Page 29 - Studio International - June 1967

re-orientation of British painting takes place. American painter of the future mentioned in Clement
It would be difficult to exaggerate Lawrence Alloway's Greenberg's influential article, The Present Prospects of
role in this process. An eloquent advocate of American American Painting and Sculpture, which appeared in Cyril
painting, he worked at the Institute of Contemporary Connolly's magazine Horizon in October 1947.11 And
Arts in various capacities from 1956 to 1960, but for some curiously enough at exactly this moment the first Pollock
Mark Rothko
years already had been using the discussion and exhibi- was exhibited in Britain—a small Abstraction, belonging to
Number 10 1950
Oil on canvas tion facilities of the I.C.A. as a platform for new ideas.9 Arthur Jeffress, was shown in a very mixed exhibition at
90+ x 57 in. Examples of so-called action painting were first shown at Southampton and Winchester.12 Furthermore, visitors to
Coll: Museum of Modern the I.C.A. Opposing Forces exhibition in 1953; very Venice would have seen Pollock's work in Peggy Gug-
Art, New York
shortly afterwards there were several Pollock-imitators at genheim's collection,13 or the three new pictures at the
Given to the Modern Museum
work in London.1
by Philip Johnson in 1952; 1950 Biennale (Number 1 of 1948, Numbers 2 and 23 of
shown in the 1956 Of course for some time now Pollock had been a familiar 1949). From this time onwards, there is a certain con-
and 1959 Tate exhibitions name to the more perceptive. He was after all the fusion as Pollock seems often to have been regarded as
part of an international trend which incorporated
Mathieu, Wols, Fautrier, even Soulages and Hartung.14
His peculiar American-ness came through only as a
wider appreciation of American painting spread in
Britain.
One can plot the course of the American invasion with
the dates of significant exhibitions, sometimes accom-
panied by visits of the artists concerned. The Tobey show
at the I.C.A. in May 1955 preceded the 1956 Tate show:
it included a group of recent works, and because of
Tobey's English connexions and his tangential position
to New York painting this served as a very useful intro-
duction. And then two expatriate Americans were in-

6 See, for example, The Power of Paris pp. 265-6, written 1950-52,
and compare this with the interest in Pollock to be seen in the intro-
duction, written October 1954.
7 Note the Matisse-derived title. Motherwell is also, of course,
important for his work as editor of the Documents of Modern Art series
for Wittenborn, which put a remarkable number of the classic texts
of modern art into English-language circulation.
8 January 5, 1956.
9 See Alloway's note to his essay, Development of British Pop, in Lucy
Lippard : Pop Art (Thames & Hudson, 1966), p. 200. In this excellent
but obviously partisan account Alloway makes clear that the interest
in American painting was part of a wider interest in American mass
culture. I have not concerned myself with this generalized American
influence in Britain, and with the emergence of Pop, though it is, of
course, closely related to my subject.
10 Opposing Forces was arranged by Peter Watson and Michel Tapié
at the I.C.A. early in 1953. There were three paintings each by Sam
Francis, Mathieu, Ossorio, Pollock, Riopelle and Serpan, and seven
drawings by Michaux. The Pollocks—the first seen in London—were
untitled in the catalogue: two small paintings of 1949, and a very
large picture (9' by 18') of the same year.
11 No. 93-94, Art on the American Horizon, London, October 1947.
Greenberg wrote: 'The most powerful painter in contemporary
America and the only one who promises to be a major one is a Gothic,
morbid and extreme disciple of Picasso's Cubism and Miró's post-
Cubism, tinctured also with Kandinsky and surrealist inspiration. His
name is Jackson Pollock....' I wish I could quote more of this
remarkable article. Pollock's first drip paintings were done in this
year, 1947.
12 It was an exhibition of paintings from local private collections,
held in Winchester in September 25-27, 1947.
13 In particular, Enchanted Forest of 1947 (page 286), one of the first
drip paintings, and Two and Circumcision, both of 1945. Another
important early Pollock, Ocean Greyness, 1943, was exhibited at the
Tate Gallery with Paintings from the Guggenheim Museum, April—May
1957.
14 The first Pollock exhibition in Paris, at Facchetti's in 1952, was
presented by Michel Tapié, the protagonist of this particular trend.
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