Jackson Pollock (36 page)

When Namuth telephoned later that week to set up an appointment, Pollock was encouraging.
As he had once promised
Art News
, he now promised Namuth to start a new painting and perhaps even finish it in the
photographer’s presence. But when Namuth showed up the following afternoon with two
Rollei-flexes hanging from his neck, Pollock regretted having made the offer. He and
Lee met the photographer in the driveway, and Pollock told him abruptly, “The painting
is finished.” He did not plan to do any more work that day, he said. Hesitantly Namuth
asked if he could see the studio anyway. Pollock and Lee took him inside the barn
and allowed him to look around. A large, wet painting was lying on the floor. Namuth
studied it through the ground glass of his camera. Pollock studied it too. Suddenly,
overcoming any doubts, Pollock picked up a brush and a can of paint and began to toss
pigment, his movements slow and deliberate. Within a few minutes he had quickened
his pace, working with speed and apparent sureness. Namuth started to shoot. He finished
one roll of film and switched to the other camera. Then he reloaded both cameras.
For thirty minutes Pollock continued to paint as the loud, rapid clicks of the camera
shutter resounded in the barn like applause.

Namuth returned the following weekend to show Pollock the photographs. Pollock studied
them closely, pleased with the results. “Do you have any more?” he asked. Namuth had
no more but offered to come back the following weekend. And the weekend after, and
the weekend after that. Throughout the summer of 1950 Hans Namuth returned every weekend
to photograph Pollock inside his studio. As surprising as this is, given the shy,
self-conscious person Pollock was, even more surprising is that some of his best-known
paintings were created as Namuth snapped away.

The year 1950 was the most prolific of Pollock’s life. He completed about fifty-five
paintings—compared to about forty the previous year—and they include some of his largest
and most
widely praised works. One, an enormous, mural-sized painting that measures roughly
nine feet high by eighteen feet long, was begun soon after Pollock finished
Number 32, 1950
(the all-black mural) and explores some of the ideas set forth in the earlier work.
The painting consists of giant weaving rhythms of black, white, and tan that cohere
almost magically into a harmonious whole. As in the best of Pollock’s work, the countless
movements and tensions even one another out so that the final effect is one of balance,
but precarious balance. It’s as if a thousand different sensations have been merged,
but just barely, and only by a superhuman act of creativity.
Autumn Rhythm
, the third of the three murals dating to this period, resembles One not only in size
but in color. Once again, the painting consists of linear rhythms of mostly black,
white, and tan, which suggest the colors of a pencil sketch and serve to remind us
of Pollock’s draftsmanly genius. But there is nothing intimidating or haughty about
the painting; to the contrary, the mood is almost intimate.

It is hard to determine from Namuth’s photographs exactly which paintings Pollock
was working on as he was being photographed. But it can be said with certainty that
he did paint
Autumn Rhythm
—or rather that he painted part of it—in front of Namuth. Photographs document the
painting’s creation: Pollock picks up a can of black Duco and, with a stubby brush,
drips some paint onto a black canvas. He steps onto the painting and tosses pigment
with wide, sweeping motions of his arm. He crouches, he stands up, he walks around
the canvas continuing to apply paint until the entire surface has taken on the activity
of weaving rhythms. This first phase finished, he tacks the painting to a wall in
the barn for a period of contemplation and study. Clearly Pollock felt sure of himself
in front of the photographer, and perhaps the experience was in some ways liberating
for him. As one who was obsessed by a need to prove himself, he seemed to derive a
special satisfaction from showing off his mastery in front of an audience. Painting
a picture such as
Autumn Rhythm
with a photographer recording his every gesture was no small feat for a man who had
once been unable to complete so much as a pencil sketch in the presence of his schoolmates.

Every weekend after Namuth had finished shooting he would go inside the house with
Pollock and show him the photographs he had taken the previous week. By the end of
the summer Pollock had looked at more than five hundred photographs, many of which
have become well known. Pollock crouches above a canvas, his balding forehead creased
into intense concentration. Pollock flings paint, moving so quickly his arm is a blur
of light. He liked the way he looked in the photographs—they show him in his moment
of triumph—never anticipating the skewed reactions they would bring to his art. The
Namuth photographs, which were first published in 1951 and have been widely reproduced
since, drew attention to Pollock’s technique and helped give rise to a popular image
of the artist as a wild, brutish paint-flinger. In 1952 Pollock would pick up a copy
of
Art News
one day and read that “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American
painter after another as an arena in which to act . . .” To Pollock’s dismay, his
art would be labeled “action painting” and its creator would be lionized as an existentialist
hero whose defiant, solitary actions counted more than their outcome. This trivialization
of his art angered Pollock greatly, but it probably never occurred to him that Harold
Rosenberg’s famous essay on action painting might not have been written had he not
posed for the pictures.

At the end of the summer Namuth mentioned to Pollock that he wanted to make a film.
Although he had never made a film before, he felt that even a short, amateurish “home
movie” could capture Pollock in ways that photographs, however polished, could not.
Pollock said it was fine with him, and the first weekend in September, Namuth arrived
in Springs with his wife’s Bell and Howell Turret. He climbed up to a hayloft in the
studio, and, holding the movie camera in his hand, shot until the film ran out. Soon
afterward he showed the results to his friend Paul Falkenberg, a film editor, who
was sufficiently impressed with the seven-minute short to suggest that Namuth undertake
a second movie, this one in color, and to offer to help him scratch together two thousand
dollars to finance it. The color movie, unlike the earlier effort in black-and-white,
required that camera lights be
installed in the barn, Since the barn had no electricity, Pollock volunteered to move
his studio out-of-doors. He made a second concession as well. Although he had already
finished preparing for his upcoming show at the Parsons Gallery by the time the filming
began, he agreed to paint one more painting so the filmmaker would have something
to film. For four consecutive weekends in early autumn he worked on one painting,
placing it in tall, damp grass and dripping pigment as Namuth shot the eleven-minute
documentary. Later Pollock destroyed the painting, perhaps because he considered it
merely a prop.

One day Namuth proposed to Pollock that he consider starting a new painting—and that
he paint it on glass. If the sheet of glass could somehow be secured in a horizontal
position a few feet above the ground, Namuth could crawl beneath it and shoot from
below, recording the loops of paint as they fell through the air. Pollock thought
it was an interesting idea and offered to build a platform that could support the
glass.

The painting-on-glass segment of the movie was shot on a cold, sunny afternoon in
late October. Namuth lay down in the grass on his back beneath the four-by-six sheet
of glass. He rested the movie camera on his chest and focused the lens on Pollock.
The camera records Pollock’s actions as he starts work. He arranges some pebbles and
wire mesh on the painting surface, binding the materials in place with a few tosses
of black pigment. He is not satisfied. He wipes the glass clean. “I lost contact with
my first painting on glass, and I started another one,” he says in a sound track that
was recorded later. He starts all over again, rearranging the pebbles and wire mesh
along with shells, bits of string, and other materials. As he works he looks down
at his painting. Through its transparent surface he sees the photographer sprawled
beneath him.

By the time Namuth finished shooting the painting-on-glass segment of the movie, the
sun had begun to set. The two men went inside the house. A dinner party was in progress.
Namuth went into the living room and joined the guests by the fireplace. Pollock did
not stop to say hello or to warm himself by the fire. He walked directly into the
kitchen. He took out two large glasses
and a bottle of bourbon and filled the glasses all the way up. He called Namuth into
the kitchen. “Hans,” he shouted, “come have a drink with me.” Namuth walked into the
kitchen. Behind him were Ossorio and Lee. The threesome stood there startled as Pollock
lifted a glass of alcohol for the first time in two years and emptied it. Namuth and
Ossorio were startled because they had never seen Pollock drink before. Lee was startled
because she
had
seen him drink before; she had seen him drink away his life, and hers too, and when
Pollock emptied the second glass, her face went white. The guests tried to pretend
that nothing unusual was happening as Pollock proceeded to tear a string of cowbells
from the kitchen doorway and threatened to hit his friends. “Let’s sit down for dinner,”
Lee said. Pollock sat down at the head of the table and started insulting Namuth.
Suddenly he picked up the dinner table and sent a roast beef skidding to the floor.
Lee picked up the roast beef and washed it off. She put it back on the table. Pollock
lifted the table again, this time sending the dishes crashing across the room. “Coffee,”
Lee announced, “will be served in the living room.” Pollock went outside to his car
and drove away.

The guests tried to make sense of the ugly events they had witnessed. Perhaps it had
something to do with the cold weather—had he poured the drink simply because he was
cold?—or perhaps with the movie, or perhaps with the death of Dr. Heller seven months
earlier. No explanation seemed adequate as they considered the fact that the past
two years of Pollock’s life, sober years, had been his most rewarding ever. He had
been featured in
Life
. He had sold many paintings. His work had been sent to the Venice Biennale. Most
important, in the past few months alone he had completed his first mural-sized “drip”
paintings—
Number 32, One
, and
Autumn Rhythm
. What had led Pollock to take the drink and consequently to return to heavy drinking?
Various writers have argued that Pollock felt “tormented” by his public success, yet
success is too easy an answer; Pollock was tormented long before he was successful.
A more plausible answer lies in his art. By October 1950 Pollock had done everything
he could do with his “drip” technique. Although
some of his contemporaries would continue to turn out their trademark images for many
years—Rothko, for instance, painted floating rectangles for more than two decades,
and Motherwell painted his “Spanish Elegies” for more than three decades—Pollock felt
compelled after four years to abandon the style that had won him both personal satisfaction
and public acclaim. So fierce was his hatred of authority figures that once he became
one, once he had mastered his own style, he had no choice but to rebel against his
own mastery. As he had turned against Benton in 1938 and against Picasso in 1944,
Pollock, in 1950, turned against himself—with the disastrous result, as in earlier
times, of heavy, suicidal drinking. If he had not taken the drink on that last day
of shooting, one suspects he would have taken it soon afterward. On the other hand,
the experience of making the movie surely helped precipitate the inevitable. How absurd
he must have felt making that painting on glass, an invisible canvas through which
he could see a camera lens pointed at his face.

Pollock left the glass painting in the backyard for a few weeks. It collected leaves
and dirt and weathered the rain. He eventually brought it inside and cleaned it off.
He titled it
Number 29, 1950
. He talked about hanging it on the porch and perhaps even setting it into the house,
like a window, but never did.

Pollock’s fourth show at the Parsons Gallery opened on November 28,1950. The opening
reception, which was held that evening from four to seven, was something of an event
in itself. About a hundred people showed up, and not even the most begrudging could
fail to be impressed by the power and vitality of Pollock’s latest work. At one end
of the gallery was
Autumn Rhythm
, which took up an entire wall. The opposite wall was taken up by One. There were
thirty-two paintings altogether, and they were hung from floor to ceiling. The effect
was dazzling; some people likened it to walking into a meteor shower. Among the guests
was Pollock’s brother Jay, a printer, who noted appreciatively to his brother Frank:
“The big thing right now is Jack’s show. . . . [The opening] was bigger than ever
this year and many important people in the art world [were] present. Lee seemed very
happy and greeted everyone with a smile, Jack appeared to be at home with himself
and filled the part of a famous artist.”