Page 28 - Studio International - June 1973

(Right) Number I 1948
Oil on canvas, 68 x 104 in.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(Below right) Detail from
Number I 1948
(Below left)
Sounds in the Grass: Shimmering
Substance 1946
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 24 1/4 in.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(Bottom)
Totem Lesson II c.1945
Oil on canvas, 70 x 62 in.
Marlborough Gallery, New York
(Opposite page)
Autumn Rhythm 1950
Oil on canvas, 305 x 207 in.
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
George A. Hearn Fund 1957

the painting.'12 If any observer could otherwise
fail to recognize Pollock's physical presence in
the great sweeping whole-body rhythms of his
painting, the artist makes the point inescapably
clear in this Painting, No. 1,1948, in front of
which one almost hears him insist, 'this is me
painting' as he imprints his hand several times
on to the wet picture. Unquestionably, he found
his identity in the act of painting and his
paintings could no more be planned in advance
than he could; the created and the creator could
come into being only in the act of creating, in the
act of living. (Rosenberg spoke of the action
painter as 'living on the canvas'.)13
But what the popularizers of the existentialist
interpretation missed (and what Rosenberg
signalized a little more clearly in later essays14)
is that Pollock's act was neither mindless nor
undisciplined. The first spontaneous swinging
gestures, which he made in the process of
painting his great web pictures, correspond to canvas to the wall Tor a period of study and
the kind of constantly moving linear rhythms concentration'; after about two weeks of this
which he wanted and which he trained himself `get acquainted' period, as Pollock called it,17 he
to execute. In a 1969 interview with B. H. again spread the canvas out on the floor and
Friedman, Lee Pollock described Jackson's began slowly and deliberately to interweave the
`amazing control' in the use of 'sticks, and innumerable skeins of paint into a rich and
hardened or worn-out brushes (which were complex whole. Goodnough concludes his
in effect like sticks), and basting syringes'.15 article, 'Of course anyone can pour paint on a
Although she was referring in that specific canvas, as anyone can bang a piano, but to create
instance to the black and white pictures, her one must purify the emotions; few have the
remark applies equally to the process which strength, will or even the need to do this.'
Robert Goodnough described in detail in his Pollock's random-looking paintings are the
`Pollock paints a picture', published in Art News, result of exhaustive decisions, some utterly
May, 1951.16 He recounts how Pollock first rational, others more subconsciously arrived at
stood looking for some time at the bare canvas (if it is not too much of a contradiction in terms
rolled out on the floor, before taking up the large to speak of a subconscious decision). The
can of house painter's enamel, which, unlike surrealist idea of freeing the subconscious was
traditional artists' tube oil paints, could be what, Pollock said, interested him most in his
poured easily, thus making possible the kind of association (together with that of the other
continuous, flowing rhythms which Pollock American 'myth makers' during World War
wanted to achieve. The next day he tacked the Two) with Peggy Guggenheim and her circle of
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