Solomon - Jackson Pollock

A BIOGRAPHY

Deborah Solomon

First Cooper Square Press edition 2001

This Cooper Square Press paperback edition of Jackson Pollock is an unabridged republication of the edition first published in New York in 1987. It is reprinted by arrangement with the author.

Copyright 1987 by Deborah Solomon

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

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Published by Cooper Square Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Solomon, Deborah.

Jackson Pollock : a biography / Deborah Solomon.

p. cm.

Originally Published: New York : Simon and Schuster, 1987.

ISBN: 978-0-8454-1182-6

1. Pollock, Jackson, 19121956. 2. PaintersUnited StatesBiography. 3. Abstract expressionismUnited States. I. Title.

ND237.P73 S65 2001

759.13dc21

2001028915

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

For helping me tell this story I am indebted to the following individuals: Mary Abbott-Clyde, Frances Avery, Will Barnet, Ethel Baziotes, Josephine Ben-Shmuel, Thomas P. Benton, Grace Borgenicht, Carol Braider, the late Fritz Bultman, Rudy Burckhardt, Peter Busa, Leo Castelli, Janet Chase-Hauck, Herman Cherry, Irene Crippen, Whitney Darrow, Jr., Fielding Dawson, Dorothy Dehner, Joseph Delaney, Paul Falkenberg, Herbert Ferber, Helen Frankenthaler, Constance Garner, Sidney Geist, Max Granick, Clement Greenberg, Florence and Peter Grippe, David Hare, Ben Heller, Joseph L. Henderson, Clair Heyer, Rebecca Hicks, Harry Holtzman, Axel Horn, Elizabeth Hubbard, Merle Hubbard, Vetta Huston, Sidney Janis, Paul Jenkins, Buffie Johnson, Mervin Jules, Reuben Kadish, Jacob Kainen, Jerome Kamrowski, Nathaniel Kaz, Ruth Kligman, Joyce Kootz, the late Lee Krasner, Ibram Lassaw, Berthe Laxineta, Violet de Laszlo, Harold Lehman, the late John Little, Josephine Little, Cile Lord, Jessie Benton Lyman, Arloie McCoy, Jason McCoy, Yvonne McKinney, George Sid Miller, Sue Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Hans Namuth, Annalee Newman, Ruth and Tino Nivola, Alfonso Ossorio, Frances and Wayne Overholtzer, Philip Pavia, Eleanor Piacenza, Alma and Jay Pollock, Charles Pollock, Elizabeth Pollock, Frank and Marie Pollock, Herbert L. Pratt, Milton Resnick, Dan Rice, Dorothea Rockburne, May Tabak Rosenberg, Patia Rosenberg, Lou Rosenthal, Berton Rouech, Irving Sandler, Nene Schardt, Rachel Scott, Dorothy Seiberling, Charles Seliger, Jane Smith, Eleanor Steffen, Ronald Stein, Ruth Stein, Hedda Sterne, Wally Strautin, the late James Johnson Sweeney, Allene Talmage, Araks Tolegian, the late Manuel Tolegian, Esteban and Harriet Vicente, Theodore Wahl, James H. Wall, Joan Ward, Enez Whipple, Roger Wilcox, Reginald Wilson, Maia Wojciechowska, Elisabeth Zogbaum, and the late Marta Vivas-Zogbaum.

I am grateful to Lee Krasner for granting me unrestricted access to Pollocks papers. Eugene Victor Thaw, the executor of the Pollock estate since Miss Krasners death, has kindly given me permission to quote from those papers.

Most of Pollocks papers are located at the Archives of American Art in Washington, DC. I owe special thanks to the Archives staff, particularly Bill McNaught and Jemison Hammond, for their gracious assistance and patience.

Some of Pollocks letters remain in private hands. I am grateful to Arloie McCoy, Rebecca Hicks, and Charles Seliger for letting me examine their letters. Frank Pollock made available to me the letters of his mother, and Irene Crippen allowed me to consult some additional letters from Stella Pollock.

I am especially indebted to Stephen Campbell of the Thomas H. and Rita P. Benton Testamentary Trusts, United Missouri Bank, Kansas City, for granting me unrestricted access to and permission to quote from the Bentons personal papers.

Many people aided me in my search for pertinent documents. My thanks to Ray Ferren of Guild Hall; Bonnie Clearwater of the Rothko Foundation; Sandy Hirsh of the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation; Marilyn Cohen of the Betty Parsons Foundation; Lawrence Campbell of the Art Students League; Altamae Markham of the Park County Library, in Cody, Wyoming; Ward Jackson of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Dorothy King of the East Hampton Free Library; and Stephen L. Schlesinger of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Time-Life, Inc. provided me with transcripts of unpublished interviews with Jackson Pollock, Betty Parsons, and several others. Pat Carlton shared with me her research on Caroline Pratt, and Constance Schwartz shared her research on Lee Krasner. Clair Heyer led me through an overgrown church cemetery in Tingley, Iowa, in search of the gravestones of Pollocks ancestors.

I am grateful to the New York Public Library for use of the Frederick Lewis Allen Memorial Room and to the Dallas Public Library for use of the Frances Sanger Mossiker study room.

John Herman, my first editor, got me off on a strong start. Bob Bender provided superb editorial advice later on and improved my manuscript immeasurably. Kathy Robbins, my literary agent, has done as much as anyone to encourage me and has also provided essential editorial guidance. Her assistant, Loretta Fidel, has been most helpful. Many others have supported me over the past few years, but I am particularly grateful to Kent Sepkowitz, Karen Marder, Douglas Pollack, David Firestone, Lee Stern, Jesse Kornbluth, and James Atlas.

To my parents
and my sisters Lisa and Cherise

My God! Id rather go to Europe than to heaven!

American painter William Merritt Chase (18491916)
when offered the chance to study abroad

Everyone is going or gone to Paris. With the old shit (that you cant paint in America). Have an idea they will all be back.

Jackson Pollock, 1946

Jackson Pollocks mother, Stella May McClure, was born in May 1875 in a two-room log cabin in Tingley, Iowa, an isolated farming town in the southernmost part of the state. As the oldest child in a struggling pioneer family, Stella was saddled with responsibilities from her earliest years. She quit school after the sixth grade to help raise her six brothers and sisters, two of whom died in childhood. The family was poor but respectable, and it gave them an edge of distinction to earn their livelihood by a means other than farming. Stellas father, John McClure, was a mason and carpenter who laid most of the foundations in Tingley; and her mother, Cordelia, was known among the townspeople for her weaving. Stella, like her parents, was good with her hands. Besides sewing all the clothes for her family, by the time she was a teen she was sewing beautiful long dresses that she sold to the wealthier women in town. She loved fine, well-crafted things, and it made her proud to be descended on both sides from weavers. Once when she was asked to write a family history, the only people she included were the craftsmen, as if no one else really mattered. Great Grand Pa Boyd was born in Ireland was a linen weaver, she noted. Great Grand Mother Speck weaver of woolens and carpets. My mother wove first piece of linen when she was sixteen.