Clem had made it known that Pollock was a great painter.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Pollock was well known, certainly, but for all the wrong reasons. He was known as much for being wild and unconventional in his working methods as for being a great artist.
Pollock said several times that he couldn't separate himself from his art. Not knowing much about modern art when I began to read about him, I was much more his persona - his struggles as a human being - that was interesting to me.
Pollock also... wanted one to be wrapped in the painting.
Every good painter paints what he is.
In the past 10 years, I've looked at life as this Pollock stuff. And now I'm almost in the post Pollock phase.
Pollock looks unusual and radical even now.
And that Newman wasn't, and yet to me Pollock is just as radical and unlike Expressionism as Newman.
Decades ago, Gerhard Richter found a painterly philosopher's stone. Like Jackson Pollock before him, he discovered something that had been in painting all along, always overlooked or discounted.
The history of American art, in a way, begins with Jackson Pollock and his big paintings. This theme of bigness - all painters and sculptors have dealt with it ever since.
In the late 30s the name Pollock was totally unknown and unheard of.