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12 [[left margin]] worried M. too -- early on [[??]] [[left margin]] with the beat of descriptive two-dimensionality, where moving line defines a plane, and the moving plane, in turn, defines a volume. This is where abstraction discovers its potential to overcome its spatial inferiority. There is no doubt that Pollock enlarged the space available to abstraction in every way by spanning the surface of painting with his enameled tracery. But, how is this tracery tied to the edges of its support? Can the paint skeins be self-supporting? Do they float from the edges of the picture surface or do they float in front of them? We can't help noticing that these questions are the same questions that come rushing to mind when we confront Mondrian's grids, as in "Composition with Red and Black" (1936). To return to the question about Pollock's paintings, the answers are: we don't know, yes, and they do both. That they do both is the most interesting answer to the most interesting question of the three. The location of the paint skeins in relation to the painting's surface is the most critical question because this helps to define the working space of abstract painting. That this working space is defined by a contradiction: that the pain skeins can be in two places at the same time, should give us some pause. This notion that we see the paint skeins sometimes on the canvas surface, sometimes floating in front of it, leaves the space in between the skeins with an ambiguous but strangely convincing spatial location. What we have is Pollock's tracery lifted free of the painting's surface bringing loosened bits of that background with it. This lifting is close to the final twist. Up popped the ghost of the draped figure, caught and partially hidden in the webbed extravaganzas, frightening Pollock so that he turned all the way back to black and white to try to flatten it out, thereby reenacting the ring around the rosy of 20th century painting. Abstraction and realism chasing each other's tail.
