Jackson Pollock

by Deborah Solomon

  12. In the summer of 1944 Pollock visited Provincetown with Lee Krasner. They married the following year. (Courtesy Nene Schardt)

  13. Peggy Guggenheim, who ran the gallery Art of This Century, gave Pollock his first one-man show. (Photograph by Gisele Freund, courtesy The Peggy Guggenheim Collection)

  14. Betty Parsons, an artist herself, became Pollock’s art dealer in the late forties. (Photo by Alexander Liberman)

  15. Pollock was friendly with several of the artists who showed at the Parsons Gallery, particularly Barnett Newman (left) and Tony Smith. (Photo by Hans Namuth)

  16. Clement Greenberg, the art critic, was Pollock’s most ardent champion. He had a weekly column in The Nation and wrote longer pieces for Partisan Review. (Courtesy Sue Mitchell)

  17. Harold Rosenberg, the art critic, coined the phrase “action painting.” (Photo by Fred W. McDarrah)

  18. After fifteen years in Greenwich Village, Pollock moved to the country. He and Lee bought a five-acre farm in Springs, East Hampton, for $5,000. (Courtesy Ronald Stein)

  19. Pollock became a household name after he was featured in Life. (Copyright Arnold Newman)

  20. Pollock was often asked to demonstrate his novel “drip” technique. Here he poses for photographer Rudolph Burckhardt . . .

  21. . . . with Lee at his side.

  22. This picture of the so-called “Irascibles,” which appeared in Life magazine in January 1951, is the only group portrait of the Abstract Expressionists. Top row, left to right: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne; middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin; seated: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko. (Photo by Nina Leen, Life magazine, Copyright Time, Inc.)

  23. The Pollock brothers and their mother gathered in Springs in the summer of 1950 for their first reunion in more than a decade. Charles Pollock (seated left) was then an art professor in Michigan. Sande (standing right) owned a printing shop in Connecticut. Frank Pollock (standing left) was a rose grower in California, and brother Jay (seated right) was a printer. (Courtesy Archives of American Art)

  24. Pollock carves a holiday roast as his mother and wife look on. (Courtesy Archives of American Art)

  25. Pollock virtually stopped painting in the last years of his life. He is shown here in his studio with his dogs Gyp and Ahab. (Courtesy Archives of American Art)

  Though Pollock socialized often that winter, he remained significantly absent from activities at the new headquarters of the avant-garde—The Club. The celebrated hangout had been founded by de Kooning, Resnick, and their cronies after deciding that they needed a meeting place more conducive to conversation than the inhospitable Waldorf Cafeteria. (The cafeteria’s management had started harassing artists, limiting tables to four, and forbidding smoking.) In the fall of 1949 they rented a loft on the fifth floor of 39 East Eighth Street, equipped it with folding chairs and a coffeepot, and thus founded the Eighth Street Club. At first a casual haunt, The Club was soon sponsoring panel discussions (“Has the Situation Changed?”) and Friday-night lectures ranging from Lionel Abel, “The Modernity of the Modern World,” to Dr. Frederick Perls, “Creativeness in Art and Neurosis.” Membership eventually swelled to a 150, though Pollock, the perpetual nonjoiner, did not join The Club. He did make one appearance in the winter of 1950 but left before the lecture was over. As Harold Rosenberg once said, “Jackson didn’t like doing things with coffee.”

  One day in May 1950, soon after returning to Springs, Pollock received a phone call from Barnett Newman. Lee answered the phone and told Newman that Pollock was in the barn and could not be disturbed. Newman said it was urgent. He was calling from the apartment of Adolph Gottlieb, on State Street in Brooklyn, where he was meeting with Rothko, Reinhardt, and others to finish drafting a letter of protest to the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The letter, signed by eighteen painters and ten sculptors, announced a boycott of “American Painting Today—1950,” a big exhibition-competition that the Metropolitan was planning for December. The artists felt it was futile to enter their work in the competition since the Met had chosen a jury “notoriously hostile to advanced art.” The only thing missing from the short letter of protest, Newman told Lee, was Pollock’s signature.

  As Lee walked to the barn to get Pollock she grew angrier by the second. Why hadn’t Newman asked her to sign the letter? Wasn’t she an artist, and an activist as well? She thought about the many protests she had attended in the thirties, the picket lines she had marched on. It only made her angrier to think that while she had been excluded from the protest, her husband, who hardly knew a picket line from a police line, had suddenly become indispensable to art-world politics. She listened silently as Pollock talked to Newman, explaining politely that he could not come to New York to sign the letter but, yes, he was willing to send a telegram to Gottlieb’s studio saying he supported the protesters. The telegram went out that day. “I ENDORSED [sic] THE LETTER OPPOSING THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART 1950 JURIED SHOW STOP JACKSON POLLOCK.”

  It turned out to be the most publicized event ever staged by the Abstract Expressionists. The story was carried on page one of The New York Times, on May 22: “18 Painters Boycott Metropolitan; Charge ‘Hostility to Advanced Art.’ ” The next day the Herald Tribune ran a damning editorial, headlined “The Irascible Eighteen,” the name by which the artists would soon be identified in a famous group photograph in Life. The magazine’s art editor, Dorothy Seiberling, initially suggested to Newman that the photograph be shot on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, with the artists carrying their paintings under their arms. While willing to pose for Life, the artists rejected the Metropolitan as a locale. Newman thought they should be photographed “like bankers,” not outcasts, and Gottlieb insisted on “neutral territory.” Life accommodated them, scheduling the photography session at an anonymous studio on West Forty-fourth Street. This time Pollock had no trouble getting to New York. He rode the train from East Hampton, on November 26, along with James Brooks, to meet his fellow protesters on the neutral territory they had requested, which turned out to be a high-ceilinged photography studio with a drab linoleum floor, windows that faced an alley, and a background curtain that no one bothered to close. Photographer Nina Leen told the group to arrange itself on the chairs and stools scattered about the room. “How do you want us to sit,” Newman jested, “according to our voices?” Leen said she did not care. The burly Newman plunked himself down on a stool in the front row. Pollock sat down behind him, on a higher stool, placing himself in the center of the group.

  The black-and-white portrait that appeared in Life in January 1951—“Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show,” the caption stated—showed fifteen painters who resembled bankers only if one assumes that their bank was about to collapse. Rothko, clutching himself self-protectively, eyes the photographer with a suspicious sideward glance. De Kooning, glaring intently from the back row, looks like a blond Kafka. The gaunt, ashen-faced Clyfford Still could be cast as the Grim Reaper. “If some of us look angry,” Motherwell once said in reference to the tedious, hour-long session, “the anger was probably at the photographer.” Pollock, however, seems to be enjoying his second appearance in Life. Gamely he turns his head over his shoulder and raises a cigarette. He is as handsome as Gary Cooper. He is leaning toward the camera, betraying no signs of discomfort with either Nina Leen’s lens or the central position he occupies in both the photograph and the eyes of the public despite his marginal role in organizing the protest.

  “There was only Jackson Pollock. He was the center of the universe.” Thus Marie Pollock, his sister-in-law, referring to an unhappy family reunion held in Springs that summer. The get-together, the family’s first in seventeen years, had been organized by Stella after learning that her son Frank, a rose grower, would be coming to New York from California to attend a convention for nurserymen. She convinced h
er other sons to join her in Springs for a day-long reunion. Charles, who was now an art professor, came from East Lansing, Michigan; Jay, a printer, from Springfield, Ohio; and Sande, with whom Stella was still living, from Deep River, Connecticut. The four brothers arrived with their wives and children, eager to see their famous kid brother. Over the years they had followed his career closely, with Stella, a voluminous correspondent, keeping them posted on every development—his exhibitions (“he had a wonderful show”), his sobriety (“still on the wagon”), and of course the article in Life (“just swell . . . be sure to get it”).

  On the day his family arrived in Springs, Pollock had something else on his mind besides the reunion. He had not long before been selected, along with de Kooning, Gorky, and four others, to represent the United States at the 1950 Venice Biennale; three of his “drip” paintings remained on view at the fair throughout the summer. While Pollock had decided against accompanying his work to Venice, he was eager to hear what the Italian critics thought about his work. On the day of the reunion he received in the mail one especially compelling review, “Piccolo discorso sui quandri di Jackson Pollock,” by critic Bruno Alfieri. Although Pollock could no more understand the text of the piece than he could its title, he read it again and again, for in the jumble of foreign words was one word he did understand—“Picasso.” The critic had compared him to Picasso, and Pollock refused to put down the article until he knew whether the comparison with his rival was favorable.

  As his guests spent the day entertaining themselves in his living room, Pollock remained seated at the kitchen table poring over the article. Whenever his relatives wandered into the kitchen to freshen up their drinks or see what he was doing, Pollock asked them the same question: “Do you know any Italian?” No one did. Pollock asked them to look at the article anyway, pointing to one line in particular: “E al confronto di Pollock, Picasso, il povero Pablo Picasso . . . diventa un quieto e conformista pittore del passato.” His relatives read the line. They grew angry. “Is Picasso more important than your family?” asked sister-in-law Alma, prompting outraged stares from both Pollock and Lee. Pollock did leave the kitchen long enough to pose for some group photographs, but judging from his expression, he resented having to participate. When Frank Pollock mentioned casually that he was thinking of staying an extra day, Lee dropped a hint. “You know, Jackson,” she said very loudly, “Betty’s coming tomorrow.” It was the last time Stella Pollock planned a reunion.

  As Pollock must have suspected, the comparison with “povero Picasso” was favorable. Critic Bruno Alfieri had written that Picasso, compared to Pollock, was “a quiet conformist, a painter of the past.” The rest of the article, however, was grossly unflattering. The unflattering parts Pollock had no difficulty understanding for Time magazine reprinted them in English in November 1950. The news item, entitled “Chaos, Damn It!” reported that Italian critics had tended to “shrug off” Pollock’s appearance in Europe and that the only critic who “took the bull by the horns” was Bruno Alfieri. He was quoted as describing Pollock’s art like this: “Chaos. Absolute lack of harmony. Complete lack of structural organization. Total absence of technique, however rudimentary. Once again, chaos.” Although Time left out the line about Picasso, it did manage to squeeze in the absurd bit of news that “Pollock followed his canvases to Italy.”

  Pollock was outraged by the item in Time. How could they not mention the part about Picasso? Didn’t they know what was newsworthy? Angrily he fired off a telegram to the magazine. “SIR,” he wrote. “NO CHAOS DAMN IT. DAMNED BUSY PAINTING AS YOU CAN SEE BY MY SHOW COMING UP NOV. 28. I’VE NEVER BEEN TO EUROPE. THINK YOU LEFT OUT THE MOST EXCITING PART OF MR. ALFIERI’S PIECE.” The magazine attempted a reconciliation but only succeeded in driving Pollock to new levels of exasperation. It published his telegram on December 11, along with an editor’s note explaining that the most exciting part of Mr. Alfieri’s piece, “at least for Artist Pollock,” was probably the statement that he “sits at the extreme apex” of the avant-garde.

  One bright June day Pollock was visited in his studio by Rudy Burckhardt, a photographer, and Robert Goodnough, a painter and critic. They arrived on assignment from Art News magazine, which was planning a feature story called “Pollock Paints a Picture.” The idea of the article was to follow a painting through its various stages of creation from first to final stroke. Pollock had already agreed to cooperate with the magazine, promising, by telephone, to start a new painting and attempt to finish it in the presence of the writer-photographer team.

  When the visitors from Art News arrived at his studio, however, they quickly learned that Pollock had no intention of honoring his promise. He could not be bothered, for his attention was focused on something else. “I can’t decide whether this painting is finished,” he said, gesturing toward a black, spidery painting lying on the floor of the barn. Never before had he limited his palette solely to black nor created such a bold image. It consisted of sweeping black arabesques, flung dramatically against the stark white expanse of the canvas. Starting a painting in black was not unusual for Pollock, but in the past he had always gone on to embellish the image with color in a process that was somewhat akin to developing a charcoal sketch into a finished painting. This time there was only black, and he wasn’t sure whether he should leave the painting in such elemental form. His decision was further complicated by the huge proportions of the canvas. At roughly nine feet high and fifteen feet long, Number 32, 1950, as the work was later titled, was his first mural-sized painting since his mural for Peggy Guggenheim six years earlier, and Pollock had to be sure that the bare-boned black image was capable of commanding or structuring all that space. He had been agonizing over the question for some time and was not about to resolve it in the presence of Art News. Still, he did want to be in the magazine. He proposed a solution. “I’ll pretend I’m painting,” he told Rudy Burckhardt, proceeding to pick up a stubby brush and a can of paint and to kneel on top of the black mural. As Burckhardt photographed him, Pollock moved a dry brush across the canvas and pretended for posterity that Number 32, 1950, the result of much hard work, had been created with a few carefree tosses of paint.

  Pollock later decided that the mural was, in fact, finished. He considered it one of his best works, an appraisal that many share. In some ways it represents the climax of his career. Twenty summers earlier Pollock had visited a school outside Los Angeles and had seen his first mural, Orozco’s Prometheus. He had soon after arrived in New York and watched admiringly as Benton and the Mexicans covered wall after wall with Depression-era murals. He had dreamed about painting his own mural, yet so inadequate were his skills that he had been unable to secure a mural commission on the WPA or elsewhere. By 1950, however, Pollock had not only mastered the tradition of mural painting but subverted its very purpose. Unlike the murals of the thirties, Number 32, 1950 does not popularize a philosophy or call for revolution. It is a revolution, shattering our notions about what is monumental in art. It can be argued that Pollock’s accomplishment was to wed the public world of the mural with the private world of his psyche in a way that was utterly new; but while that explains his newness, it doesn’t explain his accomplishment.

  Pollock’s accomplishment was to reinvent the simplest element of art—line, “the essence of all,” as he had written with remarkable prescience two decades earlier. Number 32, 1950 (Fig. 25) shows him at the height of his powers, capable of creating not just a mural but a great work of art with the aid of nothing more elaborate than a naked black line. No form, no color, just line. He can do whatever he wants with it, tapering it into filigreelike delicacy or thickening it until it is heavy as mud. He can make it tauten, slacken, halt, plunge, soar, race, and fly, and reinvent it inch by inch to accommodate the subtlest nuances of feeling. Because he was unable to express himself through the readymade techniques of art, Pollock devised his own techniques, and in the process he became a great draftsman whose facility with line can withstand comparison with pred
ecessors as formidable as, say, Ingres or Botticelli.

  On July 1, 1950 Pollock attended an art opening at Guild Hall, a long, low, whitewashed brick building at the southern end of Main Street in East Hampton. On exhibit was a show called “Ten East Hampton Abstractionists.” The list of participants was impressive, particularly for a small-town community center. Besides Pollock, the show also included Lee Krasner, James Brooks, John Little, Wilfrid Zogbaum, Buffie Johnson, and several others who had settled in the area in the five years since Pollock had moved to Springs. Pollock was standing alone at the opening when a young photographer from Harper’s Bazaar introduced himself. His name was Hans Namuth and he was renting a house for the summer in nearby Water Mill. In his thick German accent Namuth told Pollock that he greatly admired his work and would like to photograph him sometime, though not necessarily for Harper’s Bazaar. For a moment Pollock looked reluctant. “Well,” he said, “why not?”