A similar infamous event, often dramatised but apparently based solely on fragmentary evidence, is when Pollock walked naked into a room filled with guests, then urinated into a fireplace during the party following the hanging of his Mural. Guggenheim’s memory of the evening was Pollock walking naked into the room, but she didn’t mention urination. However, she stressed the man was certainly difficult and sometimes he could upset people – and furniture. However, she added he could be quite the opposite when not drinking. She believed he felt trapped in the big city and his life would have been more fulfilling had he lived out West, far from the social life of a large city, which she thought may have frightened him[68].
Guggenheim’s Autobiographies
In 1945–1946, Guggenheim worked on editing and publishing the first of two books of her memoirs. Even though Krasner was not on good terms with Guggenheim, Peggy did ask Lee to read it before the final manuscript was submitted.
As in John Updike’s highly imaginative account of many events in Pollock’s life, Guggenheim’s memoirs Out of This Century, often made up names concealing real people, though only slightly. The subtitle, Confessions of an Art Addict, did not appear on the front jacket of the Dial Press edition in 1946.
Number 12A, 1948. Enamel on gesso on paper, 57.2 × 77.8 cm, Collection Mr. and Mrs. Stanley R. Gumberg, Pittsburgh.
Untitled (Composition with pouring I), 1943. Oil on canvas, 90.8 × 113.6 cm, Private Collection.
Red and Blue, c.1943–1946. Gouache, tempera and ink on fiberboard, 48.6 × 61 cm, Collection Charles H. Carpenter.
Night Sounds, c.1944. Oil and pastel on canvas, 109.2 × 116.8 cm, Private Collection.
To say the first autobiography was not well received by critics is a polite understatement. However, the work is noteworthy here because Pollock designed the book’s jacket, with front cover art by Peggy’s companion, Max Ernst. The back was by Pollock. Several Pollock biographies, including the 1967 MoMA publication, Jackson Pollock[69], mention that Pollock designed the cover for her autobiography, but do not make clear the front cover art is by Ernst[70]. Some others incorrectly indicate that the cover art was by Pollock as well.
Later, after writing a second autobiography, Guggenheim admitted, “I seem to have written the first book as an uninhibited woman and the second as a lady who was trying to establish her place in the history of modern art.”[71] Throughout her life, Guggenheim was the doyenne of modern art, or ‘the mistress of modernism,’ the title used by her biographer, Mary V. Dearborn.
Closing of Art of This Century
“I hate paintings… Painting is my whole life.”[72]
According to biographers Naifeh & Smith, Pollock begged Guggenheim to give him a final show at Art of This Century (AOTC) in 1946, before the gallery closed[73]. It would have been the best time to sell art, during the Christmas season. He wanted to sell more paintings in order to make a profit that year. However, she said the best she could do was to give him a show in early 1947, which was clearly not as advantageous to him.
In Greenberg’s review of Pollock’s first exhibition, the critic said some of the artist’s large works used wallpaper patterns (37). Even years later, in 1952, the critic Harold Rosenberg would still refer to apocalyptic wallpaper, a phrase often repeated and which especially irritated the artist[74]. Rosenberg’s statement about gestural painting was likewise influential and became famous, alluding rather obviously to Pollock as well as others: “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act… what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.”[75]
One-Man Shows
In this unofficial review of the artist’s works, the significant one-man shows during his life are considered to be the following:
1st 1943 AOTC*
2nd 1945 Chicago
3rd 1945 AOTC*
4th 1945 San Francisco
5th 1946 AOTC*
6th 1948 Betty Parsons*
7th 1949 Betty Parsons*
8th 1949 Betty Parsons*
9th 1950 Venice
10th 1950 Betty Parsons*
11th 1951 Maryland
12th 1951 Betty Parsons*
13th 1952 Paris
14th 1952 Sidney Janis*
15th 1953 Vermont
16th 1954 Sidney Janis*
17th 1955 Sidney Janis*
18th 1956–1957 MoMA Retrospective*
19th 1957 Brazil, Rome, Basel, Amsterdam, Manburg, Berlin, London, Paris
*Manhattan
Guggenheim’s Profits
After his first one-man show, Pollock was not yet an unqualified critical success. But, late in life, Guggenheim watched the prices of Pollock paintings grow to tremendous amounts. She commented, “I never sold a Pollock for more than $1,000 in my life.” (68) Art dealer Ben Heller likewise denied the rumour he made $4 million on his works by Pollock, adding: “I’ve been in hock for works of art since I started (collecting).”[76]
However, by donating Mural to the University of Iowa in 1948, Guggenheim was able to take a tax deduction of $3,100. On the other hand, she had given away countless Pollock works over the years, usually without realising any tax advantages[77]. For example, she gave Pollock’s Cathedral to Bernard and Becky Reis in 1949, who in turn later gave it to the Dallas Museum of Art. Cathedral was chosen to represent Pollock’s work in his biographical profile in Greenhill’s Dictionary of Art (39).
Guggenheim believed she owned the 1947 works, War, Composition, Shimmering Image, White Horizontal, and Sounds in the Grass: Eyes In the Heat (II).
She didn’t mention Alchemy which is another work often shown as typical of Pollock’s work from those peak years. In Steven Little’s book Isms (2004), the painting is shown to illustrate the ‘physicality and energy’ which is typical of much of Abstract Expressionism. The author then defines Jung’s concept of alchemy, as if the painting’s title had anything to do with the painting itself.
Untitled, c.1945 Ink and Gouache over engraving and drypoint, 40.6 × 59.7 cm, Private Collection.
Number 6, 1948: Blue, Red, Yellow, 1948. Oil and enamel on paper, mounted on canvas, 57.2 × 77.8 cm, Private Collection.
Number 34, 1949, 1949. Enamel on paper on masonite, 59.7 × 81.3 × 1.9 cm. Munson Proctor Art Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, New York.
Untitled (Cut-Out Figure), 1948–1950. Enamel, aluminum and oil paint, glass