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The International Council at
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
JACKSON POLLOCK: 1912-1956
(São Paulo and Europe)

Critical reviews
Page 4

2. Rome, Italy showing (Continued)

From: L'Unità, Rome, March 12, 1958 by Dario Micacchi
(Daily, Communist party organ, circulation 150,000)

Even in his style Pollock no longer possesses the courage of painting. He takes wherever he finds some affinity: Masson, Matta, Echaurren among the Europeans who migrated (to the United States) at the start of the second World War, and above all from Arshile Gorky's abstract expressionist and surrealist tendencies. His technique diminishes and impoverishes rapidly as his pictorial language looses its ties and roots. Pollock uses more and more special materials, fluid and dripping color, mixtures of sand and glass and other things; he uses loads of precious colors...and will begin a canvas laid on the floor without knowing "exactly what he is doing" (this is what he writes). His painting knows no other rule but the one of chance....

Pollock's own experience can teach one thing...and that is that this experience ends with itself and cannot have followers. It is a tragic admonition, even if given unconsciously. It is the conquest of a desert by a man who has turned off the light of reason in himself and in his work.

Pollock has lost contact with his time and with the world of America....

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