102
PARTISAN REVIEW
Jackson Pollock's problem is never authenticity, but that of finding
his means and bending it as far as possible toward the literalness of his
emotion. Sometimes he overpowers the means but he rarely succumbs to
it. His most recent show, at Parsons', reveals a turn but not a sharp
change of direction; there is a kind of relaxation, but the outcome is
a newer and loftier triumph. All black and white, like Kline's, and on
unsized and unprimed canvas, his new pictures hint, as it were, at the
innumerable unplayed cards in the artist's hand. And also, perhaps, at
the large future stilI left to easel painting. Some recognizable images
appear-figures, heads and animal forms-and the composition is
modulated in a more traditional way, no longer stating itself in one
forthright piece. But everything Pollock acquired in the course of his
"all-over" period remains there to give the picture a kind of density
orthodox easel painting has not known before. This is not an affair of
packing and crowding, but of embodiment; every square inch of the
canvas receives a maximum of charge at the cost of a minimum of phy–
sical means. Now he volatilizes in order to say something different from
what he had to say during the four years before, when he strove for cor–
poreality and laid his paint on thick and metallic. What counts, how–
ever, is not that he has different things to say in different ways, but that
he has a lot to say.
Contrary to the impression of some of his friends, this writer does
not take Pollock's art uncritically. I have at times pointed out what I
believe are some of its shortcomings-notably, in respect to color. But
the weight of the evidence still convinces me-after this last show more
than ever-that Pollock is in a class by himself. Others may have greater
gifts and maintain a more even level of success, but no one in this
period realizes as much and as strongly and as truly. He does not give
us samples of miraculous handwriting, he gives us achieved and monu–
mental works of art, beyond accomplishedness, facility, or taste. Pictures
"Fourteen" and "Twenty-five" in the recent show represent high classical
art: not only the identification of form and feeling, but the acceptance
and exploitation of the very circumstances of the medium of painting
that limit such identification.
If
Pollock were a Frenchman, I feel sure
that there would be no need by now to call attention to my own ob–
jectivity in praising him; people would already be calling him
«maitre"
and speculating in his pictures. Here in this country the museum di–
rectors, the collectors, and the newspaper critics will go on for a long
time--out of fear
if
not out of incompetence-refusing to believe that we
have at last produced the best painter of a whole generation; and
they will go on believing everything but their own eyes.
Clement Greenberg
