Jackson Pollock reviewed

There is an interesting review in the latest issue of Jackdaw (Sep/Oct 2015, No.123) of the Jackson Pollock's Black Paintings exhibition at the Tate Liverpool.  The reviewer is Alexander Adams, who explains how Pollock turned to black and to images of conflict, war and death as a riposte to the accusation of insubstantiality after negative criticism from his 1950 show at Betty Parsons Gallery.

"All the time Pollock painted the Black Paintings, he had to struggle with the problem of representation as seen through the prism of critical debates of the era.  How could an abstract  artist prove he had skill and seriousness without resorting to conventional figuration? ...... Pollock's ambivalence is here on the canvas in front of us.  Pollock was no sooner making images than he was veiling them.  He struggled with contrary impulses ;to make powerful imagery and prove his skill and a need to maintain his stance as a committed abstract artist." And further on in the text: "De Kooning's Women encompass ambiguities whille Pollock's figures have none: fear, flight, strife, suffering and death are at the centre and there is no periphery.  Examine his figure paintings from his earliest years up to his last, Portrait and a Dream, and you will find that the bleakness of Pollock's attitude towards humanity is unparalleled by any other great Western artist."

Interestingly, in a further article in the same issue of Jackdaw, Lynette Roth reviews the show of Max Beckmann paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum.  She notes that "Beckmann's presence in America had a great impact on American painters, with his paintings widely reproduced and praised.  Beckmann's status as his own artist (meaning?) and an opponent of Nazi persecution meant he was lionised as an individual over and above his qualities as a painter.  Beckmann's presence in the USA is a critical (and largely overlooked) factor in the genesis of de Kooning's Woman series (starting 1950, and Pollock's Black Paintings (starting 1951).

I am not convinced about the last sentence in the quote above from the review of Pollock, but it was something else that struck me about these excellent reviews.  It was the artists' self-consciousness regarding their reception within the art establishment, not just in relation to self-promotion and status 'as an individual', but actually as a dictate over the inner creative voice.  The pressure of this tyranny no doubt mitigates against complacency and in  the work of de Kooning and Pollock it forged a dynamic of remarkable breadth and vigour. Great work was the result.

But to what extent and for how long can the creative imagination be restricted to the formulaic boundaries and performance criteria which theory and patronage demand?  What if the urgency of inner voice demands a 'retrograde' step?  Invention for invention's sake is theoretically approved and effective as marketing device, but isn't obedience to inner voice the real challenge and essence of creative renewal?