Page 30 - Studio International - June 1973

had identified himself with his painting and phenomena. The relationship to nature of in this sense also the ground is eliminated and
with the act of painting, he now felt himself and Pollock's revolutionary art began to emerge in the homogeneity of the surface is further
his art become one with nature's constant such transitional paintings as the 1946 emphasized. In some pictures, Pollock enriched
movement, beat and change, as he discovered Shimmering Substance and Eyes in the Heat and the already sensuous surface by adding bits of
and absorbed it in the grass, dunes and sea is clearly apparent in Full Fathom Five of 1947. other matter; Full Fathom Five is especially
around Easthampton. As he lived 'in' the These densely active paintings 'sound to the rich in this regard. Several foreign objects are
painting, he lived in nature. One could almost eye' (a Gauguin phrase)30 like the sounds in the embedded in its oil and aluminium paint; but
say of Pollock as van Gogh said of the Japanese grass. Extraordinarily rich in texture, and not the thumb tacks, pennies, cigarettes, paint tube
artists that they live in nature as though they yet so open and weightless in its linear tops, matches, etc., are only discovered with very
themselves were flowers.25 (Comparing Pollock arabesques as his slightly later work, Full close scrutiny. Lost in the life of the painting,
to a flower is not so ludicrously out of key as it Fathom Five is an exquisite web of silver, green, they 'suffer a sea-change into something rich and
might sound to those who have heard only of black and white calligraphy, weaving over and strange'. Pollock's grand scale paintings are
his roughness when he was drinking, and have behind and in and around in layer after layer, curiously both intimate and public in what they
seen only those photographs which emphasize enmeshed with bits of red, purple, yellow, give - and what they ask of us. Being in their
his tragic intensity, and who know nothing of the blue. Its continuously changing movement actual presence is somewhat like sitting in
sweetness and gentleness his friends recall.) evokes multiple sensations of nature: the silky the front row at a symphony concert - one feels
Obviously such paintings as Autumn Rhythm, filament of cobweb gleaming and disappearing mixed up with the music, physically involved in
Lavender Mist, and Blue Poles are not in the sun; the shifting, shimmering grasses the very process of making it.
landscapes in the traditional Western or which move so mysteriously even on a still day; Number 29,195o, a painting on glass which he
Eastern sense; but in a more significant way sea spray swishing along the shore and blowing worked on in Hans Namuth's film, is another of
they are like the landscapes of such masters as over the surface of the water, with the plant and the rather rare instances when he added bits of
the Sung painters, Cézanne or Monet: above animal life of the sea stirring in its depths. foreign matter, here shells, pebbles, string,
all, they are paintings which are metaphors for Pollock told Selden Rodman, 'I'm very pieces of coloured plastic, sand, wire mesh.
the inner life of the external nature in which the representational some of the time, and a little Watching Pollock at work in the film, one sees
artists immersed themselves. Fan K'uan walked all of the time.'31 His Blue (Moby Dick), a vividly the correspondence between his linear
through the snow-clad mountains for months gouache and ink of 1946, is clearly a seascape, movements and the swishing of the grasses
before he put a single stroke on silk for his although it comes at least as much from Miró as around him; on the surface of the glass the
winter landscapes; Monet lost all sense of solid from the Atlantic. In Summertime of 1948 it is insubstantial, spatially ambiguous reflections of
substance in his 25 year-long devoted study of easy to find suggestions of creatures in the sky and clouds come and go. The film also
the reflections and the swishing life in the water swelling and splashing of the lines - hybrids of demonstrates how his sensibility and intellect
garden which he had constructed. When human, animal and insect life. But the analogy controlled the apparent automatism of his
Cézanne rented a room at the Château Noir and between Pollock's painting and nature does not method. While he worked with great speed, he
a cabanon at Bibémus Quarry to paint the Mont rest only on such explicit references in those did not throw the things helter-skelter on to the
Sainte Victoire from those views, surely he did occasions when he did not choose, as he said, to glass; he would pick up an object, a spiralling
so for more than the practical convenience of `veil the imagery', but rather on the never-ending piece of wire, place it on the glass, study it, take
having his painting gear ready at hand. That he motion of matter in an unstable, fluctuating it off, replace it, rapidly but critically building
and Monet and the Chinese landscapist space, which his lines of colour convey. From and rebuilding the intricate design. He
deliberately planned their total experience of the 1947 to 1955 Pollock caught the mobility of life constructed the oils in the same way; as he said
`motifs' whereas Pollock unconsciously absorbed itself in one masterpiece after another: Lucifer about the glass picture, 'Generally it's pretty
nature, and that they represented visual (1947), Arabesque (1948), One (195o), Lavender much the same as all of my paintings.'34
appearances whereas Pollock chose, as he Mist (195o), Autumn Rhythm (1950), Blue Poles It is most unlikely that the things (pebbles,
phrased it, to 'veil the imagery'26 is of less (1952), The Deep (1953). tacks, etc.) in such pictures as Full Fathom Five
consequence, I think, than is the similarity in Pollock could have said of such paintings or the glass painting were intended to carry any
the meaning of their work as it relates to nature. (several of them over 16 feet long) as Monet did specific content or evoke any particular
They all succeeded in expressing what Cézanne of his Waterlilies, that his aim was to 'produce emotional response; they were simply things
referred to as 'the heart of what is before you',27 the illusion of an endless whole, a wave without lying around, at hand. Nonetheless, they keep
the Chinese as the `Ch'i' (`spirit resonance', horizon and without shore'.32 There is no sky, their visual independence; they remain concrete
`energy', 'inner reality') and Pollock as 'the no prescribed eye-level, no point of reference. entities, just as the richly varied blobs, hunks,
energy, the motion, and other inner forces.'28 The lines in Pollock's all-over paintings never drips, ripples, stains, alligator skins and
Pollock said, 'My concern is with the rhythms of stop swinging long enough to delineate or imply splashes, as well as the constantly changing
nature . . . the way the ocean moves . . . I work shapes on a ground (as most previous paintings thick and thin streams of enamel and aluminium
from the inside out, like nature.'29 Those inner had done); instead, they form fields of coloured paint do in Blue Poles, for example.
forces which are at the heart of Pollock's work motion in space, without foreground or Like the things and the lines, the colours also
were not fully expressed until he had lived on background, without beginning or end33 - thus retain their individual existence in the over-all
Long Island through one winter and into the it is not only the mural scale which induces in structure. Pollock was either not much of a
summer. It was only then that, abandoning the the viewer the sensation of being totally colourist or an extraordinarily audacious one.
rough jagged expressionism of such paintings as surrounded by the painting, immersed in it as Many critics would go along with Clement
The Troubled Queen of 1945 and the still faintly the artist himself was in the act of painting it. Greenberg, who wrote in 1947 (a time when he
surrealist imagery of many works like The In Monet's swaying, undulating coloured was still one of the few critics who recognized
Totem, Lesson II (1945), or The Key (1946) reflections and in Pollock's ceaselessly active Pollock as the top American painter of his
with its intense, violently contrasting hues (red- lines - like the veering paths of energy in the generation) that Pollock was 'of no profound
green, yellow-purple) applied in distinct, great chain of life - volumes are dissolved, originality as a colourist'.35 One might say that
harshly outlined shapes - usually of a single dematerialized. At the same time, paradoxically, Pollock was simply not interested in colour
colour - he began to develop his celebrated, the material nature of the paint insistently (which would seem rather curious for someone
all-over linear style, whose dazzling shimmer of demands our sensory response to its enormous who used as much of it as he did); but is it not
continuously changing colour and line conveys variety. This is true even when the paint is thin more likely that he was indifferent to the
his observation and experience of natural and stains the canvas - becoming one with it - customary 'harmoniousness' of hues, and that he
26o