Day Painting Five Days a Week, Loose Pages Gathered

Loose Pages Gathered by the Housekeeper

I probably seem to be hung up on Pollock, right? The more I dive into his work the deeper the dive. That is due to several issues that Pollock created himself. For an artist of his time making fifty paintings in one year was being prolific. In most other years he did not produce many. So, fifty was his peak year of production. If one makes so few it would seem you could line up all fifty artworks and place them in order of creation. Then, once in the sequence of creation one might better appreciate his changes, his thought pattern, his growth, his development, his creative evolution. That should be easy, one would mistakenly think.

One looks at Pollock and thinks there is nothing much to learn, it’s only about drips.

Ha! Pollock made decisions that makes it difficult to grasp this sequence of creation. He stopped giving his works titles as they were an obstacle to looking at the painting. They blocked the viewer, by suggesting a theme via the title, from letting the painting sweep over that person standing in front of the canvas. It is a common thing in museums, one I have observed thousands of times. A gallery visitor glances at an object, then spends more time looking at the label. If it happens to be in a commercial art gallery there may be a dollar value on the label. Dollar signs, familiar artist names, and a title that serves to direct the viewer all interfere with the experience of the Artwork.

At a point in time Jackson Pollock ceased naming his paintings. That happened just prior to his most prolific year. He signed his name and the year: Jackson Pollock ’50. All fifty paintings produced in 1950 were thus signed. Those paintings that appear to have titles were not titled by the artist. The numbering of Pollock’s work only seems to be systematic. They are simply inventory numbers assigned by the Betty Parsons Gallery and do not tell any tale or keep any thread alive for the hope of finding which painting followed which.

I picture Shakespeare having written a play. A wind gust blows open a window. The fifty sheets of paper fly around the room. Shakespeare is whacked in the head by the window frame and dies. His illiterate housekeeper runs for the doctor after gathering up the fifty pages. The sheets are now in a stack. The pages were unpaginated.

It would be far easier to reassemble fifty loose pages than fifty paintings. A thought on one page would lead to the next on one of the 49 remaining sheets. In the case of Pollock, drips from paintings created after an already dry, signed painting are as good a clue to sequence as if “Romeo, Romeo,” were the end words on one page of Shakespeare’s fifty sheets and ”wherefore art thou?” at the top of another. Not the same, but still useful in establishing a sequence of creation.

Then, it is still a knotted ball of string.

I have to believe that Pollock wanted to be remembered as being a serious artist. I know that he is. It’s just that he deserves to have his legacy viewed in proper order. He was not thinking about it at the time. He was too busy creating.

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