Page 62 - Studio International - July/August 1967

NEW YORK
commentary by Dore Ashton

Pollock retrospective at the Museum
of Modern Art; Frank Roth at Martha
Jackson; Miriam Schapiro at
Emmerich; Claes Oldenburg at
Janis

`What we need is more young men who paint from
inner impulsion without an ear to what the critic
or spectator may feel—painters who will risk spoil-
ing a canvas to say something in their own way.
Pollock is one.'
In these remarks in the catalogue for Pollock's
first one-man show in 1943, James Johnson
Sweeney sounds a note of healthy criticism all too
rare today. Sweeney understands that an artist of
any real measure is always capable of painting very
bad pictures, risking the spoiled canvas, and even
the spoiled career, in order to drive to the promise
of fulfilment.
Jackson Pollock War 1947, crayon, brush pen and ink, 20½ x 26 in. Coll: Estate of the artist
What prompts me to speak of it is the orgy of
regretful but positive denials of Pollock's right to
his renown that appeared during the recent retro-
spective at the MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. The re-
action was not exactly philistine, but it was
certainly a symptom of blunted sensibilities. It
shows that overexposure—an abuse well organized
in America— takes a serious toll, dazing sensitized
eyes, and dissolving intellectual equilibrium.
When I noticed the critic of the New York Times
piously remarking the 'embarrassments early and
late', which he said 'are no less embarrassing for
being certified—as they are now—as the work of an
artist who has ascended to legendary status the
world over', I could well understand his impulse to
puncture the inflated Pollock myth.
On the other hand, I wonder how any serious
reviewer, long familiar with Pollock's work, can
fail to be moved by the successes rather than the
`embarrassments'. How can he not be impressed by
Pollock's herculean effort to surmount his short-
comings? Or by the dozen or so canvases that are
indisputably the work of an inspired artist? If a
man has managed to paint a few durable works in
his life (and Pollock's was a short life for a painter),
it should be possible to celebrate him.
Jackson Pollock Ocean grayness 1953, oil and enamel paint on canvas 57 x 90 in.
The same critic wonders whether Pollock is the Coll: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
`kind of painter' whose oeuvre can sustain an
exhibition on this scale. Is there any such painter? What comes into question, then, is the principle from youth onwards, treated with as much care as
I well remember the first Picasso retrospective I of the comprehensive exhibition. This one is the documentation of the paintings. (Perhaps
saw while a student—my shock at discovering how certainly a pitiless exhibition mounted with a more!)
many bad Picassos Picasso could paint. Later, I pitiless pedantry that insists on loading the fore- My quarrel with the data-minded contemporary
remember my first entrance into the great gal- ground with every minute detail of Pollock's evolu- art historian is not quixotic. I realize that all
leries of Italy, and my disbelief: the old masters tion. Not only that: it is accompanied by a pitiless depends on what is done with the data. In this
were also guilty of unbelievable lapses. A full-scale chronology in which the man himself is laid bare case, it is clear that pertinent data in the show
Rembrandt exhibition would undoubtedly shock in all his devil-ridden insecurity. I couldn't help provided ready material for those who fastidiously
many a graduate student. It is not so easy to paint recoiling when I saw the wealth of personal data, wish to detach themselves from complicity in the
profoundly all the time. such as Pollock's desperate struggle with alcoholism Pollock myth. It is easy enough to see that Pollock,
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