Guardians of the Secret (1943) is partly indebted to Native American art (Pollock attended the 1941 Indian Art Exhibition at MoMA - he actually visited the show with this Jungian analyst!) and Jungian mythology. Pollock, having grown up in the West, was exposed to Native American art early - at least according to Pollock. In fact, a myth developed around Pollock's childhood in the West. Pollock recollected witnessing Indian rituals as a child, and historians later argued that such rituals played an important role in the development of his artistic process. Art historians such as Jackson Rushing contend that Pollock was inspired by Indian sand painters who created temporary works of art as part of a religious ritual as well as the notion that art-making is a spiritual process. Rushing believes that he turned to drip painting in a shamanistic attempt to heal himself; not coincidentally, Indian sand painting is often part of a healing ritual.
Though Pollock sought out Indian art and became well-versed in the ethnology of Native Americans, he maintained that his debt to Indian art was subconscious, as he did not deliberately draw upon American Indian artistic process or subject matter. What sort of myths do you see in this painting? What do you think the "secret" is, and who are the "guardians?" Did Pollock become his own shaman?
6 comments:
Dali's iconic "Melted Watches" –- officially called The Persistence of Memory -- never fail to fascinate a they persistently challenge and confound our pedestrian Common Sense understanding of Reality.
Pollock on the other one stimulates feelings of Repugnance and Rejection. His "work," –– if one my dignify such chaotic excesses as such ––, has always seemed to me like a wayward spoiled brat indulging, himself in a physically destructive temper tantrum, because the World has failed to devote itself to doing its best to make him happy.
I think Pollock has proven that merely being demonstrably UNIQUE does not make one "GREAT."
If, as they say, HALITOSIS is better than NO BREATH at ALL, then surely MASTURBATION is better than NO SEX a ALL, right?
Or would it be more genteel if we reefrred to it as ONANISM?
By the way did you know that Dorothy Parker named her pet parakeet ONAN, because "he spilled his seed upon the ground?"
She sôunds like someone Id hate to play Scrabble against!
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