Wigal Pollock

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78310-748-3
Verlag: Parkstone International
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 378 Seiten

Born in 1912, in a small town in Wyoming, Jackson Pollock embodied the American dream as the country found itself confronted with the realities of a modern era replacing the fading nineteenth century. Pollock left home in search of fame and fortune in New York City. Thanks to the Federal Art Project he quickly won acclaim, and after the Second World War became the biggest art celebrity in America. For De Kooning, Pollock was the 'icebreaker'. For Max Ernst and Masson, Pollock was a fellow member of the European Surrealist movement. And for Motherwell, Pollock was a legitimate candidate for the status of the Master of the American School. During the many upheavals in his life in Nez York in the 1950s and 60s, Pollock lost his bearings - success had simply come too fast and too easily. It was during this period that he turned to alcohol and disintegrated his marriage to Lee Krasner. His life ended like that of 50s film icon James Dean behind the wheel of his Oldsmobile, after a night of drinking.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wigal, Donald

Leseproben

, 1938-1939.

Pencil and colour pencil on paper, 15.2x18.2cm,

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

(405)

Meeting Krasner

During the summer of the 1936 Siqueiros workshop, Sanford married Arloie Conaway, but they continued to share the Eighth Street apartment with Jackson. Jackson then reluctantly tried to live alone, but that year also he met his future wife, the artist Leonore Krassner. Leonore was the name given to her by her Russian-Jewish parents. Reluctantly conforming to the male-dominated field of art at the time, she changed her name to the unisex moniker, Lee, and to the more popular spelling, Krasner (with one ‘s’).

Krasner got the WPA to hire Pollock again. He worked in a printing shop, cleaning the ink rollers. It is very likely at this time that he learned a great deal about the qualities and handling of commercial paints.

Krasner introduced Pollock to Kandinsky, Mercedes Carles, and Herbert Matta, as well as to her teacher, Hofmann. Those contacts would eventually lead to yet other influential people and networks of artists, critics, gallery owners, sponsors and the contemporary New York art world. Kandinsky and Hofmann especially befriended Pollock.

Once Lee moved into the apartment with Pollock, he began to rely on her considerable strength for nearly everything for the rest of his life. Krasner first met Pollock in 1936 when she was still living with Igor Pantuhoff. While rubbing up against her during a dance, Pollock crudely asked her ‘in a loud stage whisper’ if she liked to have sex. She walked away from him.

This kind of behaviour was apparently not unusual for Pollock, even when he first met: women. Similar remarks were made by several women in interviews with oral biographers, but are not included here (294). Guggenheim’s biographer stresses Krasner denied Naifeh & Smith interviewed her, albeit they insist they did so seven times (322). Krasner reported that she refused to talk with them (293).

When seeing the name Pollock at the McMillen ‘gallery,’ Krasner did not associate it with the rude man she had met six years earlier (387). The Ed Harris film recreates the 1941 scene, showing Pollock’s future wife, Lee Krasner, visiting him for the first time since the encounter of years before.

In its obituary of Krasner, mentioned when Krasner and Pollock first met “the Brooklyn-born Krasner was the better credentialled of the two and helped move Pollock toward the avant-garde.” Lee’s reputation as an artist grew during this time so when they next met she was by far the more established painter. noted Krasner “continued to paint in a mutually-respectful, non-competitive partnership with him during the years of poverty and productivity on their farm in East Hampton, N.Y.”

referred to her as a “pioneer Abstract Expressionist painter of the New York School, whose mastery of draftsmanship and color was informed by an angry toughness and an exceptionally strong sense of rhythm.” It added she “showed the influence of Matisse and Picasso as well as Jackson Pollock.” (109)

In 1937, Picasso’s was created for the Paris World Exhibition. In 1937, MoMA held one of the largest shows ever by a living and still-working artist which included 362 Picasso works, including and , which the museum had also just acquired. In 1939, Freud died. John Steinbeck’s, won the Pulitzer. Einstein writes a letter to FDR urging a project to develop an atomic bomb before Germany gets one.

Pollock surely saw Picasso’s at MoMA during 1937. It was a work he said was “terribly important to him,” according to Krasner (366). Also that year Jackson and Sanford rented a house in Pennsylvania for the summer. Sanford convinced Jackson he should begin psychiatric therapy for his alcoholism.

Psychoanalysis

Jackson returned to psychoanalytical therapy with the Jungian, Joseph L. Henderson. The following year Henderson left New York, so Pollock continued treatment with Dr. Violet Staub de Laszlo. With both, he used his drawings to aid him, including those in his dream journal.

Pollock’s sketchbook is now encased for protection at the Pierpont Morgan Library in Manhattan. Copies of the pages made before the encasement were an essential part of the insightful analysis by Francis V. O’Connor in his doctoral dissertation written in 1965 at Johns Hopkins University. It is titled, (77). Insights from his studies are seen in his subsequent articles on Pollock and are also referenced in many biographies and other commentaries.

O’Connor also wrote the extensive 1967 book, , for MoMA (78). His brilliant 1998 lecture on works which are key to understanding Pollock is reproduced in Helen Harrison’s anthology, (46) and titled, . It is possibly the most insightful of all writings about Pollock’s personality. Three of O’Connor’s four are included in Harrison’s anthology. Pollock would be in and out of therapy for the rest of his life, during which he would have periods of sobriety, productivity, and prolific creativity, followed by prolonged periods of irresponsible drunkenness, violence, creative blocks and depression.

Pollock seemed to have a love/hate relationship not only with Lee, but also with his psychiatrists. Yet, Kligman recalled she once asked him what he would like to come back as if he believed in reincarnation. After thinking about it, he said, “A psychiatrist.” (142)

The Drunk

In his Pollock-inspired novel, Updike has his Krasner-like character say her husband/artist “was pathetic when he was drunk… He reverted to infancy, this drastic insecurity and megalomania, burbling… doing whatever it took to make him the centre of attention, punching somebody. He liked to upset a table with all the food on it.” (194) The most famous example is the day he completed the psychologically draining demonstration for the Hans Namuth movie. The drama caused by Pollock after the filming has been described and shown in several media.

Both Charles and Sanford made special efforts to help their troubled younger brother. Sande rearranged his apartment so Jackson could have...