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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 16

5. Hamburg, Germany showing (Continued)

From: Main-Post, Würzburg, July 22, 1958, by Hans Hauptmann
(Daily, independent, circulation 93,167)

Also syndicated in Westfalen Zeitung, Bielefeld; Schweinfurter Tageblatt, Schweinfurt; Gütersloher Zeitung, Gütersloh, on July 22, 1958. (All daily, independent newspapers with a combined circulation os 18,500.)

In the Old Building of the Hall of Art, the Art Society in Hamburg offers its friends an exciting intermezzo, an exhibition of oils, water colors and drawings by the American painter Jackson Pollock. An intermezzo - since Pollock, one of the most original pacemakers in American painting stands along in his art. Maybe something in Miró's or Hans Hartung's pictures is related to Pollock's art. But nobody tackled the problem of contradiction which led to the willful and wanton destruction or surface and perspective, as radically as did Pollock. This had to drive Pollock eventually into adopting a certain system. Power, the system concerned his painting method only and allowed for a number of variations. Pollock must have been filled with intoxicating sensuality. The way he uses the paints and makes the elements of the color potentials storm against each other, letting ever new combinations and mixtures emerge finally results in a dionysian union of colors and shapes....

In Four Opposites his rich palette is fascinating. The paints, partly applied to the canvas in drops, partly with the aid of the brush in massive layers this as a relief, bring forth a conglomeration of complexes in all shades of the spectrum. A huge wall painting - in black and which [Number 32, 1950] - at first sight gives the appearance of an artistic chaos, a caprice of a willful spirit. Nonetheless the many, many functional lines crossing each other innumerable times in the drawing elucidate a working principle which brings forth the composition. Doubtless, the conscious and the sub-conscious succumb here to the beauty inherent in the subject matter. This beauty approaches the artist and comes to his aid. The Echo, too, is such a design, something like an artistic-physical demonstration of rolling sound waves representing sound as a phenomenon produced by resistance.

Many pictures are simply numbered, a sign that this is experimental art which may be varied at will. Number 1 (1949) like the map of a city, expressive in its shape furrowed by street-like running lines, curved, cycles, and ellipses is highly confusing in the mixture of kaleidoscopic, turbulent colors. A mesterpiece: Blue Poles (1953) which - standing upright like big pistons - loom out a mass of iridescent colors. Further, there are mystical designs: Totem II, Guardians of the Secret, Easter and the Totem - a combination of tree and animal - all of them subjects gripping in their grandiose conception and demonstrating once more how immensely important is the formative element for the translation of ideas and fantasies.