But we know that the next chapter in Janson's History of Art was about people like Helen Frankenthaler. Although I would never have doubted the logic of a person like Jackson Pollock becoming famous in his decade, in this country, I was extremely suspicious of the fame of Helen Frankenthaler. It struck me that she was another person who was reading the art history books, and she laid out a plan of how to theoterically fit her paintings edgewise into the existing rhetoric about abstract expressionism.
Pollock had a place in our society, just like a prize fighter. Millions of people, fat ugly people who have long ago gone to seed, sitting in their Barcaloungers overflowing with fat around the edges of their chairs lay back watching their TV and they see the prize fighter and they think, "Thank God there is somebody who is fit, and can fight."
And Jackson was to out society of the fifties like that prize fighter. And all the bankers, dentists, accountants, and businessmen go to the grind of their hated jobs, in their hated lives, and yet they think "At least there was someone who was great just because he threw things, and was always out of control." He was a Janis Joplin. And thank God for the Janis Joplins. If the Janis Joplins didn't exist, God would certainly have nuked the entire planet long ago in desperation saying, "What is the use of these boring, God forsaken drones?"
But then we have to consider Helen Frankthaler with her townhouse and her lap dogs. How does she fit in? Was she a passionate, suffering individual bleeding for her art? Or was she a person who purchased a paragraph in Janson's History of Art book with about five million dollars and some well connected friends? I think her fame was purchased and paid for. So was Jackson's, but in entirely different and more respectable coin.
I went to an opening of Helen Frankenthaler's once. She was there, and I met her, and I got to talk to her. Her paintings were huge. They consisted of colors that had been poured out onto the raw canvas. When you pour paint out on a canvas it tends to run, so, when looking at these paintings on the wall one involuntarily begins to wonder how is it that these big puddles of color didn't run down the canvas in big streaks? And one thinks, probably the color didn't run down the canvas because, like Jackson Pollock, her paintings were done stretched out on the floor of the studio.
So I asked her. I said, "How do you do these large paintings?"
She must have been asked this question many times because she gave me a prepared answer of which she was obviously proud. She said, "I have a large scaffold built in my studio that I can walk around on that hovers over the canvas which is stretched out on the floor."
"So," I said, "that means when these paintings were painted they were laying on the floor, and when you were looking at them, and planning them out, they were laying on the floor. And when you finally brought them to completion they were stretched out and laying on the floor."
"That's right," she said.
"Then if that is the case, shouldn't we really be looking down on these paintings?"
Well, I left the gallery and walked out into the night air of Manhattan, and I was feeling so smug and so proud of myself that I had said such a mean and insulting thing to a great artist. And I have to say, soon after that I began to feel guilty and ashamed of what I had done. Because it was a proud criticism, and it cut deeply to the quick which I saw in her face the moment i said it. Because it was the truth. The truth is that Pollock's paintings should be unstretched and put out on the floor, and so should Helen Frankenthaler's. The moment they took stretchers and stretched their work out to be hung up on the wall, they declared that all that they had done had to play second fiddle to presenting the entire output as product for sale in the market.
But I felt ashamed because I saw in an instant that Helen had listened to an astute criticism, the type that can damage a career. Because life can sometimes be brought to a stop at the utterance of three of four words.
And she, and Jackson were in agonies in their day, wondering if they were, when all was said and done, really artists at all, and not just victims of an elaborate market hoax.
This is why Jackson would get drunk, sit late at night on the curbs of Manhattan and say to his drunken friends, "I'm the greatest artist. The greatest artist. I am, aren't I?"
Pollock had a place in our society, just like a prize fighter. Millions of people, fat ugly people who have long ago gone to seed, sitting in their Barcaloungers overflowing with fat around the edges of their chairs lay back watching their TV and they see the prize fighter and they think, "Thank God there is somebody who is fit, and can fight."
And Jackson was to out society of the fifties like that prize fighter. And all the bankers, dentists, accountants, and businessmen go to the grind of their hated jobs, in their hated lives, and yet they think "At least there was someone who was great just because he threw things, and was always out of control." He was a Janis Joplin. And thank God for the Janis Joplins. If the Janis Joplins didn't exist, God would certainly have nuked the entire planet long ago in desperation saying, "What is the use of these boring, God forsaken drones?"
But then we have to consider Helen Frankthaler with her townhouse and her lap dogs. How does she fit in? Was she a passionate, suffering individual bleeding for her art? Or was she a person who purchased a paragraph in Janson's History of Art book with about five million dollars and some well connected friends? I think her fame was purchased and paid for. So was Jackson's, but in entirely different and more respectable coin.
I went to an opening of Helen Frankenthaler's once. She was there, and I met her, and I got to talk to her. Her paintings were huge. They consisted of colors that had been poured out onto the raw canvas. When you pour paint out on a canvas it tends to run, so, when looking at these paintings on the wall one involuntarily begins to wonder how is it that these big puddles of color didn't run down the canvas in big streaks? And one thinks, probably the color didn't run down the canvas because, like Jackson Pollock, her paintings were done stretched out on the floor of the studio.
So I asked her. I said, "How do you do these large paintings?"
She must have been asked this question many times because she gave me a prepared answer of which she was obviously proud. She said, "I have a large scaffold built in my studio that I can walk around on that hovers over the canvas which is stretched out on the floor."
"So," I said, "that means when these paintings were painted they were laying on the floor, and when you were looking at them, and planning them out, they were laying on the floor. And when you finally brought them to completion they were stretched out and laying on the floor."
"That's right," she said.
"Then if that is the case, shouldn't we really be looking down on these paintings?"
Well, I left the gallery and walked out into the night air of Manhattan, and I was feeling so smug and so proud of myself that I had said such a mean and insulting thing to a great artist. And I have to say, soon after that I began to feel guilty and ashamed of what I had done. Because it was a proud criticism, and it cut deeply to the quick which I saw in her face the moment i said it. Because it was the truth. The truth is that Pollock's paintings should be unstretched and put out on the floor, and so should Helen Frankenthaler's. The moment they took stretchers and stretched their work out to be hung up on the wall, they declared that all that they had done had to play second fiddle to presenting the entire output as product for sale in the market.
But I felt ashamed because I saw in an instant that Helen had listened to an astute criticism, the type that can damage a career. Because life can sometimes be brought to a stop at the utterance of three of four words.
And she, and Jackson were in agonies in their day, wondering if they were, when all was said and done, really artists at all, and not just victims of an elaborate market hoax.
This is why Jackson would get drunk, sit late at night on the curbs of Manhattan and say to his drunken friends, "I'm the greatest artist. The greatest artist. I am, aren't I?"
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