According to the painter Lee Krasner (1908-1984), who was the companion of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), he said one day, around 1942-1943: “Cursed Picasso!” Every time I feel like I’m getting somewhere, I realize that the bastard got there before me. » Now here is Pollock invited to this “bastard” and, moreover, for his first years, until 1947: the period when Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was his constant nourishment and torment. So the journey begins with the comparison of works on paper by both of them which show, through their proximity, the strength of the Picasso obsession in the young American. The purpose of the exhibition is to show how the latter extracts himself from it little by little, until he becomes the painter of drippingschoreographies of lines of color placed on the canvas placed on the ground.
Around forty of his paintings are brought together, which is remarkable because the difficulty of obtaining the loan of his works is directly proportional to his fame and his financial value, both of which are very high, since Pollock has been elevated to the rank of American hero . Added to this are approximately twice as many drawings and a few works for comparison, including an admirable Arshile Gorky from 1936-1937 and a no less interesting Janet Sobel from 1943. The whole makes a quality exhibition, hung chronologically. We would have done without a large room having black walls, but Pollock’s color is strong enough to resist it. It stands out today, as it did to those who witnessed Pollock’s escape from the references of which he was captive.
In his head, his dreams, his fingers
Picasso was therefore everywhere until around 1943, particularly in drawings, inks and pencils. Pollock knows him very early and very well. He saw his works in exhibitions, including the retrospective “Picasso: Forty Years of His Art”, at the MoMA in New York, inaugurated in November 1939, which brought together 364 and which was preceded, in May, by a presentation of Guernica (1937) in a New York gallery. He sees them in private collections and in magazines arriving from Paris, Art notebooks et Minotaur. He listened to his friend and mentor John Graham (1886-1961) talk about it. Result of this overdose: even when he draws as automatically as possible for the Jungian psychiatrist to whom he goes in 1939 to try to put an end to his alcoholism and his malaise, he creates Picasso, Guernica. He has it in his head, his dreams, his fingers. Fragments of bullfights, body parts, screaming heads, half-beast, half-man monsters, large staring eyes: we would never stop spotting the quotes.
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