Did Hans Namuth Kill Jackson Pollock?

cfollows — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:19:38 +0000

In 2006 visualintelligences.com held a Symposia : Did Hans Namuth Kill Jackson Pollock? The Problem of Documenting the Creative Process - When Hans Namuth and Jacson Pollock finsihed filming on the Saturday before Thanksgiving in 1950 they walked inside from the barn, out of the cold. Pollock walked over to the sink, reached down, pulled out a bottle of whisky and said to Namuth, "This is the first drink I've had in two years. Dammit, we need it!" The rest , as they say, is history. Please see more and PDF download here - visualintelligences.com ....

The below text is from - openculture.com - Jackson Pollock: Lights, Camera, Paint! (1951)

Jackson Pollock: Lights, Camera, Paint! (1951) In the summer of 1950, Hans Namuth approached Jackson Pollock and asked the abstract expressionist painter if he could photograph him in his studio, working with his “drip” technique of painting. When Namuth arrived, he found: A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor. Blinding shafts of sunlight hit the wet canvas, making its surface hard to see. There was complete silence…. Pollock looked at the painting.

Then unexpectedly, he picked up can and paintbrush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realized the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dancelike as he flung black, white and rust-colored paint onto the canvas. The images from this shoot “helped transform Pollock from a talented, cranky loner into the first media-driven superstar of American contemporary art, the jeans-clad, chain-smoking poster boy of abstract expressionism,” one critic later wrote in The Washington Post.

But Namuth wasn’t satisfied that he had really captured the essence of Pollock’s work. He wanted to capture Pollock in motion and color, to focus on the painter and painting alike. Above, you can watch the result of Namuth’s second effort. The ten-minute film, simply called Jackson Pollock 51 (the 51 being short for 1951), lets you see Pollock painting from a unique angle — through glass. The film achieved Namuth’s aesthetic goals, but it came at a price. Apparently the filming taxed Pollock emotionally, and by the evening, the painter decided to pour himself some bourbon, his first drink in two years. A blowout argument followed; Pollock never stopped drinking again; and it was downhill from there… Jackson Pollock appears in our collection of Free Movies Online and 275 Cultural Icons.

Via - openculture.com - Jackson Pollock: Lights, Camera, Paint! (1951)