Viewing page 26 of 32

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

24

rejected work by Pollock, for her first collage series.  MILKWEED was one of them; razor-thin pods shearing upwards across several torn black shapes that lazily orbit from the lower right, up to the left, and then begin to fall toward the ground.

By then, in point of fact, the movement's creative ascent had been accomplished.  During the years of country life for Krasner and Pollock, the movement had coalesced around The Club.  It was there that the idea of amalgamating themselves into an official group with a name was argued, pushed for by some including a few critics and museum officials enamoured of categories and labels, and most heatedly opposed by others who valued their maverik independence.  The namers won and soon, an unwritten but hewed to manifesto of machismo and America-first-ism was being upheld at Club meetings (see page xx).  Not unnaturally once that loose affiliation of idiosyncratic originals had been banded, they began, [[strikethrough]]Not unnaturally[[/strikethrough]] to desire a piece of the action from an [[strikethrough]] the [/[strikethrough]] art Establishment [[strikethrough]] so [/[strikethrough]] long aloof to their struggle.  In 1950, the famous challenge to the Establishment was made by 18 Irascible Artists, photographed more at a simmer [[strikethrough]] ing [[/strikethrough]] than overtly angry, for Life magazine.  Jackson Pollock was prominent among them; Hedda Sterne, always exhibiting [[strike through]] at that point[[/strikethrough]] at Parsons Gallery, was the only woman. Krasner had not been invited to sign the petition, an honor afforded a bare few women among whom Louise Bourgeois was one.  Two years later, the challenge had paid off.  The Museum of Modern Art gave the Abstract Expressionists its official imprimatur in a show of Fifteen Americans, not including