Page 55 - The Documenta issue of World of Art magazine (2002)

POLLOCK painter and critic robert motherwell,
to “splash him out”) provided an
i m p o r t a n t s t i m u l u s t o P o l l o c k ’s
developing creativity. as observed
by another close associate, “Jack had
a way of making magic out of things:
when he saw something interesting,
it was created strictly for him as an
artist.” understanding and deferring
to orozco and Picasso’s originality,
Pollock was able to use their ideas to
take first steps toward establishing
his own progressive stance.
one way to situate the impact of
other artists on Pollock’s creativity
is to keep in mind that he was a
member of a larger group of new
York painters (examples by many of
his colleagues are now on view at
the candiani center), who began “a
progression away from ways of referring
in which the sensory properties of the
art look like the referent.” canvases
created by these artists beginning
in the 1940s increasingly possessed
qualities that functioned like (rather
than imitating the appearance of)
a model outside the work. another
m e x i c a n m u r a l i s t , d a v i d a l f a r o
Siqueiros, provided strategic clues
for Pollock as to how to go about
achieving this. much has been made
of Pollock’s inability to verbalize his
goals, but appearances may have
been deceiving. as pointed out by
his champion, the critic clement
Greenberg, many were misled by
Jackson’s “seeming indifference to
phrases and ‘ideas.”’ to the contrary,
Greenberg noted, Pollock “saw more
in art and knew more of it than did
almost anybody.” Sometimes, however,
as Krasner perceptively remarked,
there would be “an awfully slow burn”
before an internalized concept came
to fruition. reviewing Pollock’s first
one-man show in 1943, motherwell
observed that perhaps his friend still
faced the issue of discovering “what
his true subject is.” Presaging the
central premise of full-blown action
P a i n t i n g , m o t h e r w e l l a c c u r a t e l y
STuDIo wITH ALCHeMy on THe fLoor (1947)
predicted that Pollock’s resolution
PHOTO By WILFRED ZOGBAUM
would be grounded in process, not in COURTESy JACKSOn POLLOCK PAPERS with the easel tradition was more
imagery or ideas. most of the works ARCHIvES OF AMERICAn ART
SMITHSOnIAn InSTITUTIOn, WASHInGTOn D.C. USA
seen at Peggy Guggenheim’s art of
this century gallery in Pollock’s initial
solo exhibition, demonstrated his
escalating engagement with Picasso,
sources including american indian
totemism. three untitled paintings
n o w t e m p e r e d b y d i v e r s e o t h e r
displayed, however, a somewhat
different approach, one that presaged
Pollock’s mature allover, poured style
and indicated a new influence, the
european Surrealists.
a s k e d h i s o p i n i o n t h e f o l l o w i n g
year of the Surrealist emigrés then
living in new York, “i am particularly
impressed with their concept of the
source of art being the unconscious,”
was Pollock’s answer. this response
may have surprised his old comrades
f r o m S i q u e i r o s ’s e x p e r i m e n t a l
workshop since, as one of these
observed, “to talk about Surrealism
and the unconscious was absolutely
diametrically opposed to everything
[mexican art] stood for.” apparently,
however, such a seemingly unbreakable
opposition, was easily neutralized
by Pollock. Works by the Surrealists
were undoubtedly a critical factor in
showing Pollock how to reframe his
improvisatory training with Siqueiros.
the ideas on method propounded by
the eccentric painter/entrepreneur John
Graham (whose exhibition american
and French Painting provided the
opportunity for Pollock and Krasner
to meet) were another key source for
Pollock’s development of an intuitively
engendered automatic handwriting
highlighting the unconscious dimensions
of his current procedures in 1947,
the year he made many of the works
seen at the museo correr’s in 1950
and currently, Pollock explained a
complicated notion very simply:
“When i am in my painting, i’m not
a w a r e o f w h a t i ’ m d o i n g.” i n h i s
opinion, his paintings had “lives
of their own.’ his job was to “let
[ t h e s e l i v e s ] c o m e t h r o u g h .’ B y
1949, when his sixth show opened,
now at the Betty Parsons Gallery,
JACkSon PoLLoCk In THe fIrePLACe roAD Pollock’s total retrenchment from
methods and imagery associated
than ever evident. in the close to
mural-sized canvases he had begun
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