ART-US: Seeing the Method Behind Jackson Pollock’s Madness

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Jan 26 1999 (IPS) - People viewing Jackson Pollock’s paintings can be forgiven for seeing a seemingly random series of splatters, drips and blobs; after all, that is what the artist himself saw when he poured and dripped paint on his large canvases.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York, however, has embarked on a mission to show the method behind the madness of the chaotic, yet intricate, paintings – bearing titles like ‘Number 13A, 1948’ and ‘Number 18, 1951’ – that form Pollock’s work.

As the exhibit, which opened last November and ends here next month, shows, Pollock’s major paintings from the late 1940s helped to define Abstract Expressionism by pioneering radical, sometimes improvisational, experiments in colour and form.

For all the anarchy of Pollock’s technique, in which he would sometimes dump or pour paint directly from the can onto large canvases lying flat on his studio, the paintings themselves often balance violent brushstrokes and delicate lines.

In combining chaos and harmony, the paintings demonstrate one of the principles of Abstract Expressionism: that spontaneity by artists can help to show emotional truths and the world of unconscious imagination.

What the Museum’s exhibit underscores effectively is that it took Pollock years of struggle and experimentation – during which time he performed menial jobs in the Depression-era United States – to develop his distinctive style. As Pollock himself later argued, it wasn’t “simple to splash a Pollock out”.

The exhibition highlights dozens of pieces Pollock produced in the 1930s before finding his signature style between 1947 and 1950, and reveals how the earlier paintings combine totemic, grotesque and often somber elements similar to the art of Mexican muralists Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Siqueiros, in fact, led an experimental workshop attended by Pollock in the late 1930s, in which the young artist first experimented with splattering and pouring liquid enamel paint and using the results to create unusually textured, boldly colourful work.

As his style developed, Pollock radically shifted painting techniques, sometimes allowing paint to drip from holes punctured out of paint-cans, sometimes painting with sticks or pouring the paint over objects – like car keys or wires – glued directly to the canvas. At the same time, however, he showed a keen eye for balancing colours and lines to suggest harmony in works that otherwise might just seem formless and apocalyptic.

One of the amusing features of the Museum of Modern Art exhibit is that, in addition to showing Pollock’s paintings in all their boisterous, anarchic glory, the exhibit’s curators have arranged for jazz accompanists to provide a musical counterpoint.

During the exhibit’s run in New York, several jazz musicians offered afternoon performances. The curators have even come out with a compact disc of ‘Pollock Jazz’ – including compositions by Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong and others – showing a link between the jaunty improvisatory music of the painter’s time and his own exuberantly spontaneous style.

There are other highlights designed to foster appreciation of Pollock’s unusual oeuvre. The museum has lovingly recreated a life- size replica of Pollock’s Long Island studio to show how small and intimate it was; and it is also showing every day Hans Namuth’s documentary films displaying Pollock attacking his canvases to produce his paintings.

Of course, even when Pollock died in a driving accident in 1956 at the age of 44, critics asked the crucial question: “But is it art?” The exhibit – the first major U.S. Pollock retrospective in more than 30 years – not only answers that question affirmatively but has a great deal of fun doing it.