Over time, art historians, curators and critics have viewed Pollock’s art as embodying various liberations associated with Surrealism and the dreamscape, the trance-like automatism that seems to connect his methods to Dadaism and the child-like responses of Primitivism, all the while carrying the emotional and gestural baggage of Abstract Expressionism.[3] Yet, against each of these interpretations, Pollock’s art continues to remain elusive. Pollock’s paintings escape any easy categorization as his canvases continue to pose more questions than answers. As art historian Michael Schreyach observes, it is precisely these problems with various interpretations “that sustain repeated engagements with Pollock’s achievement in the first place” (Schreyach, 43).[4]
Of all the categories art scholars and analysts have devised to characterize Pollock’s protean accomplishment since his death in 1956 at the age of 44, perhaps the most compelling is our own view of him coming upon his work almost as a new discovery more than half a century later in 2009. Going beyond textbooks, as we stand perhaps for the first time before an actual painting such as Autumn Rhythm created in 1950, it is readily apparent that the Modernist-Cubist perception of instantaneous dimensionality radically transforms in Pollock’s art. In a canvas like Autumn Rhythm, we find ourselves at the brink of layers of latex poured onto a canvas that lures us over the cliff of the picture plane into a web of new territory. In navigating any one of Pollock’s works, the viewer inevitably comes to confront the impenetrable mystery of the artist himself.
Despite the debate surrounding the interpretation of Pollock’s oeuvre in the academic community, the purpose of this paper is to explore the aesthetic rationale of Pollock on the level of his own stark statement of intention. Indeed, this essay's goal is to engage in a new and expanded interpretation of his paintings that were created in the late 40’s and early 50’s during his “Springs” period that seeks to answer a basic question that continues to remain open-ended for art historians and the larger art and scientific community: What does a Pollock drip painting communicate? In exploring this question, this paper will look at Pollock’s canvases, Lavender Mist [1950], particularly concentrating on Cathedral [1947], through the lens of advancing science that has come to redefine and expand our notions of nature and reality. The paper will research some threads of the current debate over the rationale of his work, looking beyond the insights forwarded by physicist Dr. Richard P. Taylor in his paper, “Fractal Analysis of Pollock’s Drip Paintings." Instead, this paper will strike experimental new ground in coming to look at Pollock’s canvases as quantum diaries, extending the relationship of cutting-edge quantum physics espoused by Dr. William Tiller of Stanford University. Ultimately, the paper will explore Pollock’s paint as a door that mediates our expanding conceptions of reality and nature, leading us back to perhaps a closer understanding of Pollock both as a man and as an artist.
In seeking to understand Pollock’s art, scholars have turned to his paintings and his words. In 1947, Pollock issued his famous lightning statement about his art: where his wife, Lee Krasner, recollected in response to Hans Hoffman’s admonition that he should paint from nature, Pollock stated, “ I am nature” (Varnedole et al, 28). Yet, whatever Pollock may have ascribed to himself or to his aesthetic by way of that terse statement, prominent contemporary cultural historians such as Davidson and Lytle tend to discount oral statements and testimony as disruptive over the larger truth of probing Pollock’s life; a life best recounted in terms of his bare-bone artistic activities conducted where he lived.[5] Indeed, Pollock’s move to a new home at “the Springs” located in upstate New York in 1945, can be seen as a watershed point for Pollock’s productivity and inspiration. Physicist Taylor tells of the efficacy of “the many hours that Pollock spent on the back porch of his new house, staring out at the countryside as if assimilating the natural shapes surrounding him” (R.P. Taylor, 1).[6] More than 26 new canvases were created in the relative isolation of Springs, through concentrated artistic efforts that were photographically documented in Pollack’s studio over the next decade. Yet, to many eyes, Pollock’s drip paintings have continued to remain incomprehensible. As Taylor relates as late as 2005, “despite the millions of words written about [the artist], the real meaning behind his infamous swirls of paint has remained inscrutable.”
To many observers, Pollock’s statement, “I am nature,” carried the seeds of pure revelation that ushered in new ideas relating to natural fractal forms. Pollock’s Springs studio formed a rich focus of nature and art and there is no reason to doubt Pollock’s documented love of the countryside after having moved from the concrete jungles of New York City. As his agent, Betty Parsons, remarked about him, "There was a desperation about [Pollock]. When he wasn't drinking, he was shy, he could hardly speak. And when he was drinking, he wanted to fight.”[7] Whatever personal and emotional problems assuaged by alcohol Pollock may have experienced, they were greatly ameliorated in the fresh air of Springs. The full measure of Pollock’s admission, “I am Nature” formed the cornerstone of a New York Times 2006 article by Randy Kennedy, that introduced Dr. Richard Taylor’s work that measured Pollock’s drip paintings in terms of their natural ‘fractal patterns’ and ‘fractal dimensions,’ that seemed to prove and support Pollock’s love of life and his declared embodiment of the living world. Importantly, Taylor's identification of Pollock's unique fractal markings constituted an artistic signature that could provide proof against a group of forgeries that had entered the marketplace.[8] Indeed, Schreyach’s Apollo article attempts to cover Taylor’s concept of “fractal”: “A fractal, understood in its traditional mathematical sense, is a curve having the specific property that any small part of the curve, when enlarged, will exhibit the same statistical character as does the whole curve. In other words, fractals have a consistent geometric property evident on different scales or magnifications.
The property that is defined on the smallest scale, or the highest magnification, will resemble the property found on larger scales. Fractal patterns, then, may be discerned by taking note of such repetition at various scales. Natural objects such as tree branches, rivers, and coastlines, all exhibit some degree of fractal pattern” (Schreyach, 39). Perhaps a better analogy is broccoli: no matter how small the pieces of the head, even the tiniest floret will resemble the larger plant. Works such as Lavender Mist and Cathedral were pictured in reviews such as Art News Annual Volume XXXVI as early as 1957 alongside enlarged photographs of tree branches that seemed to intimately link Pollock’s work to well known fractal patterns in nature (Art News Annual, 92-93).
Dr. Taylor’s 2006 analysis of Pollack electrified the art community. Indeed, his website states, “After fifty years of debate, the answer to modern art’s greatest question has been delivered form an unexpected source – science.”[9] Yet, Taylor’s seemingly original fractal hypothesis echoed a much earlier exhibition, “Kunst und Naturform,” staged in 1958 at the Kunsthalle in Basel. The show, organized by J.R. Geigy S.A., a microbiology firm, exhibited abstract paintings alongside micronphotographs.[10] In the exhibition, Pollock’s Cathedral was "hung alongside enlarged photographs of glia cells of the human cerebral cortex” that matched the markings of his painting almost exactly. Yet, critics such as Schreyach as late as 2007 have been careful to note that the drive to establish coordinates in nature in relationship to Pollock’s canvases and in interpreting them as enlargements of physical phenomena, is a mistaken approach. Indeed, some critics believe that such a view leads inevitably to a dismissal of Pollock’s unique handling and conception of each canvas, riveting attention too easily on paintings that might become interchangeable. As Schreyach puts the matter, “We begin to speak about ‘Pollocks’ rather than Lavender Mist.”(Schreyach, 42) Carrying the matter further scholars ask, for all the noise about fractals, do mere fractals adequately define Pollock?
To many curators and scholars the explanation of Pollock in terms of fractals is insufficient. The referencing of nature in the view of critics, creates a false sense of comfort for viewers who feel out of water viewing Pollock’s non- objective, non-referential canvases (Schreyach, 43). To certain eyes, creating a program to ‘explain’ Pollock discounts the grandeur of his vision and work. As Schreyach complains, “So why does it seem so imperative to solve the discomforts of Pollock’s completely non-referential work?” As Schreyach argues, “Perhaps we have a deep discomfort with the seemingly endless task some abstract painting demands from us: a continual vigilant investigation of our own culture’s relation to ‘nature’” (Schreyach, 43).
It is precisely Schreyach’s call for a more incisive investigation of our relationship to nature that extends this paper’s discussion over to a more radical approach to Pollock which lies in the work of physicist Dr. William Tiller of Stanford University. As Tiller states on his website, “For the last four hundred years, an unstated assumption of science is that human intention cannot affect what we call 'physical reality.' Our experimental research of the past decade shows that, for today's world and under the right conditions, this assumption is no longer correct. We humans are much more than we think we are and Psychoenergetic Science continues to expand the proof of it.”[11]
In a certain sense, a better understanding of Pollock as an embodiment of nature perhaps comes with a brief review of some of Tiller’s famous experiments that have surprisingly redefined nature. Indeed, a group of eight Stanford quantum physicists were able to physically raise the pH of water by thinking about it.[12] In another of Tiller’s proven observations of quantum physics, rooms or spaces where intensive work was conducted were observed to become altered or conditioned to the point where working spaces or artist’s studios actually assisted the work people performed in them. Results from one conditioned or 'sacred' laboratory or space could not be produced or reproduced in another.[13] In another significant observation of quantum physics, intent and specific thought directed upon an object to raise pH imbued the object with the power to do so in the absence of researchers.[14]
Tiller outlines the quantitative documentation for each of these phenomena in his published case studies corroborated with physics teams, that can be accessed at www.thetillerfoundation.com. In a certain sense, in line with the opening doors of this research, we begin to appreciate the sacrosanct arena of Pollock’s Springs studio, not just outdoors as he is commonly documented, but returning to the significance of the interior of his conditioned working space as an integral part of his creative action and language. As Pollock admitted in the 1947 winter issue of Possibilities, "Painting in the studio has a life of its own."[15]
Indeed, quantum physics offers scholars perhaps a very different emergent description of Pollock's work. In a very certain sense, in light of quantum physics that emerge from Tiller’s White Paper VII, Why We Need to Create a New Reference Frame (RF) for Viewing Nature and How do We do It? (2009), the physicist offers us a working and groundbreaking quantum mathematical paradigm:
QM(t) = Qe+ ∂eff(t)Qm(t)
This remarkable equation serves to more completely define Tiller’s observation that “human consciousness in the form of specific intention is capable of altering the properties of materials” (Tiller WP VII, 3). Within the dimensions of quantum reality as expressed in the connections of the above equation, Pollock’s artistic intention directed upon his canvas had the power to alter his materials. Along this energy arc that impacts substance and intent in painted energetic templates such as Cathedral, we find more than a composition built of fractals but rather, a composite embedment of Pollock’s thoughts and actions as he handled his materials in creating the work. In light of physics’ energetic reality, Pollock’s canvas Cathedral functions as a conditioned object that reflects the creatively altered space of the artist’s studio as well as Pollock’s actions and thoughts as a human being.[16] The painting Cathedral in a certain sense is a cathedral; a sacred reliquary space that has become conditioned with the thoughts, cares, concerns, hopes, dreams and the physical activity of the person who has come to pray or interact within the sanctuary of its environs. In such places and around such objects, healing takes place assisted by the quantum status of energy housed within objects and spaces (Tiller, WP VII, 9).
As Tiller himself has expressed it, "In the coupled state, we can measurably influence physical reality via intention."[17] That Pollock powerfully identified himself as the embodiment of “Nature” affirms his central positive energetic core that collected in the liquid lines of his technique. Whatever dark emotions may be ascribed to Pollock’s psyche, these too are in the work and constitute his color choices and handling of paint as linear maps and diaries of his inner state.
In light of these reflections, Pollock’s works are not passive objects that hang on a wall. Pollock's messages are alive in living mediums. They interact and cause us to investigate them and involve us at every turn. If we feel compelled to conduct a dialogue and question these canvases, then we are experiencing the motivation toward deep questioning that was Pollock’s ethos. Indeed, questioning can be filled with disillusion and angst as well as triumph, and Pollock is not alone in his complexity; Tiller stands alongside him at the threshold of the abyss probing for answers. That we question the meaning of these paintings to such a degree is perhaps an indication of the strength of their energetic embedment.
No easy translation is involved for the casual beholder of Pollock’s work. Both liberation and closeted anxiety seem engraved in his canvases as much as the angst of living remains etched on the lines of his brow recorded in his photographic portraits. Deeply complex, troubled, yet rising above doubt through the action and application of his painting, Pollock remains in his art and his art continues to involve us.
[1]Richard Taylor in “The Use of Science to Investigate Jackson’s Pollock’s Drip Paintings” Journal of Consciousness Studies vol. VII, no. 8-9, 2000, p. 116, comments on his seminal ideas on natural fractal forms occurring in trees, coastlines and other aspects of landscape that he applied to his analysis of Pollock, carried out by commission of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
[2]Lee Krasner’s Interview with Bruce Glaser [1967], in K. Varnedoe and P. Karmel, eds. Jackson Pollock Interviews, Articles and Reviews, New York, 1999, p. 28., tends to imply early confusion about the saleability of Pollock’s paintings as to whether they were actually “artworks” made with an artistic intention.
[3]Claude Cernuschi in Jackson Pollock: Meaning and Significance, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992, comments on Pollock’s surreal vacuum, linking him as an inheritor of Duchamp’s Dadaist manifesto through canvases that reaffirm the futility of common objects. He also explains Pollock's contributions to Primitivsm and Abstract Expressionism, with particular emphasis on constructing artist and musician biographies.
[4]Michael Schreyach, (2007) “I am Nature” Apollo, London July/Aug, p. 35 - 43.
[5]Davidson and Lytle in After The Fact, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004, devote a chapter on oral testimony addressing the problems of self-revelatory statements in conducting empirical research into cultural histories in relationship to constructing artist and musician biographies.
[6]R.P. Taylor et al, “The Visual Complexity of Pollock’s Dripped Fractals”, Perceptual and Physiological Responses to the Visual Complexity of Pollock's Fractal Dripped Patterns', The Journal of Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology and Life Sciences, vol. IX, no. 115 (2005).
[7]May 1947 “Jackson Pollock joins Betty Parsons Gallery” http://www.warholstars.org/abstractexpressionism/timeline/abstractexpressionism47.html
[8]Randy Kennedy’s “Computer Analysis Suggests Paintings Are Not Pollocks” New York Times, Art, February 9, 2006, introduced the assertion of Dr. Taylor’s work that the exact fractal nature of Pollock’s canvases could prove their dates of conception, thus discrediting a group of unattributed canvases that had come under question.
[9]http:// www.uoregon.edu/~msiuo/taylor.html
[10]G. Schmidt and R. Schenk, eds. Kunst and Naturform/form in Art and Nature, Basel, 1960.
[11]http://www.tillerfoundation.org
[12]Dribble, Walter, Tiller, W. “Electronic Device-Mediated ph Changes in Water”, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 155–176, 1999 Society for Scientific Exploration http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_13_2_dibble.pdf
[13]William A. Tiller, Walter E. Dibble, C. Norman Shealy, Robert N. Nunley. “Toward General Experimentation and Discovery in Conditioned laboratory Spaces:Part II. pH Change Experience at Four Remote Sites 1 Year Later” The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. April 2004, 10(2): 301-306. http://liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10/1089/107555304323.
[14]Tiller, William. “How the Power of Intention Alters Matter” http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive.mar2/tiller.htm.
[15]Possibilities I, Winter 1947-48. http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/pollock_jackson.html
[16]“On the Conditioning Process for an ITC Lab and other Sacred Spaces,” William Tiller & Walter Dribble, http://www.worlditc.org/f_08_tiller_conditioning_0_process.htm
[17]“The Tiller Model” http://www.tillerfoundation.com/model.php
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