Page 63 - Studio International - July/August 1967

a rough diamond from the West, was a clumsy art I am not referring to the leap into the Duco cans from easel to mural. The pictures I contemplate
student. He couldn't copy Michelangelo grace- and sticks. I mean the leap into self-assurance that painting would constitute a halfway state, and an
fully, or even El Greco, whom he obviously is marked by the still-exciting paintings of his first attempt to point out the direction of the future,
admired intensely. His attempts to assimilate the show at Art of this Century, and of subsequent without arriving there completely.'
vocabulary of his first teacher, Thomas Benton, quasi-figurative paintings that appear almost to To me, the significant aspect of this statement
and his incidental teachers, the Mexican muralists, the end of his life. (aside from its prophetic accuracy: Pollock should
were unbelievably awkward. Pollock produced clusters of strong work at have lived to see how much painting has merged
Pollock's awkwardness continues for quite a various times (1941-44, and 1947-50, and in 1953) with wall!) is in his romantic need not to arrive
while in his career. He made a great effort to and the so-called 'drip paintings' constitute only a there completely. It was this honest hesitancy
annex the international jargon derived from single phase which to my mind is over emphasized. which made Pollock swerve from his crashingly
Picasso (and who didn't in the late 1930s?), Mire), The drip paintings should be seen in relation to successful venture into automatism back co his
and probably Masson, but he wasn't too successful. his other work. For instance, one of his earliest concern with the configurative easel painting, and
He snatched up the totemic references from sur- obvious successes was the huge mural painted for with the problems implicit in the modern tradition
realist magazines, and related himself to African Peggy Guggenheim in 1943. Here, in the sloping as charted by Picasso and Matisse. Someday, I am
masks and fetishes as well as American Indian insistent arabesques, the black linear emphases, convinced, his early paintings such as The She-
rituals, but these were all common property at the the stitch-like rhythms, Pollock pre-figures the wolf, Guardians of the secret, and later paintings,
time, and Pollock was not eminently at ease with drip paintings, and also lays the groundwork for a such as Blue poles, and final paintings such as
them. rhetoric that is more encompassing than the drip Ocean grayness and Easter and the totem, will be
It must be conceded that Pollock's drawings once paintings suggest. assessed with as much seriousness as the lyrical
he turned from his first loves—Ryder, Greco, the In this connection, a statement of 1947 is most drip paintings such as Lavendar mist and Autumn
Mexicans—were not fluent. In fact, they were illuminating: rhythms. Moreover, the disciplined allusions to
eloquent records of a monumental spiritual strug- `I intend to paint large moveable pictures which figurative imagery in his late work (mythology and
gle to find, through foreign masters, a congenial will function between the easel and the mural. I symbolism is absent only during the drip epoch)
mode from which he could plunge on in his own have set a precedent in this genre in a large will appear heroic rather than the frustrated,
terms. The impression made by Guernica, for painting for Miss Peggy Guggenheim which was backsliding gestures they are now considered by so
instance, was obviously indelible. But sympathetic installed in her house ... I believe the easel picture many critics.
commentators would have to notice the leap to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern They used to say Pollock was an artists' artist.
Pollock made once he understood Picasso's feeling is towards the wall picture or mural. I Quite rightly, I think, since artists were the ones
meaning rather than his formal vocabulary. believe the time is not yet ripe for a full transition who called attention to his existence and who have

Above
Frank Roth
Study for The other side of the
mountain 1966
52 x 46 in.

Frank Roth
Martha crossing the Delaware 1966
46 x 52 in.