Jackson Pollock: Transforming Modern Art with Revolutionary Techniques

my feeling is that new needs need new techniques and the modern artist has found new ways and new means of making

his statement it seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age the

airplane the atom bomb the radio and the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture each age Finds Its

Own technique [Music] a

[Music] Jackson Pollock was the first American painter to capture the PO

imagination the Pollock myth was that of the cowboy Born and Raised on the plains of Wyoming who became the star of the

New York art World until his death in a drunken car crash in 1956 at the age of 44 Pollock was always controversial his

famous drip paintings earned him notoriety and abuse but little Financial reward yet Pollock produced a body of

work which broke with European tradition and helped found the movement which made Americans the new leaders of the

international artart world my home is in Springs East Hampton Long

Island I was born in Cody Wyoming 39 years ago my painting is

direct I usually paint on the floor I enjoy working on a large canvas I feel more at home more at ease in a b

big area having the canvas on the floor I feel near more a part of the painting sometimes I use a brush but

often prefer using a stick sometimes I pour the paint straight out of the can I like to use a dripping fluid

paint a method of painting is the natural growth out of a need I want to express my feeling rather than

illustrate them technique is just a means of arriving at a [Applause]

statement in 1946 Jackson Pollock and his wife the painter Lee ker had moved to East Hampton Long

Island the small town of Springs was where they decided to make their home and this is where Pollock was to do much

of his great work many of the other young New York painters a generation which would become

known as the abstract expressionists soon followed him out there the social life among the artists

was one of continual almost nightly drunken large parties when I think about it now I don't know how they

went on in this fashion [Music] everyone was totally drunk all the time

and was driving around in cars the Hemingway Mystique was very much in force of course Hemingway is a

big alcoholic and it was the idea I believe that since artists did have such a limed

image in the American view uh that their manhood by doing something as delicate as creating art or writing a poem

was threatened and they had to overcompensate all of them by being Super

Macho and they were strong ugly men they weren't pewdiepies at all

[Music] uh again this was right after World War II and the men had come home and the

they were supposed to all settle down with nice families and suburbs and I think that the uh writers

and artists uh were men and women who didn't fit into that role at all but didn't know how to get out of it without

seeming too bizarre despite bouts of drinking and depression Jackson Pollock felt at home

here in Springs in the Years between 1946 and 195 1 he was to produce many of his greatest works perfecting the

technique of all over painting for which he was to become famous in Pollock's greatest paintings I

think the energy is clearly there that Whiplash line the gestures Etc but there's also a feeling of being able to

enter these paintings because they are big uh there's with all the energy a great calm it's not just a feeling of of

grandness but also a feeling of of intimacy and quiet one of his greatest paintings

lavender Mist I think is one of the most common lyrical paintings that an American ever

painted this place in a funny way is um it's a bit inhabited with Jackson still he felt one with this View and he once

in fact said that what amazed him about uh being here in a Sea Coast Area on an island surrounded by water the ocean one

side the bay and the other was that uh although you looked at water and Marsh you could still because of the flatness

have the feeling uh of plains even maybe of desert so it hooked in nicely with a childhood out there in Wyoming

[Music] Jackson Pollock was born on a sheep Ranch in Cody Wyoming on January 28th

1912 it was a poor family and Jackson was the youngest of five boys his father was a um rather

shy rather weak in many ways and unsuccessful itinerant farmer and surveyor and in Pollock's early life uh

the family traveled around a great deal uh they would look for Fruit Farms one place and a surveying J uh job the next

place the mother was even from photographs I think you'd feel a much more powerful

woman with some interest in the Arts in terms of crafts arts during the summer he would

generally work with his father one of the uh areas his father had a job uh with surveying the rim of the Grand

Canyon and I have a feeling the surveying work particularly was a big influence on Pollock's feeling for space

[Music] [Music] I think that sense of American space uh

scale size uh had a tremendous impact on uh Pollock's work I also think uh the mobility itself uh the speed the energy

was all part of the American experience and I think is not unique to poic although I I feel that his particular

image expressed it so [Music]

[Music] well Jackson had been in trouble in school from an early age but in 1928 he

enrolled at The Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles and shortly afterwards met another young student Ruben Caden

one of the worst situations uh that young young artists can grow up in creatively was present in

Southern California uh it was very repressive it was more than just academic it was

mediocre uh but the healthiest and most energetic thing that was taking place there was the Disney

operation and uh there was absolutely no regard let's say for uh the energy and the Vigor of what was currently taking

place in France for instance uh and uh and in Mexico one of the first things I think

that I felt about Jackson's work is that it was energetic and it was vigorous and it and it did have a very

uh intense communicative power when we went to museums uh like the Los Angeles County

Museum him we didn't go see the show that the LA County Art Association put on but we went down to The Cellar to

take a look at the ethnographic graphic stuff you know their imagination fired by the

ethnic art they had seen the two boys went on camping trips together watching the sand painting rituals of the

American Indians and learning more about the native tradition it had an energy and

directness that was to inspire their own work [Music]

these are the kind of things that meant a great deal to me uh the fact that that the Pollock saw that I had a piece like

this and held it in very high reverence really helped us cement a relationship there was a lot that we found that we

could identify with each other [Music] at the end of 1930 Jackson Pollock came

to New York he enrolled at the Arts students league and moved in with his brother Charles and his wife

[Music] Elizabeth well in the 30s which was during the Great Depression period in

New York City I suppose we were desperately poor but we were very happy it was an exciting time we weren't we

had no rewarding results but we all thought we were going to do impressive things u i met Charles Pollock who was

the eldest of the five Pollock boys and Jackson was the youngest when he first arrived I thought

he was the most beguiling physically of any of the Pollock boys with a flashing smile which I later Learned was appla of

his as he manipulated people but in the beginning I was ingratiated by him but gradually I soured on Jackson because I

saw he was exploitative manipulative selfish and lazy his Ploy was to go

around the Manhattan like a cowboy a hinting of his Cowboy past I think Jackson had a sense of the

outdoors and love nature and a gener sort of sentimental fashion romantic fashion I should say but he never

participated in things that men in the west did he was cuddled was part of his problem Jackson Pollock was clearly

unsure of himself at this time and uncertain of his Direction as a painter as was to happen so often in his life he

was looking for a strong person to direct him his first teacher was Thomas Hart Benton the regional painter whose

emphasis on the real America influenced Pollock's own work when he first came to New

York in 1935 Pollock joined the government's Federal art project where he met more experimental painters and

had the chance to work with his Heroes the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera a Roth co uh

cieros for one thing they liberated artists American artists in terms of scale they worked on a huge scale and uh

the WPA artists who were doing murals and post offices Coast to Coast were very influenced by the Mexican way of

dividing surface and composing and juxtaposing and so on seirus was one of the first artists to use enamel and

Industrial materials and it would uh drip and so on and uh Jackson poock was very definitely

influenced by uh his uh working with SOS the first time I met Saros one of the first things that I asked him I knew

that he'd been cultural at the sh and Paris was did you ever meet Picasso you know those were Stars those were Gods we

worshiped the Europeans they opened up more possibilities to break away from the

idea of the narrative kind of mediocrity uh that we were used to seeing and being told that that's what great art is all

about PO on the other New York painters strove for a more abstract form of expression painters such as William

duning Robert motherwell asheld gki and France Klein a generation which is to become known as

the abstract expressionists many of them were given their first chance to exhibit by The

Collector Peggy gugenheim there's where American painting got started after I look whom she was the

first to show poock got his first commission which was to do a portable mural for the foyer of

the apartment house pegy Guggenheim lived in she didn't own it and the mural was portable and uh I saw it and uh

shortly after it was hung and uh I thought this made me suspect that par was a

great painter the picture seems to repeat itself all over it's become a staple of

abstra painting now but at the time that's it was called I exalted wallpaper and the mural well it just goes on and

on that's what made it so good I think he needed to paint big later on CU he didn't want to start with

the shape of the the format of the canvas as seisan had taught all to do he felt you can see that every paint stroke

in the mature Sean is more or less Echoes the the format the rectangular and it's so po wanted to get

free of that so when he'd spread a canvas on the floor as he took to doing he didn't want to have that damn

rectangle in his field of vision so soon as though he wanted to find his way to it

well uh Mr P can you tell us how modart came into being it didn't jump out of the blue

it's um it's a part of a long tradition beginning back with suzan up through the cubis the post

cubis to to the painting being done today that is definitely a a product of evolution yes and we go back to this

method question which so many people to think is is important can you tell us how you veled your method of painting

and and why you paint as you do well method uh is seems to me a natural growth out of a

need and from a need uh the modern artist has found new ways of uh expressing the world about

him I happen to find U ways that are different from the usual techniques of painting

which seems a little strange at the moment but I uh I I don't think there anything very different about it um I

paint on the floor and um which isn't unusual cuz the orientals did

that as a painter Pollock was in control constantly pushing forward his technique but he seemed unable to take

responsibility for his own life he turned to women for support Court Peggy gugenheim was his Patron and the painter

Lee cner who later became his wife encouraged him and introduced him to like-minded

painters when I brought hofman up to meet Pollock for the first time because I thought you know here's someone that

would certainly understand the work Hoffman says you are very talented you should join my class then hofman said

but to poock but you do not work from nature this is no good you will repeat yourself you work by heart not from

nature and Jackson's response to that is I am nature the modern artist is living in a

mechanical age and we have mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as

the camera and the photograph modern artist I it seems to me is working that and expressing a uh

an inner World in other words uh expressing the energy the motion and

other inner forces would it be possible to say that the classical artist Express His World

by representing the objects whereas the modern artist expresses His World by representing the effect the objects have

upon him yes the modern artist is working with the

space and time and expressing his feelings rather than

illustrating I think that much of Pollock's imagery comes from the unconscious and he accepted that and had

come had come to that as an aesthetic uh in several ways from if I remember correctly 1937 on on uh he was in and

out of analysis the rest of his life another thing was the tremendous influence of surrealism in in the years

when poock first came to New York so that between um Psychiatry uh surrealism what he'd seen

of Indian rituals in the west uh poock had pretty much uh formed a basic conviction that the UN unconscious was

where art came from Pollock got little critical recognition as he struggled to find an

individual Direction Pollock was using anything and everything that he could get a hold of

uh there was a great search for uh a new kind of excitement in material materials if you threw your paint across

or whatever it was if it brought a new phenomena into being then it was worthwhile how do you go about getting

the paint on the canvas you I understand you don't use brushes or anything of that sort do you well most of the paint

I use is a is a liquid flowing kind of paint the brushes I use are more uh use more as sticks rather than as a brush

the brush doesn't touch the surface of the canvas it's uh just above well isn't it more difficult to control than than a

brush no I don't think so I with the experience uh it it seems to be uh possible to control the flow of the

paint to a great extent and I don't use the the accident as I deny the accid is

it he could uh fling a scan of paint with the accuracy of a cowboy with a lasso and that that cowboy business I

mean I I don't like to bring that in the business of U Jackson is a Western and that's part of myth uh convenient myth

but he did have he did acquire marvelous control of that stick he would use in clean paint and then he'd use a basting

syringe big basting syringe well basting syringes are big and uh he had a lot more control in people than the myth

would have we had as much control as you need to make good art quite a few artists were working on

large canvases but American artists had no uh response critically Clen Greenberg came along and Clen Greenberg is the

granddaddy of hype in the art World Clen was the first person to say about an American Artist this is the greatest

artist so CLM single-handedly began to uh open up the uh world of publicity because

Life Magazine ran an article that was supposed to be

sarcastic with this photograph of Jackson Pollock and of course it captured the imagination of the public

and definitely part of Jackson's success was his Cowboy

image and uh throwing paint down and Reckless and Abandoned and so on it was an exciting

[Music] [Applause] image it was here in Springs Long Island

that Jackson Pollock was to spend the last 10 years of his life and produce an enormous body of work

but this art whose inspiration sprang from the unconscious and whose purpose was to express the artist's inner

feelings proved difficult for the public to understand Jackson was looked upon very

much as not only an outsider but what they would call here a character he was a man from a way but he was an artist

and all artists are or any intellectuals then were somewhat suspect when Life magazine in 1950 came out um or the end

of 49 with a big spread on Jackson Pollock saying is he America's greatest painter uh the local people absolutely

staggered it was a little bit surprising when he first went in there is this guy he's bombed right out of his mind and

the canvas is so-called painting that's laying on the floor and he had a card table with all these little uh jaws of

different color paint so he's slopping around there barefoot in the paint and he just takes

the jaws of paint and just throws him on the paint and he staggers around there and he's still walking in it you know

the wet paint but some of the Jaws slipped out of his hand and the broken glass well that got sort of got mixed in

too and then the feet started to bleed but it didn't seem to make any difference he's still slopping around in

the paint and the blood and the glass and and uh this thing was supposed to been a painting when he's got

done but uh myself after becoming a professional drunk my on my own then I could see where he was painting all of

this stuff the different thoughts that he had but uh when you really get that drunk your mind sort of those wandering

circles and I guess anything looks good at that point and uh that was supposed to been a great painting that he done

and I probably sold it for a million dollars now but at the time I wouldn't give 10 cents for it and I still

wouldn't you know this is of course my opinion of it the drunkenness was to become part of

the Pollock myth but it was interrupted by long bouts of abstinence in 1948 Jackson Pollock gave up drinking

completely and in the next three years produced some of his finest paintings actually Pollock's art was

incredibly highly controlled and it took him years to really perfect the ability to control this kind of pouring

splattering and dripping technique so as to uh give him an immense battery of effects that he could produce

instantaneously now people would say well anyone can pour that I can take a can of painted por now it is certainly

true but anyone can go up to the piano and push the note C and your c will be as good as are to rubenstein's or

horowitz's and by the same token if you spill a little paint that's going to be let's say as good as pollot for just

that little spill what makes harowitz or Rubenstein is the succession of accents and the control and and and Inter

relationship of these accents as they come one after another that is what we would call the touch of The Pianist but

the tone is the same for you or for Rubenstein in Pollock's case it's not that you can go and pour this and say or

that looks like poock it's to be able to make the continuous line which we meanders interlocks with previous

accents which is a constantly changing story these paintings sold for thousands of dollars after Pollock's death but at

the time he could scarcely make enough to live on we bought the house and and it became

a permanent residence not a Summer Rental and more and more people came out with the studio and what is now the

garage and the little shed and 5 acres of land it was $55,000 $2,000 we had to pay and that

was a loan from Peggy Guggenheim and jackon put up three paintings as

collateral then we got the barn cleared out and moved over he took the barn to work in and I took the room upstairs

that he had been working and it was rough well if you want really practical details when he moved out here his

Studio had no heat in it which immediately limited the painting life of his you know the days in which he could

paint to about seven months of the year because the rest of the time it was too damn cold and the enamel and oil paint

and he would all freeze in the barn which was unheated and the wind used to whistle through

it it was after the great paintings of 1950 that Pollock was persuaded to be filmed painting by the photographer Hans

namoth the film was a unique record of Pollock's technique but it marked a tragic turning point in his life

the final afternoon of filming was a cold one is U at Thanksgiving and it was windy and they

came in at dusk and Jackson went straight to the kitchen sink and um he'd not had a drink in two years and he

wasn't quite reformed so he reached under the sink and took out a bottle of whiskey poured himself T folk and uh the

scene was absolutely astounding eight or 10 of us here at the table uh Jackson sat down at the head of it and uh before

anybody could say anything suddenly Jackson said looking at his plate and then looking at Hans and then holding

the end of the table he said now and there's a dead silence the table at once and I saw Le the other end stiffen and I

heard her say my God now what this is in a soft voice and then Jackson said the word now louder the second time and

finally he then in a roar grabbed the end of the table and as he stood up and taking the table with him in his hands

he said no and in the midst of all this Jackson just calmly walked out of the house out

this back door out into the night and I resumed to the studio and the scene was over the tension of the filming and his

return to drinking coincided with Pollock's frustration at having reached the limit of his present style he wanted

to move forward but how Jackson was as intelligent as could be without being particularly

articulate he was one of the most intelligent people I'd ever met in the deepest

sense after painting a show say 15 20 30 pictures he'd knock off and not paint it at all for maybe weeks maybe months sit

around smoking not necessarily drinking either it wasn't that he would go on the beninge uhuh uh and

then and then he begin painting again now he never said this but I fancied I could see

this that during the layoffs he came he got rid of his manner isms such as they

were if they were mannerisms as he says in the letter that he wrote me when I was in the in Paris

that U you know I've been involved in a series of black and white canvases in which the earlier images have started to

reappear that may give the young who think it's easy to knock out of you know drip out of Po thought paused to think

they were very powerful paintings and it was a show I think was it was a terrible disaster and it happened because his

previous drip show had been a success in a small way and they were all everyone was prepared

for as much of a success so that he would be making as much as a master masonis him instead of which he is

AER Black and Whites and I think during the exhibition none of them were

sold he done his black and white show in uh 51 and there was some great pictures in it 52 he'd gone back to color and

some of the pictures were shaky I feel that he felt that uh he'd run out of inspiration not because of the

limitations of the technique anything he'd run out of his charge there were still some fine color

paintings to come but Pollock's frustration with his work his problems with his marriage to Lee rasner combined

with his alcoholism meant he was never to recover his strength as a painter even late in life when he was having

great difficulties and he was drinking again uh he never made fake Pollocks that is he never said I know what a

pollock looks like so I'll whip out a few for the trade he constantly criticized himself and because he was so

self-critical he really reduced his output to next to nothing in his last years because he really couldn't

accept what he was doing it was in 1956 that Jackson Pollock met the Young art student Ruth

cigman and began an affair with her I knew Jackson 7 months we lived together since the beginning of the

summer I guess it was late early July July and August During the period that I was there he was not doing any work

although he thought about it a great deal but that wasn't unusual you see uh when painters go through a very large

surge of energy which he had for many years he' done this great body of

work uh there are shallow periods uh writers have blocks you know he was very consumed with his emotional

life he uh had an incredible ego he had a duality in his personality very often he would say to me uh would

be sitting around the kitchen table in the morning having a coffee and he'd say you know I'd love that attitude you know

very Western you know there are only three artists Picasso batis and poock and then the other side the the

flip side of that he would say I'm no good you know I'm a phony and that self-doubt I think is

part of [Music] being a painter part of being an

artist in the last months of Jackson's life I saw a lot of him um because uh both he and I and as a

matter of fact a great many other people were going into New York to see shrinks and at first we had a station wagon

called The Flying couch which we used to all go into New York and uh then the flying couch

disintegrated and I would go with Jackson twice a week on the Long Island Railroad into New York this was when he

was having a great deal of trouble with Lee and uh lee was having a great deal of trouble with him and he was seeing

Ruth cigman in the York and um his State of Mind was extremely [Music]

desperate I think that he felt that the art within him that he wanted to express uh was so difficult to express

he had to bring it so much up from his subconscious and his subconscious was in such a state of turmoil that I don't I

didn't think he could maintain the degree of [Music]

intensity The Edge was really where Jackson painted in a strange way he he really pushed art that far I think also

in his way of life he lived that far he was on the edge he was on the edge uh in terms of peril constantly the way he

drove the way he drank the challenges that he would make the people uh when drinking uh was very much on the edge

constantly as to his driving Jackson um did more than drive when he drove he really did a form of

expression one could say and um he sometimes would Express his anger by speed or just sort of really crazy kind

of driving at that age age uh the automobile constituted something that

possibly in some structure of some societies it's there as a mother and it's there as a lover and it's also

there as an angel of death and I think that somewhere along the line it it became that for

him he did drink he was an awful awful bore he was a trial he was he was continuously testing and yet you

tolerated it and you accepted it because of the other rewards and I certainly U I've had uh

students that think that they'll just go out and get themselves drunk and that'll be it and they're Jackson

poock I'm afraid uh suicide and alcoholism are are a uh a very uh sad dimension of the whole abstract

expressionist movement all of them were really uh Children of the depression as it were

but almost without exception they were very heavy drinkers uh a lot of them like cars and

use cars dangerously a disproportionate number had had no children so there wasn't that

hold uh on their lives uh the Pollocks had no children um but there were a uh of of

specific suicides uh rothos is famous uh gorkys is famous uh then there' be be something a

classification more like existential suicide where a destructive uh pattern throughout life culminates in a violent

death and there i' give us examples people like Pollock uh I think it was all all part of part of a climate uh at

the time and these men really had no great success Pollock sold very little uh during his lifetime all all of the

big prices and all of the the en largement of reputation and all of the Mythic proportions of these people

occurs after Pollock's death it can almost be measured by by that night in the summer of

1956 Ruth cigman had been living with Jackson Pollock while his wife Lee was in Paris on the 11th of August Ruth

returned from a weekend in New York bringing with her a friend Edith met singer after a day of tension the three

set off for a party in the moment we got in the car I knew it was a mistake we were on our

way he kept stopping the car uh crying

Edith became provocative in the sense that she didn't understand and she got very

scared and then we decided to not go to the party and we were on our way home and Jackson just wildly started to speed

and he put his foot on the gas and Edith started to scream and he

laugh and um we speeded down fireplace Road and that's when the car swer [Music]

and a young girl came up to me and she was patting me and there was a man and I was holding his hand and and they

covered me and I made this girl I said go over there to where the car is and I'll be watching you and come back and

tell me if he's all right and she did and she came back and I said is he

alive she said yes I said swear by God she said I can't so I

knew if he had died of a a liver disease uh it would not have been as glamorous him dying in an automobile accident

became almost a James Dean Kimu kind of Mythology that helped the Romance of the great artist the Romantic artist not to

live it out to die too young before you become old hat you see so uh it also created a value structure

because the paintings before that oh he must have sold blue poles for $3,000 and now it's Priceless but when

it was sold to the Australian government it was 2.6 million or something now if he were alive that would never have

happened but he was the first one who started the ball rolling in getting those kind of prices so the Art Market

was created out of Jackson poock tragedy I cannot think of an estate that was handled in a more brilliant way than

was Jackson poock by Lee ker it was extraordinary she was the one responsible for getting Sydney Janis the

dealer to hold back certain paintings to get the price up on other paintings and she really did direct everything that

happened with that estate it's remarkable and she was therefore the person who really began the price

escalation of um the entire American art movement this was Lee amazing Mr Park isn't it true true that

your method of painting your Technique is important and interesting only because of what you accomplish by

it I hope so naturally the result is the thing and it doesn't make much difference how um

the paint is put on as long as U something's being said technique is just a means of

arriving at a statement he felt his only justification as a human being was as an artist and in his

art that otherwise he was no good to anybody which wasn't quite true and They carried on about Jackson's

not painting and all that he didn't paint cuz he wouldn't force himself he was true I'm not idealizing Pollock I'm

not but uh if anything he was he was he was true well he's had a tremendous influence on

uh an awful lot of people and uh the the best influence of course is is uh when they go out to try and find

themselves I think that's one of the most important things about Pollock's work actually is that uh It Isn't So

Much what you're looking at but it's what's happening to you while you're looking at his particular work and

that's something I think that he had had almost from the first pieces that I ever saw they were attention

getting they were riveting and they had a power that changed your character and your

[Music] personality I don't think anyone can walk into a room with his work without

feeling that here somewhere it's laying there it's latent [Music]

[Music] [Music] F and video present films on an

international array of 20th century artists Andy warhold the father of pop art well do you think that they've shown

a lack of appreciation for what pop art means uh no Andy do you think that popart has

sort of reached the point where it's becoming repetitious now uh yes do you think it should break away

from bean pop art uh no are you just going to carry on uh yes painter graphic artist filmmaker

or real one of Andy War kit and cult

figure during the 50s various approaches to painting prevailed Patrick harm Arthur

Boyds and Francis Bacon abstraction was the dominant force and Jackson Pollock's approach was the

most energetic Life Magazine ran an article that was supposed to be

sarcastic with this photograph of Jackson poock and of course it captured the imagination of the

public Jasper Johns presents familiar emblems and images in new contexts say she was so proud of me because she had

worked so hard to instill some respect for the American flag in her students and she was so glad the mark been

left David hawne uses still photography to make pictures of movement you can see the city very well by air you see all

these little blue pools I thought oh that looks very nice to me while Roy lonstein turned comic books

into by Art and paulao provides an all too rare woman's

[Music] perspective the difference I think between a great woman painter painting

women and a great male painter painting women is that in the case of the women painters she's got a

skeleton from Robert motherwell to Malcolm moley and Christian

boltansky F and video brings to life the great avangard artists of the 20th [Music]

[Music] century for a complete catalog of fiden Publications please call 0171

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