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“The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world – in other words – expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.”[35]

Age 38

There is a widely accepted opinion that the movement championed by the British scholar, Sir Herbert Read, and which gave American painting a new international status, did not originate in America or begin with Pollock. This theme is repeated throughout Read’s final work, Concise History of Modern Art (109). His work was written only months after Pollock’s death. Read lacked the advantage of hindsight, yet his early statements are valuable at least for that reason, as they had not yet been influenced by many other commentaries.

Read said, “It is impossible to establish national boundaries for modern painting.” He then quoted Pollock, from his famous reply in 1944 to a questionnaire published in Arts and Architecture. “The idea of an isolated American painting,” Pollock said, “seems absurd to me just as the idea of purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd… The basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any country.” (83) Even so, no less than the distinguished John Walker said, “Pollock was the most original painter America has produced.” (118)