Artful Scribbles
Ironically, 32 recently rediscovered paintings that some attribute to Jackson Pollock-whose squiggles, drips and smears many dismiss as child's play-have confounded even the experts who are debating their authenticity.
But Pollock's work wasn't always mistaken for kindergartners' finger paintings. The current Guggenheim show, No Limits, Just Edges displays works on paper that betray the influence of Pollock's teacher, Thomas Hart Benton, who used cartoons to depict rural American scenes.
No Limits argues for the importance of Pollock's transitional pieces when Pollock the illustrator became Pollock the abstract practitioner. Pieces like "Untitled" (ca. 1939?40), a colored pencil drawing on blue paper that could be a cartoony angler fish trying to eat its light, are in some ways even more interesting than Pollock's later drips. The drawing looks ablaze, as sharply drawn zigzags of red and yellow define teeth and fins.
Pollock's bold and almost childlike drawings that transcend the paper's boundaries in many ways anticipated the later works where Pollock would actually stand on his canvases while he dripped paint. Perhaps that is why he spoke of standing in his paintings. But, just as Piet Mondrian was known for his minimalist grids though he painted representational still lives and landscapes in the 1910s, Pollock will probably always be far better known as the King of Drip than for his drawings.