Page 27 - Studio International - June 1973

Jackson Pollock outside his studio
Photo: Hans Namuth

Jackson Pollock

and nature

Ellen Johnson

Jackson Pollock's retort, 'I am nature !' to Hans explication of the artist as existentialist: 'At a bear . . :9 Pollock's freedom to choose, to invent,
Hofmann's critical comment, 'You do not work certain moment the canvas began to appear to to continue pulling something new out of
from nature' is so appropriate to both the myth one American painter after another as an arena himself became ever more painful the more he
and the actuality of the man and his art that a in which to act. . . . What was to go on the canvas became identified with the revolution in
critic might have invented it for him, had was not a picture but an event. The painter no American painting which occurred after World
he not said it himself.' The defensive longer approached his easel with an image in his War Two. His friend and fellow action painter,
brusqueness of that remark, and of the others mind; he went up to it with material in his hand Willem de Kooning, characterized Pollock's
Pollock made that day when Lee Krasner to do something to that other piece of material importance bluntly: 'Every so often a painter
brought Hofmann to see his work (I'm not in front of him. The image would be the result has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it and then
interested in your theories. Put up or shut of that encounter . . . there is no point to an Picasso did it again with Cubism. Then Pollock
up !'2), is characteristic of the attitude which act if you already know what it contains.4 . . . did it — he busted our idea of a picture all to hell.
helped create the popular image of Pollock as the The act-painting is of the same metaphysical Then there could be new pictures again.'10 At a
two-fisted, rough and ready frontiersman. While substance as the artist's existence. The new time when the new art was not so publicized and
that legend was undeniably fostered by his painting has broken down every distinction clamoured after as it seems to be now, to be a
truculence, his hard drinking, his then between art and life.5 . . . Art as action rests on leader of the avant garde was a bitter and lonely
uncommon Western clothes and his battered old the enormous assumption that the artist accepts responsibility. Pollock took the responsibility of
Ford, and while it is accurate as a metaphor — as real only that which he is in the process of leadership with deadly seriousness. In his last
Pollock clearly did penetrate into unknown creating . . . the act on the canvas is an extension two or three years, when he painted what was
territory and cut a path for others to follow — it of the artist's total effort to make over his for him very little, it must have been a particular
obscures and denies many essential facts experiences . . . the dialectical tension of a torment to realize that for artists all over the
about the man. Fortunately, by now, the genuine act, associated with risk and will'.? In a country he was the symbol of revolt — freedom
delicacy and privacy of Pollock's feelings vivid image, Rosenberg asserts that 'The personified. One could almost say that he
(Lee Krasner says he kept his books in drawers American vanguard painter took to the white committed himself to the symbol which he had
because one's choice of reading is such expanse of the canvas as Melville's Ishmael took become. That symbol was forever fixed by his
a personal thing3), and his love of poetry to the sea. On the one hand, a desperate early death, in 1956 at the age of 44 in a motor
and music need no further defence and recognition of moral and intellectual exhaustion; accident, while he was driving at night on a
clarification than they have finally received from on the other, the exhilaration of an adventure dangerous section of Fireplace Road, on which
the published statements of his widow, friends over depths in which he might find reflected the he lived.
and other associates. true image of his identity'.8 That Pollock sought the nature of the self in
A similar blending of fact and fiction pertains The freedom which Pollock embraced was the nature of painting is evidenced in his words
to the presentation of Pollock as an existential as great a burden to him as it was to Camus's as well as his work. He called No. 31, 1950 One
hero, a view which again finds support in the lawyer, who discovered that 'It's a chore . . . and because he said he felt at one with it. Selden
declaration, 'I am nature !' Although Harold a long-distance race, quite solitary and very Rodman quotes him as saying, 'Painting is
Rosenberg now objects to the existentialist exhausting. No champagne, no friends raising self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he
interpretation, he himself was primarily their glasses as they look at you affectionately. is.'11 That statement was made in Pollock's last
responsible for it, through his enormously Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the summer; but already in 1947 he had given his
influential essay, 'The American Action prisoner's box before the judges, and alone to memorable explanation of why he preferred to
Painters', published in Art News, December, decide in face of oneself or in the face of others' work on the floor, 'I feel nearer, more a part of
1952. The following are only a few of the judgment. At the end of all freedom is a court the painting, since this way I can walk around
numerous passages that could serve as a textbook sentence; that's why freedom is too heavy to it, work from the four sides and literally be in
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