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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 24

7. London, England showing (Continued)

From: [[underline]] New Statesman [[/underline]], London, November 22, 1958 by John Berger
(Weekly, independent Socialist, circulation 78,000)

...Imagine a man brought up from birth in a white cell so that he has never seen anything except the growth of this own body. And then imagine that suddenly he is given some sticks and bright paints. If he were a man with an innate sense of balance and colour harmony, he would then, I think, cover the white walls of his cell as Pollock has painted his canvases. He would want to express his ideas and feelings about growth, time, energy, death, but he would lack any vocabulary of seen or remembered visual images with which to do so. He would have nothing more than the gestures he could discover through the act of applying his coloured marks to his white walls. These gestures might be passionate and frenzied but to us they could mean no more than the tragic spectacle of a deaf mute trying to talk.

I believe that Pollock imaginatively, subjectively, isolated himself almost to that extent. His paintings are like pictures painted on the inside walls of his mind. And the appeal of this work, especially to other painters, is of the same character. His work amounts to an invitation: Forget all, sever all, inhabit your white cell and --most ironic paradox of all--discover the universal in yourself, for in a one-man world you are universal! 

I have said before that [[underline]] the [[/underline]] problem for the Western artist is to find themes for his art which can connect him with his public. (And by a theme I do not man a subject as such but the developing significance found in a subject.) At first Pollock was influenced by the Mexicans and by Picasso. He borrowed stylistically from them and was sustained by their fervour, but try as he might he could not take over their themes because they were simply not applicable to his own view of his own social and cultural situation. Finally in desperation he made his theme the impossibility of finding a theme. Having the ability to speak, he acted dumb. (Here a little like James Dean.) Given freedom and contacts, he condemned himself to solitary confinement in the white cell. Possessing memories and countless references to the outside world, he tried to lose them. And having jettisoned everything he could, he tried to preserve only his consciousness of what happened at the moment of the act of painting.

If he had not been talented this would not be clear; instead one would simply dismiss his work as incompetent, bogus, irrelevant. As it is, Jackson Pollock's talent did make his work relevant. Through it one can see the disintegration of our culture, for naturally what I have described was not a fully conscious and deliberate personal policy; it was the consequence of his living by and subscribing to all our profound illusions about such things as the role of the individual, the nature of history, the function of morality....