tradition, Part II: 3. Impressionism and the Classic Pollock; 4. Color and Scale; Affinities with the Late Monet,” Artforum, Mar. 1967; William Rubin, “JP and the Modern Tradition, Part III: 5. Cubism and the Later Evolution of the AllOver Style,” Artforum, Apr. 1967; William Rubin, “JP and the Modern Tradition, Part IV: 6. An Aspect of Automatism,” Artforum, May 1967; Sidney Simon, “Concerning the Beginnings of the New York School: 1939–1943, An Interview with Peter Busa and Matta,” Art International, Summer 1967; Charles F. Stuckey, “Another Side of JP,” Art in America, Nov.–Dec. 1977; Sidney Tillim, “The Alloway International,” Arts, Mar. 1964; Parker Tyler, “Nature and Madness Among the Younger Painters,” View, May 1945; C. L. Wysuph, “Behind the Veil,” Art News, Oct. 1970.
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