Pollock’s “Untitled (Bald Woman With Skeleton)
Courtesy of The Hood Museum of Art, 2012 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jackson Pollock
is best known for the paintings he made from 1947 to 1951 in which he
poured and dripped enamel paint onto large, unprimed canvases tacked to
the floor of his studio, which at that time happened to be in Springs,
N.Y., a hamlet in the town of East Hampton. These are the works that
broke the ice for other painters of his generation, as
Willem de Kooning
put it, and that turned Pollock into a legend: “Jack the Dripper,”
according to a 1956 Life magazine article, whose approach signaled the
end of easel painting for many younger artists.
But
beyond these Pollocks — there are
others. For instance, there is the Pollock of the 1930s, a student
looking at the work of Los Tres Grandes — the Mexican muralists
Diego Rivera,
David Alfaro Siqueiros and
José Clemente Orozco.
Pollock first saw Orozco’s work in the summer of 1930, when he was living in Los Angeles and went to see
“Prometheus” (1930),
a new fresco Orozco had painted in the dining hall at Pomona College in
Claremont, Calif. The fresco depicts the figure in Greek mythology who
stole fire from Zeus and gave it to humankind. The flames, painted in
deep, warm colors, were central to Orozco’s aesthetic — hence his
nickname Man of Fire, and the title of this small but absorbing show at the
Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, in East Hampton.
Next: A review of “Men of Fire:
José Clemente Orozco and Jackson Pollock,” at
New York Times Arts.
