cowboy. He was, de Kooning thought, “the American glamour boy in art. …who were they going to go to – a Dutchman, an Italian, a Jew, a Greek? Where’s the American? He filled the bill.”[36] De Kooning later recalled: “Pollock was the leader.” He was the painting cowboy, the first to get recognition. Peggy Guggenheim was crazy about him. She bought things from him during the war recalled de Kooning[37]. However, some post-mortem ‘revenge’ could be offered as, for example, in 2005 when de Kooning’s Sailcloth (1949), made before his famous satirical Woman series began, was expected to sell for $9-$12 million at Christie’s[38].
The Movie: Pollock
Reference is made here to the Ed Harris movie several times because it follows the authoritative tome by Naifeh & Smith to which Harris had obtained the movie rights. However, the movie is a biographical entertainment which obviously isn’t a documentary. In contrast, the Hans Namuth 1950 ‘documentary’ film, supposedly showing the typical work method of Pollock, might be more acting and posing than cinéma vérité. The award-winning Harris movie is widely known. In its review of the best movies of the year 2000, Time Magazine notes Ed Harris “never lets his exhibitions of Pollock’s inexplicable gift soften or redeem the artist’s monstrousness.” The review concludes there has never been a more biographical film of an anti-hero than this one. However, have there been many artists since Beethoven with a greater contrast between the depressed artist and his inspirational art?
However, not all critics praise the film without reservation. Walsh and other critics believe the historical dimension of Pollock’s life is absent in Harris’ film. Some critics feel the film is much too narrow in its approach and fails to address many factors which influenced his life and work. While it deals with psychological issues and his response to social situations, it does not present his political history and social aspirations which surely also had to have a profound impact on his life[39].
Ed Harris began painting in the early 1990s, which certainly helped prepare him to play the role of Pollock so convincingly, especially during the painting scenes. In an interview Harris explains, “I’ve been painting and drawing off and on since I became committed to making this film. I had a little studio built so I’d have enough floor space to work on larger canvases.” (45). Walsh observes the Harris movie is “so narrowly focused and so limited in its approach that the most essential truths about Pollock and his circumstances are permitted to escape.”
Marcia Gay Harden was given the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as Krasner, but some critics agree with those who felt Harris should have been given an Oscar for directing, if not also for lead actor.
Before the Harris movie, a film referring to Pollock’s life was being thought of. It might have starred Robert De Niro (as Pollock) and Barbra Streisand (as Krasner) but it did not develop[40].
In the Harris movie, Harden, not a native of Brooklyn like Streisand, very effectively takes on a Brooklyn accent, especially for the early scenes of the movie.
Number 26A, 1948: Black and White, 1948. Enamel on canvas, 208 × 121.7 cm, Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Number 28, 1950, 1950. Oil, enamel and aluminium paint on canvas, 172.7 × 266.7 cm, Collection Muriel Kallis Newman, Chicago.
The famous Life photo of a hostile-looking Pollock foreshadows the attitudes of the roles of restless rebels (with or without causes) played by actors. Barnaby Ruhe plays the mature Jackson Pollock in PollockSquared. Actor Richard Simulcik, Jr., in his publicity poses for the 1997 play, Number One: A Pollock Painting, also effectively captures the Pollock-like attitude and the arrogant pose[41]. In promotional Polaroid photographs for his 1986 play, One Gesture of the Heart, actor/director Victor Raphael also looks somewhat like Pollock, sans dissipation and anger[42]. However, Ed Harris surely captures the image of Pollock perfectly, and had a big advantage because in the movie he physically looks like the painter of the 1940s. Moreover, Harris amazingly learned the gestural technique and does an uncanny reincarnation of Jackson’s famous action painting Dance.
Dean of Art
“I’ve got a long way to go yet toward my development – much that needs working on – doing everything with a definite purpose. Without purpose with each move then chaos.”[43]
To help readers picture the young, rebellious Jackson, biographers have suggested thinking of characters played in movies starring James Dean, or characters played by Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Steve McQueen, or Martin Sheen when they were young. Many soap operas, for example, include a character that is an angry young man archetype. The myth of the cowboy-artist Pollock probably satisfied a similar popular need in his day.
Of course, those actors were generations after Pollock. Moreover, the actors were fortunately less rebellious in their real lives than in the troubled lives of the characters they played. Pollock was, in reality, truly at least as moody and non-conformist as those fictional characters. However, comparisons at the time, especially to James Dean, who also died in a fatal car crash, are inevitable. Dean’s last movie was Giant, the giant of motion pictures released in 1956, the year of Pollock’s fatal crash. Film critic Leslie Halliwell said Dean’s death set off “astonishing world-wide outbursts of emotional necrophilia.”[44] A retrospective bio-pic, The James Dean Story, was compiled in 1957, the same year as Pollock’s retrospective at MoMA.
That atmosphere and those comparisons, along with the unique but widely-circulated photo of Pollock in Western gear, help to keep the myth alive to this day. Jackson’s brother, Charles, had a very similar photo in the Western work gear, but he didn’t perpetuate into adulthood a corresponding cocky attitude, as did Jackson. It might be that Pollock’s inner child was always that of a rebellious and independent cowboy.
Lee Krasner
In several references, the birth year of Lee Krasner is given as 1912, the same as Pollock’s. However, it is given as 1908 in Gabor and other authoritative sources. At the least, oral biographies sometimes mention she was older than Pollock. Krasner’s parents were Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn. She was the fifth of six children, and apparently her talent was overlooked in her youth. However, she later became a favourite student of the noted artist and mentor, Hans Hofmann, from 1937 to 1940. She lived with an artist, Igor Pantuhoff, in the early 1930s. She led her relatives to think they were married[45]. He was in so many ways the opposite of Lee; in his appearance, background, and philosophy[46]. Yet, they shared an apartment in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, with Harold Rosenberg and Harold’s wife, May Tabak. Rosenberg had Pollock’s evolving technique in mind when he later coined the phrase, action painting. Pantuhoff’s profile portrait of Krasner seems to be a caricature, yet it is oddly flattering. It is one of the many details carefully incorporated into the Harris movie. Pantuhoff said, “How much you get paid (for a portrait of a society lady) depends on how well you sleep with her.”[47] He was an admirer of de Kooning.
Pollock’s biographers suggest Pollock and Pantuhoff “were drawn to Krasner not so much by
Stevens. Pages 208 and 652, note 208
Klaster. Pages 209, 652 note 209
Walsh. Paragraph 32, 34
For a description of the injunction (US SD New York 00–6472) filed on behalf of Ruth Kligman vs. Pollock Film, Inc., Ed Harris, et al, see www.entlawdigest.com. That site of the Entertainment Law Digest is a subscription service.
Letter from Kate Tull, Administrative Assistant of Collegiate Church Corporation, December 3, 2003
Harrison (46). Page 342
to his father LeRoy, February, 1932
Leslie Haliwell. The Filmgoer’s Companion. (Hill & Wang, 1974) Page 215.
Naifeh. Page 381
Naifeh. Pages 378, 393
Naifeh. Page 380
