Back in 1992, a young Media Guy teamed with an old art critic to dive into some amazing work at the Australian National Gallery. Here's an excerpt from one of my favorite passages and works.
Jackson POLLOCK
United States of America 1912 – 1956
Blue poles 1952
oil, enamel, aluminium paint, glass on canvas
OT 367
signed and dated l.l., "Jackson Pollock 52";
(originally inscribed with a "3", subsequently painted over with a "2")
212.1 (h) x 488.9 (w) cm
Purchased 1973
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 1974.264
© Pollock/Krasner Foundation/ARS. Licensed by Viscopy
Blue poles was first exhibited in Pollock’s solo show at Sidney Janis Gallery in1952 where it was titled Number 11, 1952. Later christened by Pollock Blue poles, today the painting is usually referred to as such.[1] Although the date of the painting is definitely 1952, Pollock appears to have mistakenly dated it ‘53’, then changed the ‘3’ to a ‘2’.
In 1973 Stanley P. Friedman wrote an article in the New York Magazine in which he reported that he had been told by Tony Smith, that Smith and Barnett Newman had painted on the canvas that subsequently became Blue poles.[2] No-one that Friedman interviewed for his article denied the possibility that Smith or Newman contributed to the early stages of the work. What they all emphatically denied is that these initial exercises on the canvas contributed in any way to the work which Pollock then built up on the canvas to become Blue poles.Any trace of earlier involvement by Smith or Newman was covered over by the painting which Pollock subsequently made on this canvas.
The canvas is of high‑quality Belgian linen with a commercially oil‑primed ground. The earliest visible layer of paint is black, thinning at the edges to a green which appears to have been formed by the mixing of yellow and black. The first layer of paint was applied, as was customary practice for Pollock since 1947, while the canvas was stretched out on the floor. Fragments of the glass basting tubes, which were used to apply the first layers of paint to the canvas, are embedded in this layer of paint. Subsequently the unstretched canvas was tacked to a beam that ran along the wall of the studio; liquid, white paint was then applied and allowed to run down the canvas.
For the next campaign on the painting, the canvas was returned to the floor. Using his characteristic method of pouring fluid paint from above in a continuous stream onto the canvas, Pollock employed sticks, dried brushes and syringes to build up a web of rhythmic, linear accents using yellow, orange and aluminium paints. He then left the canvas alone for quite some time. When Pollock next worked on the painting, he created the blue poles with the ‘2 x 4’ length of timber that he apparently positioned to act as a straight edge for painting in the poles.[3] The poles are an unusually definite form in the ‘all‑over’ configuration of Pollock's poured paintings and various figurative connotations have been attributed to them—from totems to the swaying masts of tall ships.[4]
Pollock integrated the poles by lacing them into the composition with fine dripped skeins of white, black and blue paint. In this final operation, the artist used brushes and rags as well as poured paint. Careful adjustments were made. For example, a thin white dripped line, that might have faded at the left edge of the canvas, has been fastidiously painted over at the edge in black.
Michael Lloyd and Michael Desmond, European and American Paintings and Sculpture 1870–1970 in the Australian National Gallery,Canberra: Australian National Gallery 1992, pp. 240–45, revised Anthony White 2003
[1] Sidney Janis, correspondence with the National Gallery, 17 January 1986, NGA file 72/1198-03, f.5; Pollock himself referred to the painting as ‘Blue poles’ in a conversation with B.H. Friedman in 1955, see B.H. Friedman, Jackson Pollock: Energy made visible,New York: McGraw-Hill 1972, p. xvii.
[2] Stanley P. Friedman, ‘Loopholes in “Blue poles”’, New York Magazine,29 October 1973, pp. 48–51.
[3] Lee Krasner Pollock recalled seeing this piece of wood near the painting covered with wet blue paint, see O'Connor and Thaw, vol. 2, p. 193.
[4] In his biography of Pollock, Bryan Robertson attributes both connotations to the poles, and also suggests a cruciform and an anchor; see Bryan Robertson, Jackson Pollock, London: Thames & Hudson, New York: Harry N. Abrams 1960, pp. 23–24.
