Jackson Pollock and John Cage: An American Odd Couple
Jackson Pollock and John Cage
Jackson Pollock and John Cage are legends in American history. In the centennial year of both artists’ births, two exhibitions now on view in New York celebrate their work and underline the fact that even after their deaths, their influence continues to play an important role in how we understand, interpret, and even make art today.
Jackson Pollock: A Centennial Exhibition at the Jason McCoy Gallery presents a selection of significant loans including paintings, works on paper, and objects by Pollock, ranging 1930 to the early 1950s. John Cage: The Sight of Silence at the National Academy Museum showcases sixty pieces, mostly watercolors,, created by Cage in the 1980s and 1990s, and also includes musical scores accompanied by recordings of his music, photographs, and videos of the revolutionary composer.
Pollock and Cage were aesthetic extremes of each other. Pollock sought to make paintings that were entirely an expression of his manic inner ego, whereas Cage fought to remove himself completely from the decision-making process involved in art. And yet, Pollock and Cage did have one thing in common. They shared a common adversary: hundreds of years of European history, theory, and dominance in the arts. So while Pollock fought to break from Braque, Cage battled to break from Beethoven.
Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists attempted to strike an emotional cord through grand gestures that reflected the subconscious mind. According to Caroline A. Jones in an article in Critical Inquiry, the movement became a celebration of the “masculine solitary whose staunchly heterosexual libido drove his brush,” with Pollock as the “quintessential hero of this powerful mythos.” Pollock and the New York painters argued from an existentialist platform, “[declaring] their independence from all institutionalized concepts of the artist’s role in society,” writes Dore Ashton in the book New York School. They placed an importance on the individual over all else. “Painting is self-discovery,” Pollock once said. “Every good artist paints what he is.”
