Also painted in 1947 was Reflection on the Big Dipper. It was one of the works from this period critics, with the exception of Greenberg, loved to use to show off their clever phrases. Parker Tyler in Art Digest said, “Pollock’s current method seems to be a sort of automatism, apparently while staring steadily up into the sky, he lets go a loaded brush on the canvas. …probably it also results in the severest pain in the neck since Michelangelo painted the Sistine Ceiling.”[78]

      Not many people actually liked Pollock’s earlier works, so the rare positive reaction to them is especially noteworthy. The fact that Putzel immediately used the word ‘genius’ to describe Pollock’s works is mentioned in most biographies of Pollock. Putzel’s personal epiphany is captured in plays, movies and most notably in Ed Harris’ film. They all follow, sometimes scrupulously, the comprehensive presentation in the Naifeh & Smith biography (72). The ‘genius’ moment is also pivotal in Updike’s novel[79].

      Farmhouse

      Around the time of their marriage, Krasner found the farmhouse on Long Island which they rented. Krasner wanted Pollock to leave Manhattan, in order to isolate him from his drinking buddies.

      The house, built in 1879, was on the edge of a swamp and had no heat or inside toilet. But Krasner convinced Guggenheim that Pollock would be more productive at that location. She also convinced Guggenheim to loan them the money to obtain the mortgage on the property. Over the years Guggenheim’s relationship with Pollock, Krasner and their art would have dramatic highs and lows. It seems Guggenheim was both generous and exploitative, while Krasner was distrusted yet needed in order to do business with Pollock.

      The Studio Floor

      Once Krasner settled the initial problems with Pollock’s estate, she eagerly returned to her own career. She prepared the barn-studio to be her own studio. At that point in his oral chronology, Potter adds the rather unexpected sentence: “She had the artist Athos Zacharias scrape down and paint the floor of Jackson’s studio.”[81] Zacharias was Krasner’s assistant at the time.

      The statement is surprising because all who visit or even know about the studio recall the reverence given to the paint-splattered floor, considered to be just as Pollock left it. It is even said to show footprints associated with the painter(s) who created Blue Poles.

      Zacharias recalls,

      When I became L.K’s assistant, at a meeting that Alfonso Ossorio arranged, the studio floor was covered with 23 square pieces of hard one quarter inch thick material… On the surface of this material there were leavings of Jackson’s paintings that were very striking. After perhaps a few months, Lee asked me to ‘roll out’ (paint over) the floor with grey flooring paint. My heart sank because of the symbolic significance of her request. At the time I was not aware that on the underside of (each of) the panels there was silk screened (the image of) a baseball diamond. These were board-games that Jackson had obtained from one of his brothers, who was in the board-game business. After Lee died, the boards were pulled up and leavings of Jackson’s paintings appeared again on the original floor board[82].

      An expert on baseball board-games, Dr. Mark Cooper, has identified the squares as not wood, but a firm kind of pressboard. They were excess inventory from the 1948 game called Autograph Baseball Game, made by the F. J. Raff Company. Zacharias remembers Pollock painted on some of these floorboards from the original barn. He remembers one such work was hung in the kitchen dining area where he and Krasner would eat.

      A footprint on the floorboard in the studio today is said to have been made by Pollock after he, and apparently others, walked across his famous 1952 painting Blue Poles (13).

      Today those who visit Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center can see supplies once used by Pollock and/or Krasner[83]. They can also see very little splattering of paint on the immaculate shelves. The neat display includes “powdered pigments from the WPA paint workshop, strips of broken colored glass used by Pollock in collage pieces and by Krasner in glass Mosaics, and a skull stolen by Pollock from a prop cabinet at the Art Students League.” (13) The orderly display is similar to that of other memorialised studios of artists, including those of Benton and de Kooning. However, the spotless coffee cans and tubes of paint are in contrast to the hallowed studio floor, where visitors can see multi-coloured paints splattered by Pollock himself. The hallowed area is venerated; visitors wear slippers to protect the area if they want to walk on it.

      Untitled, 1946. Gouache on paper, 56.5 × 82.6 cm,Thyssen – Bornemisza Collection, Lugano.

      Circumcision, 1946. Oil on canvas, 142.3 × 168 cm, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York).

      Blue Poles in PollockSquared

      “I do step into the canvas occasionally – that is, working from the four sides I don’t have to get into the canvas too much.”[84]

Age 38

      In the climatic scene in Bill Rabinovitch’s film, PollockSquared, neighbours are seen helping to pick up Pollock’s sagging spirits by coming to his yard and helping him create Blue Poles. Rabinovitch envisions the work as being created in the yard, rather than in the studio[85]. The possibility is inspired by Potter’s suggestion that Tony Smith and Barnett Newman collaborated with a discouraged Pollock. Naifeh & Smith expanded the idea. They propose it was first Tony Smith, then Newman, who worked with Pollock on the piece[86]. Solomon details how the three artists might have worked together over time on the painting[87]. Rabinovitch goes further with the idea to include neighbours. However, Potter admits, “Lee’s view of others having worked on it (Blue Poles) is put simply: ‘Hogwash!’ She remembers Jackson painting in the poles (eight dark blue mostly vertical lines) with a two-by-four (piece of lumber) as a straightedge.” Dealer Ben Heller comments: “Collaboration? Fig leaves! That’s an old war-horse that’s been, I think, sufficiently answered enough times not to have to require any more comment.”[88] Stanley P. Friedman observes the Australian who bought the painting might have got a bargain in obtaining a masterpiece by three great American artists rather than one[89].

      Rabinovitch explains:

      “An artist’s absolute authenticity wasn’t really what I was after. Rather, I wanted to make larger, more poetic points about the general Zeitgeist, which is done throughout the film. The Blue Poles scene is the climax of the movie. I brought in more characters than likely participated in the actual event. That definitely throws things into a more fanciful perspective.”

      At the same time, Rabinovitch gives a nod to historic reality as he makes the actors who play Barnet Newman and Tony Smith prominent in the scene. He recalls,

      “Our Newman was a close look-alike as well as a powerful intellectual artist who strongly identified with

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