Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  Busboy: Wilson. Gorky always with women: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel. Wolfhounds: Pavia, q. in Gruen, p. 264. Gorky at League classes: Rand: Gorky was a monitor in a League class that included Barnett Newman, who was at the League from 1922–1926. “Towering”: Rose, “Arshile Gorky and John Graham,” p. 63. Gorky’s height and erudition: Rand. Fox and de George: Kaz.

  Tolegian and Pollock living together: CCP. “Joking”; “they would insult”: Horn. “Very dapper”; “aloof”: Kaz. Tolegian in cafeteria: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel. Hauteur, “outlandish jargon”: Rand. Manuel later told Araks he discovered that Gorky was Armenian when he accidentally spilled coffee on him in the lunchroom and Gorky began swearing in Armenian. Gorky was born Vosdanig Manoog Adoian. He arrived in America in 1920 and changed his name to Archele, then Arshele, before settling on Arshile; Rand. Tolegian writing poetry: CCP. Pollock shy: Kaz. “With his high heel”: Wilson. “The smile”: Horn, “JP,” p. 81. “Stupefied”; “just plain dense”; “Jackson always seemed”: Kaz. Resnick: When you talked to him, “it was as if he didn’t understand you.”

  Grosz: Grosz was nominated to teach at the League on March 25, 1932. Despite “his real prejudice against any foreigners” (Emerson), Sloan supported the appointment of George Grosz, calling him “the only modern German painter of whom the French critics think anything.” When only one of the twelve board members voted for Grosz, Sloan resigned in fury. Grosz eventually was invited to join the faculty; Landgren, pp. 102–04. Campbell: Sloan used the Grosz affair as a pretext for a referendum in his losing battle for autocratic rule of the democratic League. Sloan and Lie: See Landgren, pp. 102–04; Campbell; Emerson; Holtzman; Klonis: Sloan simply wanted to be able to dictate faculty selections. “Specific”; “I do everything”: Kaz. “He developed”: Artist, p. 336.

  Unmailed letters: JP to SMP, Sept. 20, 1932. Charles saving drawings: CCP. Fifty-eighth Street speakeasy; “just knock”; League collections; gin with English labels: Kaz. Delaney: Delaney. Mitchell: Campbell; Delaney; Kadish. Mitchell was from Cornwall-on-Hudson. Widespread drinking: Cherry; Kaz. “Joe, you know”: Q. by Delaney.

  12. BENTON

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscripts, brochure, records, and transcript

  Baigell, THB; THB, An American in Art (American); An Artist in America (Artist); Braun and Branchick, THB; Burroughs, THB; Centre Georges Pompidou, JP; Craven, THB; Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture; Fiedler, What Was Literature?; Roosevelt, THB; Yeo and Cook, Maverick with a Paintbrush.

  Matthew Baigell, “THB in the 1920s,” Art Journal, Summer 1970; Thomas Craven, “THB,” Scribner’s, Oct. 1937.

  Maecenas Benton, “Benton Chronology,” July 22, 1915; THB, “The Intimate Story” (Intimate), (unpub. ms. in possession of the Benton Testamentary Trust).

  Western Military Academy; Catalogue and Register, 1906–1907, Upper Alton, Ill.: Western Military Academy, 1907.

  Newton County, Mo., census, 1900.

  Betty Parsons, int. by Kathleen Shorthall for Life, 1959, Time/Life Archives.

  Interviews

  Herman Cherry; Lyman Field; Harry Jackson; Larry James; Rosalind Krauss; Ernestine Lassaw; Ibram Lassaw; Dudley McGovern; Wallace Milam; CCP; FLP; May Tabak Rosenberg; Syd Solomon.

  NOTES

  Incident at Coast Guard Beach: Solomon. Victorian world shaped by women: Douglas, pp. 4–7: Victorian sentimentalism, more prevalent in America even than in England itself, stemmed from “the drive of nineteenth-century American women to gain power through the exploitation of their feminine identity as their society defined it. … Increasingly exempt from the responsibilities of domestic industry, they were in a state of sociological transition. They were becoming the prime consumers of American culture.” Sentimentalism became a political tool for redressing the balance in favor of men that had been further distorted by the industrial revolution, for endowing society with the very sensibilities that were seen as limiting women’s worth; see Douglas, p. 12.

  Artists unproductive or homosexual: Cherry. Impact of industrialization on women and art: Douglas: In the Northeast, this sociological transformation of women from serious-minded, hardworking producers into frivolous, relatively inactive consumers was a result of the industrial revolution. Douglas (p. 55) writes of the transformation of the American home wrought by the industrial revolution: “Formerly an important part of a communal productive process under her direction, it had become a place where her children stayed before they began to work and where her husband rested after the strain of labor. Once her family had looked to her quite literally to clothe and feed them; now they expected a complex blend of nurture and escape from her ‘voluntary’ care.” With a loss of productive capacity came a loss of power.

  Changes in market for literature and art: Douglas, p. 9: These changes in the market “debased” art from the serious to the light, from the noble to the frivolous: “The well-educated intellectual minister of the eighteenth century read omnivorously, but the dense argumentative tracts he tackled forced him to think. … His mid-nineteenth-century descendant was likely to show a love of fiction and poetry and a distaste for polemical theology; he preferred ‘light’ to ‘heavy’ reading. By the same token, numerous observers remarked on the fact that countless young Victorian women spent much of their middle-class girlhoods prostrate on chaise longues with their heads buried in ‘worthless’ novels. Their grandmothers, the critics insinuated, had spent their time studying the Bible and performing useful household chores.”

  “American culture”: Douglas, p. 5. “Enormous need”: Douglas p. 73. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Moby-Dick: Douglas, p. 367: “Melville specifically warned women away from Moby-Dick;” see Fiedler, p. 28. “Mass culture”: Douglas, p. 3. Exclusion of female artists: Ernestine Lassaw; Ibram Lassaw. Harry Jackson, Ernestine Lassaw, and others have noted that several women artists of the period felt compelled to “masculinize” their names; e.g., Grace Hartigan briefly taking the name George Hartigan. Exchanging women: Rosenberg.

  “A pack of precious ninnies”: Artist, p. 281. Epic mural cycle: Baigell, “THB in the 1920s,” p. 425: THB intended a completed cycle of sixty murals. Fight with Ives; “Just about bashed”: Jackson. “Leftists attacked him”: Artist, p. ix. No one more of a man: FLP: “Among dogs, Benton was the bulldog.” Going to whorehouses: Cherry, who later clarified: “Benton went to these places to make drawings. He was completely intent on his work. As an assistant on a mural, my inflamed youth made up what I guess would be called fantasies. Today my ideas of masculinity are different.” Benton’s profaneness and pugnacity: Jackson. Benton’s vulgarity: Artist, p. 145. Benton’s misogyny: Burroughs, p. 113: “He was inclined to ignore his female students completely.” When Burroughs asked him about the place of women in the art world of the 1930s, he said, “You never heard of any female Rembrandts or El Grecos—interesting, isn’t it?” Jackson a willing student: “On retrouvera encore Benton dans Ie côté cowboy, dans Ie rôle homme de l’ouest, dans ces déguisements qui jusqu’à la fin de sa vie accompagneront Pollock”; “Pollock, Jung et Picasso,” entretien avec Claire Stoullig, in Centre Georges Pompidou, p. 46. See also, Burroughs, p. 114: “Although seemingly quite different personalities, they also had much in common: the Midwesterners’ pride and distrust of the Easterners and Academics; the need to shock people with their behavior and statements; parents divided over their careers; and the crude, obscene language when drinking.” Burroughs could have added that they both had strikingly similar love-hate relationships with their mothers; both rode the freights and worked as surveyors; both risked becoming dandies at a young age, and had to fight to prove their manhood; both struggled against a natural lack of technical facility; both boasted of their successes with women but felt awkward around them and demonstrated little need for their company; both had become artists to the displeasure of their fathers and to the inordinate pride of their mothers; both would steal supplies when poor and desperate—Benton, from Macy’s (Burro
ughs, p. 47), JP from the WPA storeroom; Krauss, recalling LK.

  Founding of Neosho: 1839; James. Wood and stone house: James: Benton called it a stone house, but in the only photo of the building, taken after it burned down in 1917, it seems to be a structure largely of wood. “Marvels” of the Benton home: Intimate, pp. 3–6. Birth date: Burroughs, p. 29. “Southern hill people”; “frontiersmen”; “tidewater aristocrats”: Intimate, pp. 42–43. “Old Bullion Benton”: Burroughs, p. 31. Thomas Hart in every generation: McGovern. Welsh blood; physique and disposition: Intimate, p. 43. THB uses the word “phlegmatic,” but he seems to have meant “choleric.” “From obscurity”: Intimate, p. 2.

  Lizzie choosing M. E.: Intimate, p. 8. “Was not in any sense”: Intimate, p. 21. “A tall, willowy”; “sang and tinkled”: Intimate, p. 8. Lizzie a spoiled baby: Intimate, p. 24. Waxahachie: Burroughs, p. 29. “Celtic”-looking: Intimate, p. 44. “Electness: Intimate, p. 45: “The Wises saw themselves as superior to and separate from other people and rarely let down the barriers protecting that elevation.” “Found themselves”: Intimate, p. 16. Lizzie’s different goal: Intimate, p. 17. “Pictures on the wall”: Intimate, p. 65. St. Louis gowns; “brunette handsomeness”: Intimate, p. 24. Lizzie a political asset: Intimate, pp. 25–26. Bonhomie: Intimate, p. 26. M. E.‘s populism: Intimate, p. 31. “Lizzie Wise may have been”: Intimate, p. 8. “Plain men”: Intimate, p. 3. Lizzie’s efforts to control M. E.: Intimate, pp. 54–55. Indignant screams; Tom frightened; “I was aware”: Intimate, p. 20. “A plain manifestation”: Intimate, p. 23.

  “I was conditioned”: Intimate, p. 3. Douglas, p. 8: “Middle-class literary women lacked power of any crudely tangible kind and they were careful not to lay claim to it. Instead they wished to exert ‘influence,’ which they eulogized as a religious force. … This was the suasion of moral and psychic nature, and it had a good deal less to do with the faith of the past and a good deal more to do with the advertising industry of the future than its proponents would have liked to believe.” “Influence” was to be asserted through psychological insight and manipulation. Horace Bushnell said of a wife’s role: “[Hers] is not an ambitious noisy power; it is silent, calm, persuasive, and often so deep as to have its hold deeper than consciousness itself;” q. in Mary Bushnell Cheney, Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, New York: 1880, p. 111, q. in Douglas, pp. 61–62.

  Tom advising on choice of dresses: Intimate, pp. 66, 105. Embroidery and crewelwork: Burroughs, p. 31. Lizzie’s flowers: Intimate, p. 95. “More in the spirit”: Intimate, pp. 95–96. “Unusual interest”: Burroughs, p. 31. Preparation for parties: Intimate, p. 105. “Her taste”: Intimate, p. 66. “Rid[ing] in a high”: Intimate, p. 13. Packed lunch: Intimate, p. 125. Bringing flowers: Intimate, p. 34. “The mooncalf age”: Artist, p. 12. Parties: Intimate, p. 112.

  Two worlds: Intimate, p. 32: “As it is with most boys, I tended to regard my father as a more interesting person than my mother and to see his activities in a more glamorous light than hers.” M. E.‘s cronies: Artist, p. 7. M. E.‘s jokes and stories: Intimate, p. 20. “Expository men”: Artist, p. 5. Man’s world: Intimate, p. 19: “a world of men.” “Always reeking”: Intimate, p. 49. “Erecting and mending”: Intimate, pp. 18–19. “An addiction”; M. E. talking to himself: Artist, p. 5. M. E. working with figures; “in moody silence”: Intimate, p. 26.

  Tom asked to kill woodpeckers: Intimate, p. 36. “The worst game-shy”: Intimate, p. 37. “Visions”: Intimate, p. 47. “The homeliest man”: Craven, p. 9. Lobbying for better address; “keep his Washington”: Intimate, p. 54. “After hearing”: Intimate, pp. 54–55. “A socially proper address”: Intimate, p. 55.

  Lizzie convinced Tom a genius: Burroughs, p. 31. “Drawing pencils”; Lizzie keeping Tom’s pictures; “were saying”: Intimate, p. 64. Art tutors: Intimate, p. 73. Corcoran lessons; Western High School: Intimate, p. 84. Tom attended art classes at the Corcoran Gallery, and then, in 1903–04, at Western High School in Georgetown; Yeo and Cook, pp. 11, 22. Drawing trains and ships; “parading behind”: Intimate, p. 51. Books on Indians: Intimate, p. 81: Tom still had these reports of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology when JP met him in 1930. “Bitter disappointment”; “as a depictor”: Intimate, p. 73.

  “Something like a Puritan”: Intimate, p. 65. Burroughs, p. 37: “In spite of an early intimacy between father and son, the father later tried his best to prevent the boy from becoming an artist; he was profoundly prejudiced against all artists.” M. E.‘s attitude turned “from indifference to active opposition … when we moved to Q Street”; Intimate, p. 67. But regardless of his reservations, even though he assuredly would have preferred to see his son follow him into the law, M. E. continued to subsidize Tom’s art far into his adult years. “I knew that there was money at home for my education and I set myself to get it. With my mother’s backing, I finally succeeded and set out, when I was nineteen years old, for Paris”; Artist, p. 33. It may have been his mother’s backing, but it was also his father’s consent. In later years, even after his wife had deserted him to join Tom in New York, the colonel would send Lizzie an extra twenty dollars for Christmas expenses and even some meal and flour for corn bread, knowing how fond his son was of it; Burroughs, p. 54. “The boy”: Intimate, p. 64. “Were sorry”: Artist, p. 25.

  Lizzie introduced to President; “Overwhelmed”; “seventh heaven”; “probably the happiest”: Intimate, p. 69. “To teach the home folks”; Washington-style dinners: Intimate, p. 85. “Set all the food”: Intimate, pp. 85–86. “Mighty uppity”; “[My father] constantly admonished”: Intimate, p. 86. Promenades; “Mother outshone”: Intimate, p. 87. “Went into hysterics”; M. E.‘s explanation for defeat: Intimate, p. 102. “You can’t take”: Q. in Intimate, p. 102. “[She] leaned”: Burroughs, p. 34, q. from the journal of Ellen Maury Slayden, wife of a Virginia congressman. Sisters coming to care for Lizzie: Intimate, p. 121. End of career: Artist, p. 15. “Moody spells”; adding numbers: Intimate, p. 26.

  Abandoning art: Intimate, p. 105. Picking fights; “scoundrelly Republicans”: Intimate, p. 115. Complaints about “quarrelsome” Benton; Intimate, pp. 116–17. Chores: Intimate, p. 89. “Where we added”: Artist, p. 9. Athletic hopes dashed: Intimate, p. 110. Football team: Burroughs, p. 34: Tom was competitive in swimming, boxing, football, and baseball. We have evidence only of wrestling, football, and boxing, although, by Tom’s own admission, he wasn’t very good at football or boxing. Being cut from the squad: Intimate, p. 124. “A hero worship”: Intimate, p. 127.

  Boxing: Intimate, p. 110. Burlesque shows; Wagner; drawing opera scenes: Intimate, p. 111. “Picture-making”: Intimate, p. 108. “Saddle-maker”; “violin-maker”: Intimate, p. 80. Another way to prove that an artist could also be a man was to treat it merely as a pastime, an entertainment, like whittling or juggling. Working in the fields, young Tom “drew comic pictures to amuse his companions;” Intimate, p. 88. At other times, he claimed that drawing “excused him from chores” (Intimate), and later, in military school, that it “relieved me of boresome military drills”; Intimate, p. 137. A few years later, Tom would sidle into the art world as a cartoonist, just as JP entered with thoughts of becoming a mason. Mr. Calhoun; “a big city man”; “a little puffy”; “a great talker”; “We could hardly”: Intimate, p. 122. “He was most enthusiastic”; Paris and “La vie de Bohème”: Intimate, p. 128. Benton (Intimate, p. 128) remembers his father saying, “‘Something is wrong with that man,’ but he wouldn’t say what.” “[His] stories”: Intimate, p. 129. Surveying crew: Intimate, p. 132. “A wild boomtown”: Intimate, p. 131. “That irrepressible itch”: Artist, p. 17. “On Saturday nights”: Artist, p. 18. Relatives; “respectable people”: Intimate, pp. 131–32. “The right kind”: Intimate, p. 132.

  With Calhoun in hotel; “and see what a city”; “became excited”; “I caught”; “embarrassed”: Intimate, p. 133. No more contact with Calhoun: Still, Tom asked for Calhoun’s help in arranging a Joplin exhibition for the works that he had painted as a student in P
aris; THB to M. E. and Elizabeth Benton, n.d. “Remembered for years”: Intimate, pp. 133–34: “I almost felt sorry for him. Years later, losing caution with age, he carried his homosexual activities too far for the Joplin area to stomach and was run out for corrupting young boys. Vice was an accepted part of Joplin life but not Mr. Calhoun’s kind.”

  Official account of career choice; “grinning fellows”; “they laid”; “how it was done”; “‘so’”: Artist, p. 19. “I don’t think”: Artist, p. 20. “Rehabilitation”: Intimate, p. 129. “Huge masculine figures”: Unidentified source, q. in Burroughs, p. 48. Arrival in Chicago; “genius outfit”; scuffles: Artist, p. 32. “He bought himself”: Burroughs, p. 42. “Notoriously drunk”: Craven, “THB,” p. 35: “Most of the time, fighting in cafés and quarreling with girls.”

  Lizzie abandoning M. E: Burroughs, p. 48. Lizzie helping Tom avoid combat: Artist, p. 43; Baigell, pp. 48, 53; Burroughs, p. 52. Lizzie went to Washington to see Secretary of War Daniels to make sure that he got into the comparatively safe navy; Burroughs, pp. 52–53. Honeymoon at Lizzie’s: Burroughs, p. 64. Lizzie invited to Vineyard: Burroughs, p. 72. Permanent house: Burroughs, p. 78. Designs for embroidery and crewelwork: Burroughs, p. 31. “As the last”; Tom drawing train incident: Intimate, p. 52.

  13. JACK SASS

  SOURCES

  See Chapter 11.

  NOTES

  “[Jackson] had no”: Artist, p. 332. “Some strange irregularity”: Craven, p. 340. “Jack’s talents”: Artist, p. 332. “He had great”: Benton to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964. “Halting”; “badly”; “crude”: Craven, pp. 341, 58–59. “[Tom] made his”: Craven, p. 340. “Lack of technical”: Burroughs, p. 42. “They were all”: Artist, p. 34. “Great talents”; “intense interests”: Artist, p. 332. “I [liked] the idea”: Artist, p. 32. “We agreed”: Artist, p. 36. Craven, p. 341: Benton’s “most gracious defender was Macdonald-Wright who steadfastly maintained that buried in his halting, badly imitative, and crude performances were the seeds of genius.” “I had seen”: Artist, p. 332. Benton a student of different movements: Burroughs, pp. 51–52. “Casting around”: American, p. 102. “With every whiff”: Artist, p. 38. Benton and Weichsel: American, pp. 35–36. Benton and Dewey: American, pp. 167–68.