Unsung: Jackson Pollock

Before he was dubbed “Jack the Dripper,” before Time magazine asked if he was “the greatest… Before he was dubbed “Jack the Dripper,” before Time magazine asked if he was “the greatest living artist,” before he gave America an art arena where it could finally compete with Europe, Jackson Pollock was just a surrealist. The days of his mural-sized revolutionary abstractions were still years away and he was still under the spell of Mexican and Spanish painters like Orozco, Rivera and El Greco. But he was still great.

The early Pollock, a protege of the great American artist Thomas Hart Benton, still wanted to be the American Picasso. And one woman saw the potential in him. Fortunately, her name was Peggy Guggenheim.

Pollock’s first solo exhibition was at the Guggenheim Museum in 1943, guaranteeing him not only the $150 per month that his sponsor paid him but a chance to impress the art critics who mattered. Most reviews were mixed, but one, Clement Greenberg, was forceful and enthusiastic, providing the foundations for the careers of both critic and troubled young artists.

Pollock’s early still-formalist figures radiate with angst. He had already been an alcoholic for nearly a decade, and the dark, thick lines in his early paintings are a direct window into the dysfunction that would effectively end his career and life in another 10 years. But the power and energy – that would later be the only aspects of his work – course through Pollock’s early paintings, giving them life and an edge that modern art is too often without.

The paintings are risky; they are bold and arresting. They are the works that prompted Greenberg to say glowingly of the young man, “he takes orders he cannot fill.” They are a rare glimpse into the formative stages of the man who turned the 20th century art world upside down. “Blue (Moby Dick)” (ca. 1943) shows the influences of Joan Miro. Works like “The She-Wolf” (1943) and “Stenographic Figure” (1942) are bold and disturbing, moving with controlled chaos around the page in manner that heralds his later work.

The period of surrealism was brief. In 1946, Pollock’s ,i>Eyes in the Heat is a clear predecessor to the drip abstractions that would become his hallmark, and one year later “Full Fathom Five” is devoid of any concrete shapes at all.

If Pollock’s greatest legacy is that he broke the rules that bound the art world, then his early work is testament to the fact that he was a gifted artist even when he played by them. The mantra of Pollock’s critics is “anyone could do this.” One look at the paintings in the 1943 exhibition is proof enough that no amount of bravery could have compensated for the phenomenal talent that made Pollock’s career possible.