Cowboy of American art
GIRIDHAR KHASNIS
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Jackson Pollock's statement, "[A canvas is] an arena in which to act," assumes a new meaning 50 years after his tragic death.
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Daring technique: Pollock at work.
"Painting throughout its history has served many different purposes... But one act of faith has remained a constant ... Jackson Pollock was driven by a despair which was partly his and partly that of the culture which nourished him, to refuse this act of faith... "
John Berger, The Suicide Of Art
WHEN his first one-man show opened on November 8, 1943, at Peggy Guggenheim's gallery, Art Of This Century, it ostensibly heralded the emergence of modern art in the U.S. The New Yorker hailed him as an "authentic discovery", while ArtNews declared that his abstractions were free of Paris, and contained "a disciplined American fury".
In March 1945 his second solo was held at the same gallery in New York. In just three years, Pollock had broken away from virtual anonymity and become a celebrity. By the end of the decade, he was the unquestioned American superstar in the art world. "Pollock was the leader," conceded Willem de Kooning, a key figure (along with Pollock and Arshile Gorky) in the movement, which came to be known as abstract expressionism. "He was the painting cowboy, the first to get recognition."
Decades later, celebrated cultural historian John Berger presented an insightful commentary in his article, "The suicide of art" (The Guardian, December 31, 1989). "His later fame as a painter produced the legend that at heart Pollock was a cowboy," wrote Berger.
Disruptive behaviour
Born in Cody, Wyoming, on January 28, 1912, Jackson belonged to an Irish/Scots Presbyterian family. It is said that the youngest of five sons of Stella McClure and LeRoy McCoy Pollock was born strangled by the cord, which led to his suffering mild learning and motor disabilities, and — more damagingly — a susceptibility to alcohol. Growing up in Arizona and California, Pollock was expelled from school for fighting and other disruptive behaviour. When his father tried his hand at ranching and farming, Jackson helped him as a farmhand — milking cows, ploughing and cutting alfalfa.
Jackson followed his brother Charles to New York City in 1930, a very decisive move. There he came initially under the fold of regionalist American artist, Thomas Hart Benton. Subsequently, the work of Mexican mural painters whose experimental techniques, epic scale, totemic images, visual intensity and use of industrial paints left a profound impression on Pollock who attended David Alfaro Siqueiros' politically charged workshop in NY. By 1939, he had been exposed to the mastery of artists like Picasso and Kandinsky; by 1944, he was charmed by Surrealists.
Even as he was creatively absorbing new trends and influences, Pollock continued his personal battle against self-doubt, depression and dejection. By 1937, he had become a serious victim of alcoholism and had to receive psychiatric treatment. He even suffered a nervous breakdown the following year. Between 1939 and 1941, psychoanalysts, who followed the teachings of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, treated him; they used Pollock's own drawings in the therapy sessions and encouraged him to analyse them for clues to his unconscious mental processes.
The Dripper
Pollock acquired his famous nickname, Jack the Dripper, when in the mid-1940s; he enthusiastically committed himself to a daring technique. The canvas instead of being on the easel, was spread out on the floor; the artist moved energetically around it — almost as if in a dance — to drip, splash, pour, splatter, and spread oil, enamel, and aluminium paint across its surface; the "performance" wouldn't stop until he saw what he wanted to see.
"[A canvas is] an arena in which to act," he exclaimed. "When I am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident."
Kirk Varnedoe, curator of one of Pollock's major retrospectives in recent years theorises that, with the `drip' or `poured' paintings he made from 1947 through 1950, Pollock ruptured traditions of art-making, giving new permissions to subsequent generations of artists in all mediums and gaining international notoriety: "Pollock's best work is inhabited by opposites: lyrical and violent, anguished and ecstatic, cathartic and obsessive, tormented and liberating, ethereal and base."
Splashing him with paint-spattered overalls, Life, in early August 1949 put up a sensational headline: "Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?" The article gave a dramatic push to Pollock's reputation as one of the most challenging, influential, and provocative American artists.
While his works attracted many artists, galleries, and collectors, Pollock's sharp, untouched and, often, contradictory personality traits also surfaced. He became known for urinating on some of his paintings, and quite habitually ripping men's room door off its hinges. His assertive art, sharp tongue, abusive manners and hostile conduct became the talk-of-the-town.
End of his days
By 1951, however, Pollock moved away from his abstractions; his darker canvases started showing clear figurative elements. By 1955, he had stopped painting altogether, buckling under the twin pressures of alcohol and depression. On August 11, 1956, a hopelessly drunk Pollock sped on his Oldsmobile convertible with two co-passengers. He didn't live to see another day; he was 44.
In "The suicide of art", Berger provides interesting contextual references and clues about the prevailing political climate and cultural scene in the US between 1942-56. "The US had emerged from the war as the most powerful nation in the world."
As for the New York artists, Berger saw them caught up in a ruthless, aggressive, competitive loop. "The risks were high and casualties many. Gorky and Rothko killed themselves. Kline, Reinhardt, Newman died young. Nearly all the painters drank heavily to protect their nerves ... "
Berger also explains how by 1948, the U.S. needed a sophisticated reply to the slogans of `Yankee Go Home!' and how the CIA (during the 1950s and 1960s) covertly supported a multitude of initiatives and presented the new American Art across the world as a promise for the future.
"In this way a mostly desperate body of art, which had at first shocked the American public, was transformed by speeches, articles and the context in which it was displayed, into an ideological weapon for the defence of Individualism and the right to express oneself. Jackson Pollock, I'm sure, was unaware of this programme — he died too soon; nevertheless the propaganda apparatus helped to create the confusion surrounding his art after his death. A cry of despair was turned into a Declaration of Democracy."
E-mail: giridharkhasnis@gmail.com
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