The Subversion of Gravity in Jackson Pollock's Abstractions Author(s): Claude Cernuschi and Andrzej Herczynski Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Dec., 2008), pp. 616-639 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20619641 . Accessed: 09/04/2013 12:53 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Art Bulletin. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 199.79.254.152 on Tue, 9 Apr 2013 12:53:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Subversion of Gravity in Jackson Pollock's Abstractions Claude Cernuschi and AndrzejHerczynski While implementing the Surrealist directive of eliciting the proved ideal for Pollock's deployment of the poured tech and intent on an unconscious, generating extensive vocabu nique allowing formaximum control and making the paint of lary unbroken, free-flowing lines, Jackson Pollock felt his accelerate directly toward the canvas in the shortest possible ambitions frustrated two to conven by constraints endemic time.5Nonetheless, itwill be proposed here that the effects of tional easel painting: the interruption of the creative act rhythmic energy for which the artist is best known are, per to on canvas caused by the inconvenient need reload the brush and the force, contingent the vertical reorientation of the on as he canvas on the wall for drag his hand spread pigment along the contemplation. surface. Initially, Pollock tried to circumvent these impedi On its face, this claim should hardly be controversial. As ments by squeezing paint directly from the tube. This adjust Leo Steinberg already stressed, Pollock intended all of his to amounts ment allowed him dispense larger of pigment abstractions to be exhibited vertically.6 As early as 1962, he than could otherwise be held on and eliminated the neces reasoned that Pollock sity to reload the brush. But forcing paint out of the tube while simultaneously ensuring that it is applied with elan is a indeed poured and dripped his pigment upon canvas laid tricky proposition; so is avoiding the increased friction on the ground, but thiswas an expedient. After the first caused by the tube's rubbing against the canvas. To extend color skeins had down, he would tack the canvas on the duration of his and enhance the of his gone gestures fluidity to a wall to he to to see get acquainted with it, used say, strokes, Pollock needed a practical way of carrying more where itwanted to go. He lived with the painting in its pigment and dispensing itwithout touching the image.When upright state, as with a world confronting itshuman pos Paul Brach asked him why he started pouring, Pollock re ture.7 plied, "Someone tried to talkme into using a dagger striper but the sucker didn't hold the paint long enough. I just wanted a line. ... I wanted to it As is More T. longer keep going."1 recently, J. Clark observed that although the "picture ... well known, he achieved both objectives by laying the canvas was put on the floor to be worked on itwas always being on the floor (Fig. 1). Retaining more paint on sticks and read on the floor as if itwere upright, or in the knowledge trowels, he worked with fewer interruptions, and pouring that it would be. To pretend otherwise would have been in the air as a and Pollock was never naive about pigment effectively enlisting gravity partici naive, painting."8 pant in the process he eliminated the deleterious effects of These observations touch on a key feature of the poured friction altogether. Not surprisingly, critics have counted the technique; even so, critical aspects of the artist's dyadic pro cess have remained If Krauss focused almost implementation of the poured technique and the reorienta unexplored. as on Pollock's of as if tion of artistic activity from the wall to the floor Pollock's exclusively point departure painting most original and influential contributions to the history of horizontally were an end in itself Steinberg and Clark art. of stopped short elucidating how central Pollock's reorienta tion of the canvas proved to his mode of operation. To be The Question of Orientation sure, their description of the artist's method as unitary and Informed by the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Georges Ba cohesive is apt, ifonly because there isnothing to suggest that taille, Rosalind Krauss struck a different chord. In her view, Pollock even considered exhibiting his works on the floor of as a medium" at an at Pollock's deployment "horizontality repre angle whereby paintings (especially those the upper sented a radical regression from the intellectual, disembod end of his dimensional range) are particularly awkward to ied, optical way of perceiving the world that stems from observe. But although laying the canvas horizontally was max humanity's erect (vertical) posture. By stressing the horizon imally convenient for pouring, the artist, as Steinberg indi as to fore often creative in order to tal opposed the vertical, Pollock, she argued, cated, interrupted activity reposi the even characteristics of urina for on the wall. grounded corporeal, abject, tion his work study and ultimately display tion and defecation, an implication of the poured technique These two integral, yet separate actions each played their own maintained in, say,Andy Warhol's later Oxidation Paintings indispensable role. Even if physically produced in the first was as after the and Linda Benglis's sculptures.2 state, the work only recognized "complete" not crux a to a sailboat or By itself, though, "horizontality" does capture the second, process comparable constructing as in one it serves its of Pollock's contribution. The artist conceded much him aircraft: though assembled environment, con self.When asked about painting on the floor, he replied, purpose only in another. Pollock's shift in orientation "That's not unusual. The Orientals did that."3This remark is stituted no less of a sine qua non. And it is by recognizing the some perfectly apposite; laying the canvas horizontally, after all, essential contributions of both steps that of the subtle a man and broader of Pollock's hardly precludes dispensing pigment in traditional intricacies, implications, procedure canvas relief. ner.4 No doubt, the horizontal orientation of the may emerge in sharper This content downloaded from 199.79.254.152 on Tue, 9 Apr 2013 12:53:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE SUBVERSION OF GRAVITY IN POLLOCK'S ABSTRACTIONS 517 1 Hans Namuth, PollockPainting, 1950 (artwork Hans Namuth Estate; photograph provided by the Center forCreative Photography, University of Arizona or Two Three Dimensions? does not make contact with the support, nothing comes to full To have the act of Appreciating the ramifications of Pollock's manipulation pass. any consequences, therefore, paint of the canvas's orientation from the a closer on on requires, outset, ing is dependent what transpires the two-dimensional investigation of his creative process and, more to the point, its surface of the picture plane. Though most painters may not on reliance gravity. Pouring, after all, is impossible without have felt constrained by this exigency, Pollock sought and an gravitational force. Had Pollock lived in environment devised an alternative through which he severed his depen were neu on as a trans where the effects of the Earth's gravitational field dence that physical connection and, result, tralized on the international for exam a space station, formed painting into truly three-dimensional process.11 he could have not These technical came at a ple9 probably painted but poured. innovations, however, price. Choosing pouring as the principal means of dispensing pig Expanding his activity into three-dimensional space, Pollock ment, in turn, had a major consequence for his modus ope forfeited the luxury of being able to suspend his process at it from a two- to a three-dimen no randi, namely, transforming will. Actively working in the air, he could longer interrupt sional affair. Pollock's of are no less his as a once abstractions, course, movements, especially gesture, initiated, would two dimensional than easel on canvas as as re "conventionally" paintings, and, keep releasing pigment the long any no matter on was their practice, painters obviously work by moving mained the implement he wielding.12 The streams of in three-dimensional space. Yet, whereas previous artists had paint already in flight, furthermore, would instantly lie be no to was to the bounds of the artist's control save measures choice but touch their piece, Pollock free paint yond for in the air, allowing his gestures to range in three dimensions, oudandish (such as yanking the canvas out from under the as to rise and fall, as well span from side to side, all without pigment already airborne). Yet the artist managed to turn making direct physical contact with the canvas. In traditional this situation to his advantage. Since his gestures were per easel or mural painting, no sooner is the brush lifted from formed in the air, the painting underneath him simulta or the cloth wall discounting, for the sake of argument, the neously recorded both where and with what velocityhe moved exception of an artist flinging or spraying paint at an upright his implement, including the most subde inflections and surface10 than the creative act is (provisionally perhaps, but tremors of his hand and wrist.