Jack the Dripper liberated art from staid convention

Evelyn Toynton

Yale University Press; $26

Review: Marc O’Sullivan

It seems fair to observe that Jackson Pollock is one of just two 20th century American artists whose name has almost universal recognition. The other is Andy Warhol, who, as time passes, looks more and more like an ad-man who got lucky.

Pollock is best known for his “drip” paintings — on his death, aged 44, in 1956, Time magazine disparaged him as “Jack the Dripper” — and these are indeed the works on which history will judge him.

In eschewing easel painting, and laying his canvases on the ground, Pollock found he could work around them with greater freedom.

He spilled paint from the can, squeezed it directly from the tube, or splattered it across the canvas with a brush, creating frenzied patterns in bright industrial colours.

Jackson worked so intensely he might just as well have been spilling his own blood. In so doing, he liberated art from the European academic tradition and established a new painterly language uniquely American.

Evelyn Toynton’s new book on Pollock is brief — just 124 pages — but astutely written. She comments wryly on some of the myths that have grown up around Pollock, particularly his reputation as a “cowboy artist”.

Well into his adult life, Pollock was looked after by his older brother Sande and his wife. They eventually surrendered responsibility for him to the artist Lee Krasner, who married Pollock and would prove to be his greatest champion.

Krasnick had her work cut out for her; Pollock was a depressive and an alcoholic, prone to fits of incoherent rage and violence. His personality served well to further his reputation as a gifted brute — Stanley Kuwolski with a paintbrush — but he was hell to live with.

Towards the end of his life, Pollock acquired a young mistress, Ruth Kligman. When Krasner was away, she came to visit with a friend, Edith Metzger. Pollock — drunk as a lord — took them driving. Metzger was so terrified she tried to leap from the moving car, and Pollock reacted by driving even faster. He crashed at a corner, killing them both and severely injuring Metzger. It was a pathetic and indefensibly selfish end.

Krasner’s handling of Pollock’s estate after his death drew criticism from many. She was accused of being manipulative, putting his works on the market just one at a time, thus ensuring that demand far exceeded supply and that his prices kept rising.

Toynton, quite rightly, defends her, pointing out that Krasner was civic minded enough to ensure that most of Pollock’s work went to public museums rather than private investors.

With the profits, she established the Pollock/ Krasner Foundation, a charity that continues to support young artists today. And she returned to making her own art, belatedly receiving the critical praise denied her in Pollock’s lifetime. Perhaps, in the long run, it is Krasner who will be seen as heroic.

Were it not for her, it is doubtful that Pollock would have lived long enough to achieve the kind of success he so obviously craved and quite probably deserved.