Page 29 - Studio International - June 1973

visiting European surrealists. It is also worth the catalogue of Pollock's first one-man show, Queen, An Ace in the Hole, Once Upon a Time,
remembering that in his long, cruel battle November 1943, at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of High Priestess. His next show, at the same
against alcoholism he was often in analysis, This Century Gallery. gallery January, 1947, was composed of two
beginning when he was about 18, and that he Ironically, the new order in Pollock's over-all series, Sounds in the Grass and Accabonac Creek.
seriously read and admired Jung, who wrote, linear structures can even be considered Among the revealing names in the Sounds in the
`The unconscious functions satisfactorily only traditional in one respect: he seems to have had Grass group are Croaking Movement, Shimmering
when consciousness fulfils its task to the limit a predilection for discrete designs. It is not only Substance, Eyes in the Heat, Earth Worms; in the
of its capacities.' That any stage of his maze-like that the grand curves of paint swinging out second group, Bird Effort, Constellation, The
paintings was deliberately ordered by Pollock's beyond the edges of the picture are always Water Bull, and Magic Light. Although Pollock
intellect was impossible for most observers to brought back into it (obviously it was his sometimes got help from others in the difficult
grasp in the beginning. Even many of those who intention to paint the canvas, not the floor); but task of naming paintings, Lee Pollock says that
admired his work for all its other great qualities the total configuration of the image turns in even so he never accepted a suggestion unless it
of dynamism, openness, audacious untrammelled toward the centre, for all the world like the fitted in with his own ideas; and in any case the
style, its vast spaciousness and grandeur of scale figures on a Greek stele. That inward-turning Sounds in the Grass and Accabonac Creek titles
and concept, still were unable to perceive the factor of the design (often lost in reproductions were entirely his own.24 The latter is the name
delicacy and lyricism of his mature work until because of incomplete or cropped photographs) of the body of water lying at the back of his
after his death. As Gertrude Stein declared, all is one of the essentially cubist elements of property. In 1948, he went along with his
masterpieces are ugly at first; it is only after they Pollock's work, which is sometimes accentuated confreres and began to assign numbers rather
have become familiar, largely through imitation, by a greater openness and lessening of pictorial than names to his pictures, but the fact that he
that one sees how beautiful they are.18 Now it is activity out toward the edges of the canvas.23 later reverted to titles and even went back and
easier than it was 20 or 25 years ago to see that The design within the edges is complete; but in named some of the numbered paintings
what Pollock created was a new kind of order. As spite of that, the picture goes out into the world (Number 9, 1948 was changed to Summertime;
he admitted not long before he died, he and two around it. It is a complete part of a continuing, Number 30 (or 4), 1950 to Autumn Rhythm;
or three of his associates 'changed the nature of living whole, like a tree in a forest. It is this Number 31, 195o to One) is of more than passing
painting'.19 In 195o, when answering a question latter, rather specific interpretation of 'nature' interest to the whole issue I am raising.
(in a taped interview) as to whether it wasn't that I particularly want to explore because I Another little fact directly underscores how
more difficult to control his liquid, flowing paint believe that Pollock's move to Long Island was important his natural surroundings were for
than the usual brushed-on tube oils, he of decisive significance for his art. him; he had the barn (which he used as a studio)
answered, 'No, I don't think so ... with All of the work that we think of as uniquely moved to one side so that he could see from his
experience—it seems to be possible to control the his dates from the last decade of his life, when he house all the way back across the fields and
flow of paint, to a great extent, and I don't use and his wife lived in the house which they bought marsh to Accabonac Creek. With his dog Gyp or
. . . the accident . . . I deny the accident:2o He (borrowing money from Peggy Guggenheim) on Ahab by his side, he walked down there often or
gently tried to set the record straight, 'I do have Fireplace Road at Springs, Easthampton. tramped through the woods and along the shores
a general notion of what I'm about and what the Consider even the change in titles of the pictures of the bay and the open ocean. Even the short
results will be.'21 He was obviously disturbed by painted before he left New York with those he distance from his back door to his barn-studio
the popular notion of Jack the Dripper, pouring exhibited after he had lived at Springs a whole took him through the buzzing, swaying, living
out pictures in a mindless frenzy. Lee Pollock year — four full seasons. The pictures in the grass.
tells us that 'Jackson was furious' when James earlier show, held at Peggy Guggenheim's The Nature was not something apart from himself
Johnson Sweeney called him 'undisciplined' in Art of This Century Gallery in April, 1946, CI am nature' has to mean that, no matter what
the otherwise 'fine introduction'22 he wrote for have such names as Circumcision, Troubled additional interpretation one gives to it). As he
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