KAREN W ILKI N
167
pictures that formed th e hea rt-and hi gh po int- o f the show.
In
th ese
potent, wo rdl ess metaph o rs, Poll ock's whipl as h skeins and spatters, hi s
airborn e sweeps and stutters o t paint crea te webs at once dense and
diaphano us.
The bes t pictures brea th e and pulse, eith er because they seem trans–
parent or because Poll ock's orches trati on o f color creates an unstabl e
expanse through which fragi! e trails o t paint thread complica ted paths,
shooting toward th e edges o t the canvas and then retreating. But Poll ock's
color can also be stati c and arbi trary; scale and rhythm can go terribly
wrong. T hen th ere is no pulse, no ae ratin g shitt between large-scale, Dung
drawing and small , ti ght incidents, o nl y a j ammed, airl ess accumulati o n.
Instead of impl ying a vas t, spread ing expanse, the coiling lin es of paint coa–
lesce into a dense surface, forming an opaqu e, impenetrabl e fi eld th at makes
you struggle-involuntarily-to rcad it as a " traditional" painted image. At
MOMA, the close proximi ty o t tail ed pi ctures, near- mi sses, and kn ock–
down , drag-out triumphs made the show tascinating, instru ctive, and
eye-tes tin g.
Mos t o t th e ea rli es t wo rks, done in th e mid-1 930s when Poll ock was
barely into hi s twenti es, betray a less-than-sensiti ve touch and a less-than–
inspired color sense. At wo rst, they are amateur efforts to wres tl e oil paint
into submi ssion o r at leas t into consenting to ca rry emoti on. At bes t, they
are highl y charged peri od pi eces, sharply Davored with Surrea li st noti ons
of tappin g the un conscious thro ugh " pure psychi c automati sm," ove rlaid
with Picasso, fil tered through Mex ican moderni sm- Masson meets
Siqueros. Yet even th ough they remind you of wh at just about every oth er
ambiti ous Ameri can arti st wo rking at the time was do ing, the raw energy
and power even th e mos t ham- fi sted and predi ctabl e of Poll ock's ea rly pic–
tures is uni gno rabl e; the young painter could crea te drama w ith a play of
bright and da rk across the surface ot hi s canvas almos t trom the moment
he began to paint seri ously.
That "across the surtace" is the operative phrase was confirmed by the
retrospecti ve's drawings, a small selec ti on trom the notebooks, exhibited in
depth a few yea rs ago, that document both the young painter's inventiveness
and hi s study of old mas ter painting. When Pollock drew trom life, he had
enormous difficul ty translating hi s percepti ons of mass and form into two–
dimensional pi ctorial language, but when he drew trom other art- that is,
from mass and torm already fil tered through someone else's perceptions
into two-dimensional pictorial language-he was abl e to give full play to
hi s fasc ination w ith fro ntali ty and pulsing arti culations, to indul ge com–
pletely a taste fo r over-all loading that amounts to a
horror
vaCl /l/ i.
By the la te thirti es and ea rl y forties, these characteristi cs dominated
Poll ock's work , mos t obviously in pictures with mythological th emes that
