Читать книгу Pollock - Donald Wigal - Страница 33

“I hate paintings… Painting is my whole life.”[72]

Age 44

According to biographers Naifeh & Smith, Pollock begged Guggenheim to give him a final show at Art of This Century (AOTC) in 1946, before the gallery closed[73]. It would have been the best time to sell art, during the Christmas season. He wanted to sell more paintings in order to make a profit that year. However, she said the best she could do was to give him a show in early 1947, which was clearly not as advantageous to him.

In Greenberg’s review of Pollock’s first exhibition, the critic said some of the artist’s large works used wallpaper patterns (37). Even years later, in 1952, the critic Harold Rosenberg would still refer to apocalyptic wallpaper, a phrase often repeated and which especially irritated the artist[74]. Rosenberg’s statement about gestural painting was likewise influential and became famous, alluding rather obviously to Pollock as well as others: “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act… what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.”[75]