Book Review : Spilling Colors on Pollock’s Life Canvas

To a Violent Grave: An Oral Biography of Jackson Pollock by Jeffrey Potter (Putnam’s: $22.50)

Jackson Pollock prepared his canvasses by placing them on the floor and splattering paint over the surface, staring intently at the result until abstract images began to emerge. At that point, he would allow the paint to drip more slowly, gradually layering a complex non-objective design.

Potter has borrowed the painter’s controversial technique, attempting to create a coherent biography by allowing about 150 people to spill out their recollections of the artist in the expectation that a satisfactory pattern would spontaneously take shape.

Brawling Drunkard

We hear in turn from those who remember Pollock as the difficult child, anguished adolescent, rambunctious art student, brawling drunkard and helpless dependent. The result is a book with all the sad redundancy of the artist’s life but little of the subtlety of his work. More than most, Pollock’s brief, melodramatic career cries out for externally imposed order; without it, his 44 years become a reckless squander of talent and love. A dazzling painting might happen by accretion alone; a definitive biography requires some selectivity than Potter provides.

Page after page, memories accumulate as relatives, friends, art dealers, wives, lovers, teachers and fellow painters recall Pollock. Potter has tracked down gas station attendants, storekeepers, chance acquaintances, neighbors; anyone who even encountered the artist in his spiraling rake’s progress.

Many of the interviewees offer only trivia; others present more thoughtful insights into Pollock’s tortured psyche, but the message is always the same. Jackson Pollock was an uncontrolled and boorish drunk, a generally inarticulate man given to sudden outbursts of crude and vicious sarcasm. He was an irresponsible son, a capricious husband, a mercurial friend. He would wreck your home, appall your guests, abuse your wife and frighten your children, but only if he loved you. His enemies weren’t so lucky, and his worst enemy was always himself.

Recognized as Genius

These recollected incidents, some recorded at the time they happened, others dimmed by the passage of 30 years, all tend to be tempered by lavish use of the word genius.

When William de Kooning calls Pollock “a little paranoid about his greatness,” he’s paying the man a rare compliment. Though Elaine de Kooning tries valiantly to be equally as kind, candor overcomes generosity. “Jackson was hostile to Bill’s utilizing the figure, the “woman” series, and would use some of his pejorative terms. . . . I think Jackson’s ego was his problem in painting. With Jackson, I was aware of the forces, the concentration and the rage that was in that man--the desperation. His greatness has to be qualified.”

Pollock was less charitable and more profane in talking about De Kooning. “That Dutchman, what’s he know about the East End? He doesn’t even know how to drive.” Clement Greenberg, the influential critic who was one of the first to appreciate Pollock’s gifts, admired the artist’s integrity. “He didn’t fool himself--no argument, no talk like ‘Maybe you didn’t see it right.’ ” Anyone who knew Pollock learned to be grateful for small favors.

Potter, the elicitor and chronicler of these assorted vignettes, remains in the background. An intimate of the artist for seven years while Pollock and his wife, the gifted painter Lee Krasner, lived in East Hampton, Long Island, Potter’s voice is subdued and deliberately non-judgmental. He describes the local people who became involved in the tumultuous relationship between Pollock and Krasner, making a concerted effort to show Pollock’s capacity for affection and kindness, an aspect of his character most often seen by those who posed no threat of professional competition. John Cole, a sensitive young man who worked as a contractor for the artist, reports “There was a sweetness to him--absolutely. He gave me two paintings--oils--and good ones.” Even in his worst phases, Pollock could be capable of the extravagant beau geste.

“The number of friends,” Potter says, “who were given works is legion--a surprising number disposed of them soon after his death--but his kindness took other forms also, such as rendering services and offering sympathy. He was a good listener, helped by his intuition, and awareness of his own problems made him open to those of others”; an inverse case of company loving misery.

While examples of the gentle side of Pollock’s tempestuous personality do not exactly abound, there are enough to suggest a fundamentally decent human being swamped by booze and bluster. One way or another, the artist managed to transform the chaos of his life into harmony on canvas, but by the end of “To a Violent Grave” we’re no closer to understanding that mysterious process than we were at the beginning. Though Potter serves up hundreds of Pollock manifestations, the man himself remains elusive as the work he produced.