Page 24 - Studio International - January 1973

world. These works predate Pollock's all-over between the four borders of the canvas; there
dripped paintings by several years and serve to was not enough room between the surface of the
emphasize that surrealist automatism, while it canvas and the source of the movement which
may undoubtedly have served a necessary the brush was to trace upon it, i.e. (by this date)
function in loosening the hold of cubist the painter's shoulder. This sense of 'lack of
picture-space, was not necessarily the only room to paint in' may well have been in a very
mode in which this could be achieved. The direct way a consequence of that quality of
negative motive - the need to 'evade' the cubist actual physical violence which Pollock brought
frame of reference to the world23 itself to the activity of painting (according,
suggested ends which implied the same means. specifically, to Motherwell - an eye-witness to
In Pollock's work, 'automatism' (the ideology of Pollock's painting procedures whose testimony I
graphisme as 'self-discovery') and extreme am otherwise reluctant to call26).
painterliness (`aformal' means of departure Although Pollock's solution to the problem of
from oppressively formal ends) come to signify reconciling his technique with his needs and
one and the same thing. concerns was highly individual, he was not
alone in confronting the problem. It seems to
4 Jackson Pollock: before 1947 have been a general problem in the mid forties.
A survey of the archetypal, aggressive, animal, Matta, at least, felt a shift in priorities from
sexual, mythic imagery of Pollock's work of the existential concerns to a recognition of the need
early forties - roughly from, say, Male and for a new 'space' in which to make these
Female of 1942, through the Guggenheim concerns manifest: 'At one point the artists
Mural of 1943, Night Ceremony of 1944, via started discussing not any more who we are
gouaches and pen drawings of 1946 heavily and what happens to us and how we are
reminiscent of Miró at one extreme and changed by our paintings, etc., but started
Masson at the other, to the Sounds in the Grass talking with their hands, trying to describe
Picasso
The Three Dancers 1925. 84 3/4 X 56 in. paintings of 1946 - reveals a gathering impetus space like a dancer does.'27
The Tate Gallery away from the exploitation of specific (though To abandon the canvas on the easel or wall
`disintegrating') single images (Pasipha and and place a larger canvas on the floor was a
conscious' than Pollock's. From 1943 on he was She Wolf of 1943) via the agglomeration of development which may thus have served for
for instance devoted to collage, not merely, one image types (the Mural, and Gothic of 1944) Pollock a need also felt by others. But the
suspects, as an extension of his range of towards a recognition of the priority of the change may well have seemed to him to be
approaches to the surface of the painting, but as procedures over the results of image- motivated by essentially practical and particular
a means of suggesting a world of 'plastic' generation. It is in these terms that Pollock considerations - the need for 'more room', etc. -
relationships, invested with particular progresses from a considerable dependence however radical the implications of the action
associations, which could render compatible the upon compatible but second-hand imagery and however dramatic its consequences
legacy of cubist types of composition and the (Guernica, etc.) towards an original mode of within Pollock's art and beyond.
techniques of surrealist juxtaposition without self-expression in which the notion of the I suspect that Pollock may also have been
real danger of loss of control. It was as if possibility of significance in imagery is by no motivated, in increasing both the size of the
automatism was to him something essentially means betrayed; which itself can be seen as the canvas and the area of travel of the paint, by
theoretical which he never very effectively put achievement of a degree of 'self-realization'. a desire to open the painting up a bit; i.e. to
into practice. As compared, say, with In Pollock's 'all-over' paintings of 1946, for avoid a situation in which a relatively prolonged
Pollock's work, to which it must have seemed instance Sounds in the Grass; Shimmering and satisfactorily intense period of working on a
close in the early forties, Motherwell's lacks Substance and Eyes in the Heat, the imagery, if painting was bound to result in a surface too
boldness and spontaneity. Where Pollock was not recognizable, is still recognizably there; worked-over and too dense to admit of
changing the terms of reference of a tradition, but the activity upon the surface - that part of mimesis of some kind.
Motherwell remained 'artistic' in relation to the painting, that is to say, which flatly asserts The adoption of the drip-and-spatter
European models. In his work of the fifties, itself as occupying a literal place upon a surface technique and of dried-out brushes, sticks and
as the forms become simplified and the scale literally viewed as flat - increasingly veils, or trowels as tools, can also largely be accounted
considerably enlarged, the tendency is towards edges out or overpowers the imagery for in practical terms : Pollock was enabled by
rhetoric rather than grandeur. established as the result of the less spontaneous, this means to maintain a relatively upright
Perhaps the notion of automatism - an earlier stages of the painting. As the 'pace' of the position, a distance away from the floor and the
essentially literary and strategic notion after all - painting accelerated - as he got more fully canvas. The painting-at-arms-length stance
was really less effective than the urgency of the `into the painting'24 - Pollock seems to have cannot be sustained for a painting on the floor
needs which that notion, among others, was found the actual procedure of paint as it can before an easel or a wall. The point of
adopted to serve. Hans Hofmann was generally application increasingly expressive; not a balance for Pollock became the hips, not, as
unsympathetic to Surrealism, at least until the means of depicting, but the actual means to before, the shoulder; the natural rhythm - and
mid forties, when it seems he was prompted to mimetic life, within the painting, of the Pollock was a 'rhythmical' painter from the
reconsider by the work of younger painters.22 significance which the depicted form was to start - became inevitably more expansive,
His concerns were generally formalist concerns, have embodied.25 involved longer, more sweeping movements of
i.e. concern with composition as structure and The result is very dense (though very rich) in the hand controlling the application of paint.
with surface as tension-in-depth; yet in both colour and texture; the Sounds in the Grass He gained more sway over the canvas. The
substantial works of the early forties, such as paintings are comparatively small, and it seems dictates of gravity and the increased fluidity of
Effervescence of 1944, puddled and dripped paint as if there simply was not enough room in them the paint ensured that a painting produced in
serves to loosen up the surface beyond the point to allow full scope to the kind of expansion this manner would be more prone to those
at which reminiscences of cubist formalities can which was inevitably entailed in the `accidental' effects which, in the name of
survive to perpetuate associations with the `evolutionary' process outlined above. It was automatism, Pollock had been concerned to
particularization of space in the material not merely a matter of inadequate space exploit since at least 1936 (the year of his