Pollock Revisited

In the eleven years since he was killed in a car crack-up at the age of 44, Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock, fabled for his whiplash paintings, truculent insistence on wearing cowboy boots, and his drunken rages, has ceased to be regarded as a guru among his fellow artists. A more sophisticated public is no longer shocked by the fact that he dribbled and threw paint at his monumental canvases instead of applying it with a brush. For those accustomed to the bright glow of neon, even his colors seem calm. In short, Pollock has become something that many artists dread more than being controversial: he has become an institution.

In 1956, only a handful of his paintings hung in museums; today, there are more than 30, and their prices have escalated some 1,500% (a major drip painting by Pollock now brings upwards of $100,000). Matters have even reached the stage where, when Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art last week opened an immense Pollock retrospective, some critics decided that it was high time to begin to debunk the "myth" of his achievement. Sniffed the New York Times's Hilton Kramer: "An interesting artist of, say, the third class. It is only the poverty of our own artistic values that has elevated his accomplishment into something higher."

Pollock's fellow artists, however, still view his work with admiration. Over 400 of them turned up to survey the 172 paintings and drawings assembled by Curator William S. Lieberman with the cooperation of Pollock's widow, Painter Lee Krasner. At the party before the openings, both old friends and those who had never met Pollock were equally enthusiastic. Jasper Johns was particularly taken with the extraordinary range and variety of the works in the exhibition, which begins with Pollock's earliest, and remarkably mediocre, landscapes, reflecting the influence of his first mentor, Thomas Hart Benton, continues through his famous "drip" paintings of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and concludes with his anguished return to figuration just before his death.

Said Robert Motherwell: "I have a deep respect for Pollock. After a slow start, like Van Gogh, he skyrocketed for a few years." Added Richard Lindner: "He broke through the traditions of the European painters. Don't forget the time--when he painted, America was very dependent on European tradition. In 50 years, Pollock will probably be more important than he is today--maybe not as a painter, but for liberation." Said Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning, who did not attend the opening: "Pollock broke the ice."

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