KAREN WILKIN
At the Galleries
"The Big One"-a colleague's term-of the fall season was the Jackson
Pollock retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Proof that this was
the
show to see-or be seen at-came from the parade of international art
world heavies (and the occasional movie star) at MOMA's Friday morning
viewings; but apart fi·om its chic, the Pollock show was essential because of
its sheer excellence. The course of a short, intense career was presented
through a thoughtfully chosen, elegantly presented selection of canvases,
works on paper, prints, and a couple of scu lptures-everything from labo–
rious, essentially student efforts to gritty early works, to the astonishing,
radiant poured paintings of Pollock's all-too-brief peak period (about 1947
to
1950), to the desperate struggles of his last years.
It
was Pollock warts
and all, with full weight given to the painter at his best. Wall texts that
repeated old half-truths cou ldn't diminish the impact of this brilliant show;
neither could the hokey facsimile
(5(/1/5
floor) of the painter's Springs studio.
Pollock emerged as an unpredictable giant: a wildly uneven artist able
to reach dazzling heights; a tonal master who could sometimes do remark–
able things wi th chromatic color; a preternaturally energetic, even brutal
painter capable at the same time of extraordinary delicacy and lyricism.
(Substitute the word "scu lptor" for "painter" and you have a good descrip–
tion of Pollock's contemporary, David Smith.) The late Hans Namuth's
well-known films of Pollock at work, screened continuously during the
exhibition, served to underscore that delicacy. Namuth's camera revealed
the variety, fluency, and elegance of Pollock's gestures as he disposed
paint, the
lrn(e
with which he worked, most dramatically visible, perhaps,
in his dance-like, tidy footwork, as he stepped along the length of the can–
vas laid out before him.
"Elegant, delicate, and fluent" seem unexpected words to app ly to a
painter whose myth portrays him as savage, uncontrolled, and taciturn,
but tension between violence and delicacy is precisely what makes
Pollock's best paintings exhilarating. Witness the Dallas Museum of Art's
Cathedral,
the Modern's
Nllmber
1,
1948
or
Nllmber
31, 1950,
the N ational
Gallery's
Lapel/der Mist,
the Metropolitan's
Alltumll Rhythm: Nllmber 30,
1950,
or Muriel Kallis Newman's
N IIII/b er
28,
1950,
deservedly celebrated
KAREN WILKIN'S
Cezalllle
is avai lable from Abbeville Press.
