Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  Ben-Shmuel opinionated: Schlemowitz. Exhibitionistic: Pavia. Ben-Shmuel not drinker: Grossman. “Gentle eccentric”: Kaz. “Lots of personality”: Pavia. “Outlandish”: Kaz. “Weird.”; “nuts”; “crazy”: Grossman. Brutish to women: Resnick. Humiliating to women; “to him they were”; Impotence: Grossman: “Morris Levine told me Ben-Shmuel was impotent. And he was probably the best friend [Ben-Shmuel] had.” Latent homosexuality: Grossman: “That was my feeling about him later on, when I got to know a little more about life. That was his problem—he was a latent homosexual.”

  Ben-Shmuel working alfresco; Browne’s studio; Katz an apprentice: Kaz. Ben-Shmuel undisciplined: Renee Gross. Ben-Shmuel haphazard: Grossman. Ben-Shmuel articulate: Kadish. “If he liked you”: Schlemowitz. From marble to rubbish: Ben-Shmuel, “Carving,” p. 503. “Sixth sense”: Ben-Shmuel, “Carving,” p. 502. Fired clay: Mexican Madonna (1927), carved in fired clay to resemble the sculptures of Gauguin. Bronze: Saint Sebastian (1932), boldly attenuated and vertical in the manner of the German sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck. Near-abstraction: Torso of a Young Boy (1929), in black granite, with the simplicity of a classical Cambodian temple carving. Monumentalism: Portrait of a Young Woman (1929), in Scotch granite.

  Ben-Shmuel proud: Resnick. Hammer and chisel to compressed air: Brodsky, p. 13. Carving vs. sculpting: Grossman. Michelangelo: Although carving was “the technique Michelangelo used and advocated all his life” (Hibbard, p. 15), he did occasionally make wax models for some works, including the David (Hibbard, p. 34), and used assistants for at least some of the rough carving; Hibbard, pp. 97, 101, 109–110, 112, 172. Late Greeks first carvers: The Egyptians apparently had used enlarging and transferring devices, but the purposes were structural and architectural, not plastic.

  Zorach: One of the new breed was William Zorach, a Lithuanian immigrant to Cleveland, who returned briefly to Europe to study art in Paris. He exhibited in both the 1911 Salon d’Automne in Paris and the 1913 Armory Show in New York. It wasn’t until 1917 that he made his first sculpture as an adult, a relief carved from wood, and by 1922 he was committed both to sculpture and to direct carving. Zorach preferred archetypal subjects—“the relationships between man and woman, woman and child and child and animal”—and conferred on them a primitive monumentality; Whitney Museum of American Art, p. 323.

  Flannagan: The greatest sculptor of the new movement, John Flannagan, was attracted to direct carving, not for reasons of monumentality, but of intimate mysticism. In a tragic life marked by alcoholism, nervous breakdowns, a severe automobile accident, and suicide, he, too, began sculpting in 1922, turning, five years later, from wood to stone. He preferred working natural field stones which he collected on long trips. He usually derived his subjects—an elephant, a duck, a bird hatching from an egg—from the original shape of the stone, creating images so true that they seem to have emerged from the material rather than from his imagination. An admirer of Eastern art, especially that of India, he called his works “occult fossils.” Like JP, he was especially interested in images of transformation, epitomized by the later work, Triumph of the Egg, catching the chick at the moment of its emergence from the shell; Whitney Museum of American Art, pp. 271–72. “A sea of marble”: Brodsky, “Concerning Sculpture and Robert Laurent,” pp. 13–14.

  Pollock quitting Sloan for Laurent: Feb. 3, 1933: registration card. “A native”: Paraphrased from Frost, “Laurent,” p. 10. Laurent was born in France on June 29, 1890, to a fisherman’s daughter and a weaver’s son on the same Brittany coast to which Gauguin was drawn about the same time. Under the sponsorship of Hamilton Easter Field, a wealthy American painter, Laurent came to America for nearly three years, then continued his education in Paris where he was particularly impressed by the rounded bronze women of Aristide Maillol. In 1907, he joined Field on a grand tour of Europe and three years later moved to the United States to begin his career as a sculptor, Moak, pp. 13, 15, 17.

  “Quite delicious”: Q. in Moak, p. 17. Pavia: Laurent introduced his students to Cubism. Laurent preferring carving: Laurent (q. in Moak, p. 18) said he “always preferred cutting directly in materials” and that he usually started “cutting without a preconceived idea” because this kept him “more alert and open to surprises.” Works cast from plaster: Laurent wrote in the early 1930s (q. in Moak, p. 20): “Working in plaster is a combination of modelling and direct cutting.” Laurent’s inheritance: Laurent was the childless Field’s only heir; Moak, p. 17.

  Laurent’s career was not completely free of controversy. Only months before JP enrolled in his class, his Goose Girl, based on the myth of Leda and the Swan, was exhibited at Radio City Music Hall. The statue of a nude girl with an amorous goose instantly ignited a fury of Puritan outrage; Karp, p. 67. “Just what is the Goose Girl doing?” reporters demanded; q. in Frost, “Laurent,” p. 11. Despite rumors that the brouhaha had been stirred up by the Music Hall’s director as an opening-night publicity stunt (Frost, “Laurent,” pp. 11, 37), an “art expert,” DeWolf Hopper, was called in to quell the rising public outcry. Hopper’s response (q. in Gutman, p. 77) was inconclusive—“Well, I’ve had six wives, but none of them looked like that”—but the statue was removed nevertheless, causing some outrage at the nearby League. Despite its removal, Laurent was and continued to be a favorite among the Rockefellers, especially Mrs. John D., Jr., Mrs. Nelson, and Abby Rockefeller Milton; Frost, “Laurent,” p. 37.

  Laurent’s basement studio; Pavia’s father: Pavia: “My father thought sculptors were rich people, because he worked for sculptors and they made those lousy monuments you see all over Italy.” “Well, you might”: Frost, “Laurent,” p. 37. Laurent’s parties; trips to speakeasy: Pavia. “I had many things”: JP to SMP, SLM, and MJP, Mar. 8, 1933. “I always feel”; “cutting in stone”; “it holds my interest”: JP to SMP, SLM, and MJP, Mar. 25, 1933. Pollock doing janitorial work: Horn, q. in Potter, p. 45. “Persistently searching”: Ben-Shmuel, “Carving,” p. 508. Pollock abandoning stones: Horn. Stone head: OC&T 1042, IV, p. 121.

  Pollock going to Ben-Shmuel’s summer place: FLP to MLP, Apr. 12, 1933; Pavia. Thirty miles northeast of Philadelphia. Stone yard: Pavia. Various granites: Ben-Shmuel, “Carving,” pp. 502, 505, 508. Davis: Kaz; photo in possession of AAA. Davis a student of Ben-Shmuel; wealthy; cosmopolitan: Kaz. Davis drinking with Pollock: Horgan. Jackson not traveling with Frank: FLP. Or with Tolegian: Tolegian, int. by Hoag, Feb. 12, 1965. “[The apprenticeship]”: FLP to MLP, Apr. 12, 1933. Jackson moving: Chronology prepared by CCP for EFP, Feb. 1975. East Eighth Street: EFP.

  Ben-Shmuel’s violence: Resnick. The Devll’s Hole; Davis’s house and studio: Horgan: Built by her father-in-law. Horgan, our primary source for JP’s association with Davis, lost track of JP until 1949, when she saw her second husband reading Life magazine: “I just happened to walk by him and look over his shoulder and see a picture of Jack. ‘I know him,’ I said. ‘That’s Jack Pollock.’ I said I’d known him when I was just a young kid.” Horgan’s information is confirmed by DeMeio, her employer many years ago, and by Wagner, whose family lived in one of three other houses on the same isolated road as Davis’s cabin, and who remembers JP as a “blond Polish boy.” Dark: DeMeio. Squirrels, deer, and pheasant: Miller. Wild turkey; “Going into that hollow”: DeMeio. “Houseboy”: Q. by Horgan. Horgan doing housecleaning: DeMeio; Horgan. Having models come in; sketching and modeling: Horgan; Wagner. Going to Storm’s house; lamb stew; square dances; Pollock going into New York with Davis: Horgan.

  Continuing to see Davis: Horgan. Never speaking of Davis: There is no mention of JP’s association with Davis in the official record, nor is there any memory of it among his family and close friends. Pollock renting room: Busa. Pollock failing to register: Registration card. Pollock visiting the League: Busa. Seen in Bridgman’s class: Delaney; Kaz. The school records don’t show him officially enrolled in the class; registration card. But the skull that appeared in JP’s room at this time (Busa) and Bridgman’s interest in skeletal analys
is indicate that this could be the time he studied with Bridgman. Pollock seen arguing with Gorky: Pavia. No longer bragging about Charles: Horn.

  Pollock still eager for Rita; hinting about an affair: Busa. Jackson’s silence: Kron. Alcohol legal: The Twenty-first Amendment was ratified on February 2, 1933. “A dog in spring”: Busa. “Roaring like a Satyr”: Horn, “JP,” p. 83. “Wild Indian”: Resnick. “A maniac”: EFP. “Mr. Hyde”: Horn, “JP,” p. 83. Fight in Harlem: Busa: “If Americans”: Q. by Busa.

  Springarns: Springarn: J. E. Springarn was also a founder of the NAACP. Formal affair: Kron. The Springarns lived at 9 West Seventy-third Street. Amy Springarn: Born in 1883, making her fifty at the time. Amy a student of Benton: Springarn. Jackson and friends playing at Springarn party; “sophisticated”; “the maids”; Pollock heading for bar; Pollock and Tolegian drifting apart: Kron. Tolegian’s one-man show: Hale, “Ex-Fresnan.” “I don’t give”: Q. by Delaney. Tolegian denying knife incident: Q. in Potter, p. 41. Knife incident: Burroughs, p. 119; Darrow, q. in Friedman, p. 26.

  Busa’s background: Busa. Fifty-eighth Street rooms; Busa telling Jackson about time on rails: Busa. Although they were tireless in their exchange of sexual stories, the Pollock brothers surrounded the subject of homosexuality with a cordon of silence. JP knew nothing of Charles’s encounter soon after arriving in Los Angeles in 1922 with a fellow artist who, misconstruing Charles’s long hair and Edwardian clothing, promptly propositioned him. Nor did Frank speak of an incident during his “dandy days” in New York: “I was standing on Fifth Avenue, out by myself with a goddamned cane, and some guy came up to me and said, ‘Where should we go?’ Jesus Christ! I said, ‘You hit on the wrong guy.’ I hightailed it out of there and never carried a cane again.” Both came away from their experiences disgusted, distrustful, and portentously silent. SWP: “Charles is the most liberal man in the world. The only thing he won’t tolerate is homosexuality. Sande, too.”

  Coaxing Jackson home “upright”: Jules. “Run me over”: Resnick. Punching out store windows: Karl Fortress, q. in Potter, p. 54. “Comatose” silence: Wilson. Ending in the gutter: Kaz. Night boat: Kaz; Pavia. Pavia says it was the Albany Night Boat. Unscrewing light bulbs: Pavia. Threatening to jump overboard: Kaz.

  Ten years’ absence from sculpture: Kadish. Skull “borrowed” from Bridgman: Busa: JP was kicked out of the rooming house on Fifty-eighth Street when the landlady discovered the skull sitting on his bed and thought it was a bad omen. (The skull was still in JP’s studio at the time of his death.) Woman with five figures: OC&T 10, I, p. 9. Woman with crowd: OC&T 59, I, p. 46. Style not Benton’s: CCP: In 1933, JP was doing small experimental works in a style unlike Benton’s; CCP to FVOC, Dec. 17, 1963, q. in FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 50. Ryder’s show: Solomon, p. 56, citing Busa. Pollock studying Ryder monograph: Price, Ryder. Sentimental Journey and Going West: Solomon, pp. 56–57. Pollock and Death Rides the Wind: OC&T 5 and 6, I, p. 5; see FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 163. Forgery: Ryder scholar (name withheld by request). Going West: OC&T 16, I, p. 16; see FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 166. The Wagon: OC&T 2, I, p. 3; see FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” pp. 165–66. Painting of farm family: Unpublished painting in possession of Robert Miller. “‘All visible objects’”: Melville, p. 164. Poker games and three-card monte: Busa. Pollock’s doodles: OC&T 391, III, p. 7.

  Self-portrait: OC&T 9, I, p. 8. Ryderesque gloom: FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” pp. 167–68: This self-portrait may have been patterned after Ryder’s own early mature self-portrait, which JP could have seen. Both are small, and just as the work by JP is isolated on a white ground with an edge of raw canvas showing, the work by Ryder is thinly painted at the bottom. The work by Ryder was not in the 1932 catalogue by Price (Ryder) but was exhibited at the Kleeman Galleries in New York in October and early November 1935 and published in Art Digest on November 15, 1935, p. 10. The Kleeman Galleries were at 38 East Fifty-seventh Street, the Ferargil Galleries at 63 East Fifty-seventh Street; since JP was associated with the Ferargil Galleries through Rita Benton, it is almost certain that he would have seen the Ryder exhibition. Hunter, “JP,” p. 6: JP’s works of this period “showed many of the mannerisms and captured something of the emotional atmosphere of Ryder’s dream landscapes.”

  17. THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscript, document, and transcript

  Allen, Since Yesterday; THB, An Artist in America (Artist); Bernstein, The Lean Years; Brittain, Thrice a Stranger; Burroughs, THB; Congdon, The Thirties; Ellis, The Epic of New York City; Friedman, JP; Hamilton, In America Today; Josephson, Infidel in the Temple; Kazin, Starting Out in the Thirties; Marling, Tom Benton and His Drawings; Mayhew, ed., Martha’s Vineyard; McElvaine, The Great Depression; McKinzie, The New Deal for Artists; Mumford, The Early Years; New York Panorama; OC&T, JP; Potter, To a Violent Grave; Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze; Solomon, JP; Still, Mirror for Gotham; The WPA Guide to New Orleans.

  “No One Has Starved,” Fortune, Sept. 1932; William Rubin, “JP and the Modern Tradition, Part I: 1. The Myths and the Paintings,” Artforum, Feb. 1967; Mary Heaton Vorse, “A School for Bums,” The New Republic, April 29, 1951.

  FVOC, “The Genesis of JP: 1912 to 1943” (Ph.D. thesis), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1965.

  Chronology prepared by CCP for EFP, Feb. 1975, AAA.

  SLM, int. by Kathleen Shorthall, Nov. 9, 1959, for Life, Time/Life Archives.

  Interviews

  Pamela Arceneaux; T. P. Benton; James Brooks; Polly Burroughs; Peter Busa; Robert Cooter; Whitney Darrow, Jr.; Karen Del Pilar; Axel Horn; Reuben Kadish; Gerome Kamrowski; Maria Piacenza Kron; ACM; Charles Mattox; Sophia Mumford; Eleanor Piacenza; CCP; EFP; MJP; MLP; Rachel Scott; Jim Sleeper; Araks Tolegian; Steve Wheeler; Reginald Wilson.

  NOTES

  Mitchell appearing: CCP. Darrow appearing; Jackson being held: Darrow. The jail at the corner of Tenth Street and Sixth Avenue was torn down in 1974. Wrecking nightclub: EFP. “Something minor”: CCP. Howe: CCP; EFP; Darrow. He was a colleague of Elizabeth’s on the New York World. Probably because of his patrician background and Princeton deportment, Darrow was also once asked to go to court in JP’s behalf; Potter, p. 48. Howe; “severe admonishment”: EFP.

  “I had hoped”: FLP to CCP, Oct. 10, 1933. Charles’s vigil; “ask to see”; Greenwich House murals: CCP: He doesn’t know how the idea originated. Charles’s entry: Political subject matter was apparently typical of Charles’s paintings of the time. In November 1934, he exhibited a painting at the John Reed Club called A Chicken in Every Pot, described by the New York Times as showing “three outcasts preparing their scanty meal in the open”; Nov. 10, 1934; FVOC, “The Genesis of JP,” p. 145. Jackson’s entry: QC&T 8, I, pp. 6–7; O’Connor (“The Genesis of JP,” p. 142) identifies the instruments as a banjo, a clarinet, an accordion, and two harmonicas, although the painting is difficult to decipher; according to O’Connor (“The Genesis of JP,” pp. 143–44), JP’s choice of mural subjects was appropriate because the Greenwich House was noted for its school of music for more than six decades. But JP had been in Ben-Shmuel’s Greenwich House workshop only briefly, and it is unlikely that he, or Charles, was familiar with Greenwich House history.

  Rita hearing about drinking: Kron. Duration of Vineyard stay: CCP; Busa. “Without alcohol”: THB to FVOC, Mar. 31, 1964. Blueberries: CCP. Learning to sail from T. P.: Araks Tolegian, recalling Manuel. Helping with chores: Artist, p. 334. “Strike out”: Burroughs, p. 116. Beach picnics: Burroughs, p. 83. Sunbathing: Burroughs, p. 116: Nude swimming was “one activity … which the Island residents would never share.” Sketching or painting: OC&T 24–30, I, pp. 21–30; Busa: He brought back “a lot of interesting landscapes from Martha’s Vineyard.” Gay Head lighthouse: Mayhew, ed., frontis. Squid-spaghetti; vermicelli with clams: Burroughs, p. 82. Lobster; fresh fish: CCP.

  “Jack’s Shack”: Burroughs, p. 116. Although Benton makes a great dea
l of fixing up the chicken coop for JP (Burroughs, p. 116; Friedman, p. 26; Artist, p. 334), it had been made livable by 1928 or 1929 when Charles visited; CCP. The shack may have been further improved during one of JP’s early visits. No radio, cards, or phonograph: CCP. Regular 4:00 A.M.: Burroughs, p. 185.

  “He was mostly”: Q. in Friedman, p. 25. Cross-country trip: OC&T (IV, p. 218) and Friedman (p. 33) say 8,000 miles. CCP to Rubin (q. in “JP and the Modern Tradition,” p. 22) also gives the 8,000-mile figure. Chronology prepared by CCP for EFP, 1975, gives the figure as 6,000 miles, but given the route, 8,000 appears to be accurate. Preparations for trip: CCP. Price and production of coal: Congdon, p. 49. Mining town conditions: “No One Has Starved,” p. 27. “Eating days”: Congdon, p. 49.

  Harlan County battle; Harlan County draws intelligentsia: Bernstein, The Lean Years, excerpted in Congdon, pp. 51–52. Intellectual pilgrimage: The results of the Dreiser-chaired National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners were published in a book, Harlan Miners Speak; Wilson and Cowley came separately as part of a delegation of New York writers; later, a committee of prominent attorneys came under the sponsorship of the ACLU. Bernstein, The Lean Years, excerpted in Congdon, p. 53: “It seemed that a writer or an intellectual who failed to reach Harlan in 1931–32 was hardly worth his salt.” Union movement failing: Bernstein, The Lean Years, excerpted in Congdon, p. 54.