The Persistence of Pollock

THE PERSISTENCE
OF
POLLOCK
3 May – 28 July 2012
Bobbi Coller and Helen A. Harrison
Co-Curators
The Persistence of Pollock
From our vantage point at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it’s hard to imagine the
pictorial landscape before Pollock. There was, of course, Picasso, whose dazzling and protean
presence Pollock admired and envied, but from whom he tried to differentiate himself. But when
Pollock first started to exhibit his singular and revolutionary poured paintings, he caused an
earthquake that shattered the syntax of visual language, destabilized fundamental expectations of
how a painting should be made, and liberated future generations of artists.
Something about Pollock transcends the confines of painting. His art and persona have inspired
numerous creative responses in many forms: musical compositions, poems, novels,
choreography, performance art, a superb film with Ed Harris, and a one-act play by his friend
B.H. Friedman. His immediately identifiable poured-paint look has been easily adapted for
everyday products, including textiles, wallpaper, and pottery. Pollock has become part of culture,
a symbol, and a point of reference. After his death, Pollock’s widow, the artist Lee Krasner,
tried to correct many inaccurate myths that grew up around him, but sometimes truth is less
powerful than mythology.
For artists, the idea of Pollock has become as open and multilayered as an abstract painting. This
exhibition, “The Persistence of Pollock,” assembles thirteen works in a variety of media that
reflect Pollock’s powerful impact and attest to his continuing relevance for contemporary artists.
They represent each of the decades of the sixty years since Pollock’s death in 1956. Some of the
artists express admiration, some introduce humor, some rebel against a patriarch; some challenge
the artist’s machismo by introducing a feminist perspective, while others incorporate nonwestern traditions and use Pollock’s work as a springboard for further innovation. Several
reference the iconic photographs of Pollock at work taken by Hans Namuth during the summer
of 1950. At first dismissed by the great photographer Edward Steichen, who advised Namuth,
“this is not the way to photograph an artist,”1 the powerful images helped to create and sustain a
legend. This exhibition, held on the hundredth anniversary of Pollock’s birth, offers the
opportunity to consider and marvel at the endurance of that legend.
Alfonso Ossorio (1916-1990)
In addition to being a fellow artist who greatly appreciated Pollock’s work, Alfonso Ossorio was
a close friend, a Hamptons neighbor, and a loyal patron. Born in Manilla, The Philippines, into a
family who derived their wealth from sugar refining, he attended secondary school in England
and the United States before graduating from Harvard in 1938 with a degree in Fine Art.
Ossorio’s early work was influenced by Surrealism, but in 1949 he saw Pollock’s Number 5,
1948 at the Betty Parsons Gallery and immediately purchased it. He later described his first
reaction to Pollock, saying:
Here I saw a man who had broken all the traditions of the past and unified
them, who had gone beyond cubism, beyond Picasso and Surrealism,
beyond everything that had happened in art…his work expressed both
action and contemplation.”2
When Number 5, 1948 arrived at Ossorio’s home, he noticed that it was damaged. Pollock
offered to repair it, so Ossorio and his partner, the dancer Ted Dragon, drove with the painting to
Springs. That meeting initiated the warm friendship that grew between Pollock and Krasner and
Ossorio and Dragon. It also introduced the city dwellers Ossorio and Dragon to the East End,
where they decided to rent a place for the summer of 1949. Two years later, it was Jackson and
Lee who recommended that Ossorio purchase the seventy-acre estate on Georgica Pond known
as The Creeks, which Ossorio and Dragon made their home for the next 40 years. Also in 1951,
Ossorio wrote the catalogue introduction to Pollock’s solo exhibition of black paintings at the
Betty Parsons Gallery, and arranged for them to be exhibited in Paris the following year.
As a result of his exposure to Pollock’s distinctive
painting process, Ossorio experimented with a freer,
allover style and even made poured works with thick
accumulations of pigment. But beyond artistic
admiration, Ossorio helped Pollock financially by buying
work and sending monthly payments in anticipation of
future purchases. Such an arrangement must have gone a
long way to alleviate the couple’s monetary anxieties.
After Pollock’s fatal car crash, Ossorio made a series of
memorial works in homage to his friend and kindred
spirit.
Alfonso Ossorio, Untitled, mid 1950s. Oil on Masonite, 22 ¼ x 22 ¼ inches .
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center. Gift of the Ossorio Foundation
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Perhaps the most unexpected tribute to Pollock came in 1962 in the form of a now famous
magazine cover, The Connoisseur, by the brilliant illustrator Norman Rockwell. Only six years
after Pollock’s death, Rockwell produced a visual metaphor of the establishment confronting the
avant-garde, controlled propriety
facing expanding energy, and
buttoned-up grey and white contrasted
with exploding color. In one inspired
image, the master of realist illustration
engages in a dialogue with the master
of mid-century abstraction.
Norman Rockwell, study for The Connoisseur,
1961. Oil on canvas board, 14 x 24 ½ inches
Lent by American Illustrators Gallery, New York
Rockwell’s painstaking efforts to achieve the look of a Pollock abstraction were even more
remarkable than the finished composition. For each Saturday Evening Post assignment, he
routinely created many studies, and transformed his environment acccordingly. For this cover,
his usually tidy studio became a temporary abstract expressionist workplace, similar to Pollock’s
studio, where he made a series of studies for the “action painting” portion of the image.
Numerous photographs document the process, and several are uncannily reminiscent of Hans
Namuth’s photographs of Pollock leaning over his work.
Process photos for The Connoisseur (cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1962)
Photographs by Louie Lamone, 1961, courtesy Norman Rockwell Museum Collections
Part of The Connoisseur’s charm is that the viewer
cannot see the spectator’s reaction. If the dapper
gentleman is a surrogate for Rockwell, it must have
been approving, for in the same year that he painted
this illustration, Rockwell was asked to reflect on
his career choice. He replied, “If I were young and
starting out again I would try to be an abstract artist.
But at the time I started in art, almost 50 years ago,
illustration was an exciting thing. I was very lucky
to be able to do the thing I liked most.”3
Rockwell seems to have enjoyed the foray into
abstraction that The Connoisseur cover offered, and
he played with the result. He entered the trial study
illustrated above in an art competition at the
Berkshire Museum, but rather than use his real
name, he signed the canvas Percival (a variant of his middle name, Percevel), thus protecting his
reputation as a realist illustrator. He won Honorable Mention.
Lee Ufan (born 1936)
Pollock had a reciprocal relationship with Asian art. He was attracted to the expressive and
controlled flow of line, the effect of dark color bleeding into absorbent surfaces, and the singular
shape of long scrolls. Throughout the 1940s, Pollock regularly attended exhibitions of paintings
by Mark Tobey—whose work was strongly influenced by Chinese calligraphy—at the Willard
Gallery in New York. And in Japan, a group of experimental artists who called themselves the
Gutai Art Association, founded in 1954, greatly admired Pollock after seeing examples of his
work in a 1951 exhibition. Five years later, representatives of Gutai sent Pollock a letter and
copies of their magazine, which promoted the concept of “concrete art,” in which “the human
spirit and matter [materials] shake hands with each other.”4 Although there is no evidence that
Pollock responded, the magazines remain in his library.
The Korean-born artist Lee Ufan moved to Japan in 1956, the year Pollock died. During the next
decade, Lee led a movement known as Mono-ha (literally “school of things”), similar to Gutai in
its response to the shifting social and political culture of post-war Japan. He concentrated his
efforts on sculpture based on the relationship among natural and industrial materials and the
space around them. In addition to sculpture, large-scale
installations, and metaphysical writings, Lee produced a
body of abstract paintings and watercolors that pulse with
allusions to time and nature through repetitive gestural
marks that draw attention to the meeting of pigment and
surface.
Lee Ufan’s Pushed-Up Ink shows Pollock’s far-reaching
influence. Informed by Pollock’s experiments with ink on
Japanese paper, Lee soaked his brush with animal skin glue
mixed with the ink and repeatedly pressed it against
absorbent paper until the liquid material bled through, often
creating holes in the process. Like Pollock, Lee’s action in
making the work creates a rhythm that is both intoxicating
and expansive.
Lee Ufan, Pushed-Up Ink, 1964. Ink on Japanese paper, 27 ½ x 21 ¾ inches. Private collection
Lynda Benglis (born 1941)
In 1974, Lynda Benglis posed nude holding a strategically-placed dildo for a shocking and
controversial advertisement in Artforum magazine. But even before that groundbreaking photo,
she had been challenging the gendered associations attributed to art movements and styles,
overturning long-standing expectations.
After having boldly employed the physically demanding pouring technique so associated with
Pollock, as well as the active gestures of male Abstract Expressionists, Benglis was featured in a
1970 Life Magazine article entitled “Fling, Dribble and Dip.” The article made clear the
connection between Benglis and Pollock by including one of Namuth’s 1950 photos of Pollock
in his studio alongside working shots of Benglis. She later commented, “Pollock pioneered the
movement of dealing with materials used by the artist as the prime manifestation of imagery.” 5
But Benglis’s canny, signature pourings from that time also reflect an early exploration of
several other important issues which would flower in
the 70s: the fracturing of 60s minimalist geometry; the
emerging strength of feminist debates; the
transforming orientation of ground-hugging sculpture
exemplified by the work of Carl Andre; and the
emerging use of eccentric materials such as latex,
foam, and beeswax.
Lynda Benglis, Rumpled Painting / Caterpillar, 1968. Poured pigmented
latex, 4 x 95 x 51 inches. Lent by the artist, courtesy of Cheim & Read,
New York. © Lynda Benglis/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Rumpled Painting/Caterpillar represents an internalizing and extension of Pollock’s floor-based
paintings. Here, painting and sculpture are fused and the canvas disappears allowing the paint to
function independently in relation to the ground. Like a neon-colored insect, the congealed paint
lifts off the floor, suggesting the inching motion of a caterpillar. Early work like this led to
Benglis’s monumental wall-hung eruptions of hardened polyurethane foam , so aptly titled
“frozen gestures.” With these fluid, bulbous mounds, Benglis exploded Pollock’s “masculine”
pourings, creating even larger gestures that fuse such oppositional categories as hard/soft,
male/female, and painting/sculpture.
Ray Johnson (1927-1995)
Ray Johnson, the idiosyncratic and prolific founder of
the New York Correspondence School, had a complex
relationship with themes of celebrity, money, and death.
Of equal importance with his letters, his small, dense,
and coded collages evoke the constructed dream world
of Cornell, the gamesmanship and punning of Duchamp,
and the obsession with celebrity associated with Warhol.
Along with several favorite personalities, Johnson cited
Jackson Pollock in many of his carefully-assembled
collages. Filled with both formal-visual and languagebased associations, Johnson’s references to Pollock tend
to allude to his aura of masculinity as well as his early
death.
Ray Johnson, Jackson Pollock (Recipes), 1973. Collage and ink on Masonite, 15 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches.
© Ray Johnson Estate, courtesy Richard L. Feigen & Co.
Jackson Pollock (Recipes) is an example of Johnson’s amusing word associations. Here, a recipe
for the fish, pollock, becomes fused with the artist, Pollock. In addition, beyond the humor of the
coincidence, is the darker suggestion of aggression, since the pollock is both filleted and ground
into burgers. The artist’s name is applied to a shape suggestive of a tombstone and the prepared
fish filets are laid out on a plate surrounded with funerary flowers. Johnson’s characteristic
glyph-like shadow shapes surround the recipe and central square, personalizing the ready-made
elements and adding an unknown symbolic system similar to a mysterious, archaic language.
Humorous, yet serious, this work turns a typical magazine recipe into a reminder of mortality.
At the age of 67, Ray Johnson committed suicide in a premeditated and orderly way.
Mike Bidlo (born 1953)
Like an idolized and feared father figure, Pollock looms over subsequent generations of artists.
And, like rebellious, talented progeny, many artists demonstrate their independence by mastering
the parent’s accomplishments in order to surpass him. It is easy to project the oedipal myth onto
Pollock, an artist who, during his own brief but outsized life, explored both cultural narratives
and psychoanalysis in his quest to surpass the School of Paris, and especially Picasso.
As a young artist, Mike Bidlo chose Hans Namuth’s movie of Pollock painting as the basis for
his first show, a performance reenactment in 1982 at P.S.1. Looking back on it in 1993, he
observed:
It was this rebellious gesture to do the Pollocks, to destabilize the idolatry. And now it’s
all been consumed, which is good because I always thought you couldn’t cause change
from without, you had to be in the system to cause change. So maybe it’s all
working in a way—for this minute—Tomorrow is gonna be another story. But it’s still
important that the work be controversial, say something to do with freeing myself from
the bondage of their tyranny.6
The imitation of Pollock paintings, however, did not
come easily. After at least a year of studying the way
Pollock moved, the way he controlled the viscosity and
layering of paint, and the way the paint was absorbed
into the canvas, Bidlo could convincingly reproduce a
Pollock which he then entitled “Not Pollock.”
A pioneer in the appropriation movement, Bidlo has
proceeded to replicate works by many artists including
Picasso, Matisse, De Chirico, Mondrian, Warhol, de
Kooning, Lichtenstein, and Schnabel. Each of these
“Nots” raises questions of influence, identification,
originality, authenticity, context, admiration and
rebellion.
In this exhibition we have included a dress that Bidlo
“Pollockized” for the gallerist Gracie Mansion to wear in
1982. Transforming a painting into a garment (and vice
versa) transcends boundaries, reminding us of another
Mike Bidlo, Jackson Pollock Dress, 1982.
appropriative art form, fashion. Underlying the
Enamel on satin. Lent by Gracie Mansion,
transgressive gesture of wearing a “Pollock” is the
New York. Photo © Gary Azon
acknowledgment that even debased and transported from the museum wall to everyday life, the
distinctive look of the paint pattern retains its unique reference to Pollock and its iconic quality.
François Fiedler (1921-2001)
Although François Fiedler was born in Hungary, studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Budapest,
and became part of the art circle around the influential art dealer Aimé Maeght in Paris, it was
his encounter with the work of the American artist Jackson Pollock that transformed his art.
Fiedler first saw Pollock’s work in 1959 at the exhibition “Jackson Pollock et la Nouvelle
Peinture Américaine” in Paris. But it was not until the Pollock retrospective at the Centre
Pompidou in 1981 that Fiedler was decisively influenced. According to his nephew Peter Fiedler,
the artist was in “deep mourning” following the death of his mother and his art world mentor,
Maeght. Visiting the Pompidou exhibition, however, “he was totally lost in Pollock’s painting
and returned to life again…Pollock made a deep impact in his art.”
As his nephew recalls, François Fiedler described
his reaction this way:
I entered the painting…I felt the dramatic
force. The pictorial energy of canvas
enchanted me. I felt the full freedom of
the rhythms. I recognized the duality in
Pollock’s works—improvisation and
precise interpretation at the same time. I
was fascinated by the works of Pollock
and [they] definitely influenced my own
working methods.7
François Fiedler, Untitled, 1985. Etching, 25 ¼ x 25 ½ inches
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center. Gift of Peter Fiedler, Budapest
Robert Arneson (1930-1992)
During a ten year period, beginning in 1982, the ceramic artist
Robert Arneson produced over 60 works in homage to Jackson
Pollock. Many are relief portraits that hang on the wall and, with the
difficult medium of ceramic glazes, mimic poured paint on the
artist’s face or clothing, fusing the man with his production.
Robert Arneson, Pollock, 1983.
Glazed ceramic. Not in exhibition.
Robert Arneson, Saga of Jackson Pollock BookEnds, 1988. Bronze, each 9 ¼ x 8 ½ x 4 ½
inches. Pollock-Krasner House and Study
Center. Gift of the artist
More unusual is the pair of bronze
bookends that use the space between the two sections to divide time. With the addition of written
phrases and models of Pollock’s notorious car, they project a story of his fatal demise. Handcrafted with inscriptions that read like a ballad to a flawed folk hero, the sculpted model of a
speeding Oldsmobile on one bookend and the overturned wrecked car on the other make tangible
the tragedy of Pollock’s early death. Arneson imagined the moments immediately before and
after the crash, portraying two crucial scenes from the Pollock saga—the first conveys sheer
recklessness, and the second the tragic consequences. The bookends, like two tombstone slabs,
contain the date, setting, and imagined lines of dialogue of the final event that haunts the Pollock
legacy.
Janine Antoni (born 1964)
In Loving Care, first performed in 1992, Janine Antoni brilliantly recasts the physical
engagement of Abstract Expressionism as a woman’s activity, as in her performance at the
Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford represented in the current exhibition. Antoni replaced paint
with a product usually associated with women, hair dye, with a brand name, Loving Care,
calculated to appeal to the empathetic
qualities associated with women. Instead of
a paintbrush, the artist’s own hair becomes
the applicator as she kneels to cover the
bare floor with sweeping movements.
Loving Care subverts the macho “action
painter” stereotype by creating a bold
gestural composition using the softness of
a woman’s tresses.
Janine Antoni, Loving Care, 1992-96. Performed at the
Wadsworth Atheneum, 1996. DVD courtesy of the artist
and Luhring Augustine, New York
The year after she first performed Loving Care, Antoni again
merged art history with mundane materials when she sculpted
fourteen self-portraits mounted on classical pedestals in the
manner of Roman Imperial busts. Her materials were soap and
chocolate, and her performance entailed licking each of the
sculptures. Lick and Lather recorded the reshaping and eventual
erasure of the artist’s own features, accompanied by the sounds
and aromas emitted during the process.
Janine Antoni, Lick and Lather, 1993
As Antoni explained:
(detail). Not in exhibition.
I’m interested in everyday body rituals and converting the most basic sorts of activities
(eating, bathing, mopping) into sculptural processes. Even in doing this, I imitate fine art
rituals such as chiseling (with my teeth), painting (with my hair and eyelashes), and
modeling and molding (with my own body). In terms of materials, I use what is
appropriate to the activity. Those materials, soap, lard, chocolate, and hair dye, all come
in contact with my body within our culture. These materials also have a specific
relationship to women in our society. The gender of the viewer informs the reading of the
work.8
Red Grooms (born 1937)
Red Grooms is renowned for whimsically exaggerating contemporary people and settings, often
transforming them into three-dimensional environments. A Grooms tableau is a carnival version
of the real world. In the 1990s, he turned his playful eye to iconic artists such as Picasso, Francis
Bacon, and Henry Moore, giving us working portraits of twentieth century masters amid their
signature works.
Red Grooms, Jackson in Action, 1997. Color 3-D
lithograph, 26 x 33 x 7 ¼ inches. Lent by Marlborough
Graphics, New York
Grooms’s tribute to Pollock relies on a cubist
vocabulary to put the “action” into Action Painting,
and compress a great deal of biographical
information into a relatively small space. Set in the
famous East Hampton studio (with the fourth wall
removed like a theater stage), the artist, surrounded
by his paints and props, is portrayed working like a
stop-action, multi-armed dynamo on a large canvas
spread on the floor. Grooms merges visual
information from several key photographs of the
painter and his wife, and includes both Lee Krasner
in the doorway and the photographer Hans Namuth
recording the scene. As if to amplify the dynamism
of Pollock’s method, the entire composition literally
rises off the page towards the viewer.
Vik Muniz (born 1961)
Vik Muniz creates strikingly beautiful photographs
based on canonical works from the history of art
and popular culture. The artist first reproduces the
image on the studio floor, using eccentric and
unexpected materials such as sugar, sequins, sand,
toys, peanut butter, or diamonds. He then
photographs the composition from a height, turning
a familiar image into a study of form, color and
texture. From a distance, one immediately
recognizes the quotation, but, moving closer,
wondrous accumulations of materials emerge. As
the artist observed, “The moment when one thing
turns into another is magical.”9
Vik Muniz, Action Painter III (Action Photo IV), Pictures of Chocolate,
1997-2009. Digital C-Print, 37 ½ x 37 inches. Lent by Kay Childs
Hans Namuth, Jackson Pollock painting Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, 1950. © Hans Namuth Ltd.
Like several other artists in this exhibition, Muniz based his tribute
to Pollock, begun in1997, on the imagery of Hans Namuth. Unlike
anyone else, however, Muniz chose an edible material, Bosco
chocolate syrup, as his medium. The syrup has a viscous
consistency and glossy sheen, similar to the enamel paint that
Pollock favored.
Building on his photographic model, Muniz next wanted to create
portraits of real people using materials that reflected their lives. He
focused on a group of impoverished workers in Brazil who support
themselves by salvaging recyclable materials from the enormous garbage dump, Jardim
Gramacho, in Muniz’s native city, Rio de Janiero. The project, documented in the awardwinning 2010 film Waste Land, became a profound and socially transforming experience,
empowering the workers as they participated both as subjects and in the creation of the
photographs. With extraordinary sensitivity and intelligence, Muniz used art to dignify and uplift
the lives of a group of disadvantaged people, and, in return, he felt equally enriched.
Joe Fig (born 1968)
In 2000, Joe Fig’s curiosity about the day-to-day working habits and creative processes of the
artists he most admired led him to embark on a project to recreate, in miniature scale, the
interiors of those artists’ studios. One of his first subjects was Jackson Pollock working in and
around his studio on Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton.
Joe Fig, Namuth’s Pollock #10, 2004. Mixed media,
13 x 13 x 13 inches. Lent by the Parrish Art
Museum, Southampton, New York. Museum
purchase, Daniel Downs Bequest Fund and Mrs.
Hickman Price Fund, 2007.7
Using Namuth’s images as his source,
Fig made several meticulous
reproductions of Pollock and his
surroundings with uncanny accuracy.
The scale and detail lift the twodimensional photographs into a threedimensional zone situated somewhere
beyond childhood dollhouses and
museum dioramas.
Fig lavished the same care when recreating the studios of other art-world idols including
Matisse, de Kooning, Newman, Warhol, and Lichtenstein. The effect of seeing them all together
is like viewing the tour-de-force painting, Gallery of the Louvre, by Samuel F. B. Morse, in
which he reproduced, in miniature scale, many of the great works from the museum in one
gallery. It makes the viewer marvel that one artist can repeat so many artistic landmarks.
The next phase of Fig’s quest to understand artists’ creative lives involved living artists. He
visited and interviewed fifty artists, gathered information, and photographed and measured their
studios to help recreate each environment. The result was a book, published in 2009, pairing the
interviews and studio constructions of 24 artists, including Chuck Close, Malcolm Morley, Eric
Fischl and April Gornik (married artists with adjoining studios), Philip Pearlstein (the oldest),
and Dana Schutz (the youngest). The project can be seen as an historic picture of the varieties of
working practices of artists at the beginning of the twenty-first century. “My book, Inside the
Painter’s Studio, offers a rare glimpse into the universe of the artist’s studio,” said Fig. “The
questions asked deal with the day-to-day creative life, and the real practicalities of what it takes
to be an artist.”10
Arnold Chang (born 1954)
The most recent work in this exhibition was made by Arnold Chang, an artist who has immersed
himself in the ancient tradition of Chinese ink painting, but who never lived in China. He has
reflected on his choice to engage in such a formal and traditional art form as a search for
structure, discipline, and balance after experiencing the tumultuous decades of the 60s and 70s in
America. Born and raised in New York City, he remembers as a child seeing the great, densely
poured Pollocks in New York collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Long after Western eyes had become accustomed to the
gestural sweeps of Abstract Expressionism, the jolt of
seeing Pollock’s work for the first time was reenacted in
mainland China in 1981. As a result of the United
States’ formal diplomatic recognition of the People’s
Republic of China in 1979, cultural exchanges increased
and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston was chosen to
send a stellar selection of American paintings from their
collection to be displayed in Beijing and Shanghai.
Thirty years later, Chinese artists still remember their reaction to seeing Pollock’s Number 10,
1949 [above]. One important critic vividly recalled the event. “I almost entered a state of
unconsciousness,” he said. “Chinese art always placed an emphasis on consciousness and
political stance. With abstract art, people could freely express their emotions.”11
For its 2010 exhibition, Fresh Ink: 10 Takes on Chinese Tradition, the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston sponsored an artist-in-residence program, in
which leading artists from China and the Chinese diaspora engaged in
dialogues with classical examples from the museum’s superb collection of
Chinese art. Chang, the only American-born artist in the exhibition, decided
to venture beyond the Chinese collection. Believing it was more appropriate
for him to respond to an American work, he chose Pollock’s Number 10,
1949 for his inspiration—the same painting that astonished viewers in China
in 1981. The museum allowed Chang [left] to study the Pollock horizontally, as it was made and
the way one reads a scroll. He resonated with many elements, such as the fluid and expressive
lines of paint and the individual character of the patterns that identify the hand of the artist.
These qualities were also valued in Chinese brush painting beginning in the late 11th century,
when scholars began to reject illusionism and embrace the unique handwriting that reflected the
spirit of each individual artist. Although they kept to a horizontal landscape format, their imagery
became looser, more a reflection of the artist’s personal interpretation than a realistic rendering
of the scene.
Arnold Chang, Brushwork Study for Reorienting Pollock, 2008. Ink on paper, 25 x 87 ½ inches. Lent by the artist
For Brushwork Study, Chang used traditional brushes, trusting that the American audience,
familiar with the language of Abstract Expressionism, could easily enter the stylized world of
Chinese ink painting. Working with the Pollock was unusually satisfying for Chang. He felt that
Pollock’s nature-related gestures provided a point of integration for the two sources of his
identity—his Chinese heritage and American visual culture. "My choice of Jackson Pollock as a
model was an attempt to coax modern audiences into recognizing the abstract qualities inherent
to classical Chinese painting,” he explained. “It was also a way for me to integrate the American
and Chinese sides of my identity.”12 The resulting work is a beautiful mixture of rhythmic skeins
of ink, reminiscent of Pollock, placed with the delicacy and limited palette of a Chinese scroll
painting.
Jackson Pollock, Number 10, 1949. Enamel and aluminum paint on canvas, mounted on wood, 18 x 107 ¼ inches.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Tompkins Collection and Sophie M. Friedman Fund.
If the reasons for Pollock’s persistence are complex, one thing is clear: we would not still be
talking about him if his work did not still engage us. Standing in front of a large, juicy Pollock
today, the paint on the surface is still fresh and the anti-gravitational force can still reach into
your stomach and twist your insides. One hundred years after Pollock’s birth on January 28,
1912 in Cody, Wyoming, artists are still moved by the work and the man.
When I asked Joe Fig what Pollock means to him, he responded:
I am not interested in the “myth” of Jackson Pollock. I’d rather focus
on the man and his creative process. He was a young artist who studied
with and became part of the Tom Benton family. He was a man who
challenged himself in the studio. A man who through discipline, faith
and hard work listened to his inner voice and followed his own vision and
came up with a way of creating that was his own. By doing so, he changed
the American culture and the course of art history. He was courageous. 13
Bobbi Coller, Ph.D.
New York City
April 2012
NOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Hans Namuth, “Photographing Pollock,” in Pollock Painting: Photographs by Hans
Namuth (New York: Agrinde Publications Ltd., 1980), n.p.
Alfonso Ossorio, “Jackson Pollock: The Artist,” www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/artist2.shtm, accessed
April 4, 2012.
Norman Rockwell, “If I Were Starting Out Again,” Los Angeles Examiner, December 24,
1961.
Jiro Yoshihara, “Gutai Art Manifesto,” 1956. Translated in “Under Each Other’s Spell: Gutai and New
York (East Hampton: Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, 2009), p. 17.
Robert Pincus-Witten, “Lynda Benglis: The Frozen Gesture”, Artforum magazine, November 1974, p. 54.
Mike Bidlo, interview with Anna Bonney, Bomb Magazine 45, fall 1993.
Peter Fiedler, personal communication, March 6, 2012.
Laura Cottingham, "Janine Antoni: Biting Sums Up My Relationship to Art History," FlashArt (1993),
pp. 104-05.
Vik Muniz, quoted in Waste Land, 2010, directed by Lucy Walker.
Joe Fig, interview with Nicole Pajer,"Inside the Painter's Studio," March 31, 2011.
www.chinashopmag.com/2011/03/joe-fig-takes-you-inside-the-painter’s-studio/, accessed March 28, 2012.
Li Xianting, quoted in Meredith Palmer, “’81, When East Met Western Art,” The Washington Post, Dec.
25, 2011.
Arnold Chang, quoted in "Up Close and Personal with Asian American Artist, Arnold Chang,"
www.jadeluckclub.com/close-personal-artist-arnold-chang/, accessed March 28, 2012.
Joe Fig, personal correspondence, March 16, 2012.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Assembling some of the numerous examples of artists’ responses to Jackson Pollock for this
exhibition yielded many rewards. Among them was the opportunity to discover the variety of ways in
which Pollock’s work has spoken to generations of artists.
We sincerely appreciate the generosity of all the lenders to the exhibition. We were also greatly
assisted by representatives of several art galleries, and wish to thank Alexandra Ferrari, Natalia Sacasa
and Caroline Burghardt, Luhring Augustine; Frances Beatty and Jennifer Grossman, Richard L. Feigen &
Co.; Judy Goffman Cutler and Sara Bliss, American Illustrators Gallery; John Cheim and Karen Polak,
Cheim & Read; Simone M. Ayers and Michael Prete, Marlborough Graphics; Barry Rosenberg,
Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs: Venus Van Ness, Norman Rockwell
Museum; Alicia Longwell and Chris McNamara, The Parrish Art Museum; and Megan Malloy and Katie
Rashid, Sikkema Jenkins & Co. In addition, we appreciate the participation and generosity of artists
Janine Antoni, Mike Bidlo, Arnold Chang and Joe Fig. We are also most grateful to Francis V. O’Connor
for bringing the work of François Fiedler to our attention, and to Peter Fiedler, nephew of the artist, for
providing essential biographical information. In addition, Michael Blakeney introduced us to the work of
Arnold Chang, and Meredith Palmer loaned us the fascinating historic photograph of Chinese audiences
admiring Pollock in 1981. Lastly, we would like to thank Joanne Feierman for graciously acting as first
reader of the essay and offering thoughtful advice.
Bobbi Coller and Helen A. Harrison, co-curators
PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS
Antoni: Prudence Cummings Associates at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London
Benglis: Courtesy Cheim & Read / VAGA
Bidlo: © Gary Azon
Chang: © Bruce M. White
China: © Meredith Palmer, 1981
THE PERSISTENCE OF POLLOCK
Checklist of the exhibition
Janine Antoni (b. 1964)
Loving Care, 1992
Performance video
Lent by the artist, courtesy of Luhring
Augustine, New York
Red Grooms (b. 1937)
Jackson in Action, 1997
Color 3-D lithograph, 26 x 33 x 7¼ inches
Lent by Marlborough Graphics, New York
Robert Arneson (1930-1992)
Saga of Jackson Pollock Book-Ends, 1988
Bronze, each 9 ¼ x 8 ½ x 4 ½ inches
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.
Gift of the artist
Lynda Benglis (b. 1941)
Rumpled Painting / Caterpillar, 1968
Poured pigmented latex, 4 x 95 x 51 inches
Lent by the artist, courtesy of Cheim &
Read, New York
On display in the studio
Mike Bidlo (b. 1953)
Jackson Pollock dress, 1982
Enamel on satin, 50 inches long
Lent by Gracie Mansion
Ray Johnson (1927-1995)
Jackson Pollock (Recipes), 1973
Collage on masonite, 15 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches
Lent by Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York
Vik Muniz (b. 1961)
Action Painter III (Action Photo IV),
Pictures of Chocolate, 1997-2009
Digital C-Print, 37 ½ x 37 inches
Lent by Kay Childs
Alfonso Ossorio (1916-1990)
Untitled , mid 1950s
Oil on masonite, 22 ¼ x 22 ¼ inches
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.
Gift of the Ossorio Foundation
Arnold Chang (b. 1954)
Brushwork Study for Reorienting Pollock,
2008
Ink on paper, 25 x 87 ½ inches
Lent by the artist
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Study for The Connoisseur, 1961 (Cover for
The Saturday Evening Post, January 13,
1962)
Oil on canvas board, 14 x 24 ½ inches
Lent by American Illustrators Gallery, Inc.,
New York
François Fiedler (1921-2001)
Untitled, 1985
Etching, 25 ¼ x 25 ½ inches
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.
Gift of Peter Fiedler, Budapest
Lee Ufan (b. 1936)
Pushed-Up Ink, 1964
Ink on Japanese paper, 27 ½ x 21 ¾ x 1 7/8
inches
Private collection
Joe Fig (b. 1968)
Namuth’s Pollock #10, 2004
Mixed media, 13 x 13 x 13 inches
Lent by the Parrish Art Museum,
Southampton, New York. Purchase, Daniel
Downs Bequest and Mrs. Hickman Price
Fund, 2007.7