Videos by Helen A Harrison
This illustrated talk will examine the relationship between Jackson Pollock's "action painting" t... more This illustrated talk will examine the relationship between Jackson Pollock's "action painting" technique, which reached its apogee in 1947-1950, and the jazz music he loved. His spontaneous creation of free-flowing forms is often likened to jazz improvisation, specifically the bebop that was prominent at the time, and many people believe he listened to that music while he painted. Was Pollock responding directly to the rhythms and energies of jazz, or was the music's influence on him more oblique and subtle? 8 views
Papers by Helen A Harrison
Long Island Historical Journal, Volume 16, Numbers 1-2 (Fall 2003/Spring 2004)
Women Artists of the New Deal Era: A Selection of Prints and Drawings
Woman's Art Journal, 1989
Stuart Davis's "World of Tomorrow
American Art, 1995
... Rather than incorporatinga reference to a fellow modernist such as Liger, Arshile Gorky, or L... more ... Rather than incorporatinga reference to a fellow modernist such as Liger, Arshile Gorky, or Lyonel Feininger, or one of the younger vanguard painters, including Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning,who contributed important murals to fair buildings, Davis gave pride of place to ...
Academia Letters, 2022
, Jackson Pollock sent a postcard from his New York City address to his lover, Lee Krasner, who w... more , Jackson Pollock sent a postcard from his New York City address to his lover, Lee Krasner, who was visiting her family in Huntington Station, Long Island. "Dear Lee," he wrote, "Have signed the contract and have seen the wall space for the mural-it's all very exciting." 1 The mural in question was being commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim, his dealer and patron, for the hallway of her Manhattan town house. Two weeks later, he wrote in more detail about the project to his eldest brother, Charles, who was then living in Michigan: I have a year's contract with (The Art of This Century) and a large painting to do for Peggy Guggenheims house, 8'11 ½ x 19'9" [sic]. With no strings as to what or how I paint it. I am going to paint it in oil, on canvas. They are giving me a show Nov 16, and I want to have the painting finished for the show. I've had to tear out the partition between the front and middle room to get the damned thing up. [Fig. 1] I have it stretched now. It looks pretty big, but exciting as all hell. 2
Rivers, Larry
Oxford Art Online
Subway Art and the Public Use of Arts Committee
Archives of American Art Journal
... The core group included Block (a mili-tant member of the Union's executi... more ... The core group included Block (a mili-tant member of the Union's executive who was later killed while serving with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War), Cronbach, Doris Kravis, Ruth Chaney, Ida Abelman, Jo-seph Konzal, and others making about ten in all. ...
Book Review:Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision, 1925-1950 Robert Judson Clark, David G. de Long, Martin Eidelberg, J. David Farmer, John Gerard, Neil Harris, Joan Marter, R. Craig Miller, Mary Riordan, Roy Slade, Davira S. Taragin, Christa C. Mayer Thurman
Winterthur Portfolio a Journal of American Material Culture, 1985
Arthur G. Dove and the Origins of Abstract Expressionism
American Art, 1998
John Reed Club Artists and the New Deal: Radical Responses to Roosevelt's “Peaceful Revolution”
Prospects, 1980
In the early 1930s, a significant number of American artists who were aligned, either practically... more In the early 1930s, a significant number of American artists who were aligned, either practically or theoretically, with the Communist Party became supporters of the New Deal. Artist members of the John Reed Club, a Party-directed cultural organization, were enjoined to develop “revolutionary art” as a vehicle for the type of social change that had transformed tsarist Russia into the Soviet Union. Yet many of them found Roosevelt's “peaceful revolution” worthy of the highest accolade they could bestow on a subject: its inclusion as an affirmative theme in their work. In so viewing it, they ran counter to the Party's stated policy in opposition to socioeconomic reform—a policy that was later reversed to accommodate the New Deal and thus vindicate the…
Dawn of a New Day: The New York World's Fair, 1939/40
Technology and Culture, 1982
American Art and the New Deal
Journal of American Studies, 1972
The current nostalgic interest in the 1920s and '30s has brought about more than the revival ... more The current nostalgic interest in the 1920s and '30s has brought about more than the revival of period fashion and interior decoration in America. For anyone concerned with die visual arts it has illuminated the most exciting and prolific decade diat country has ever seen. During die Depression the official approach to art and die artist was radically different from anything before or since, and probably from anything in the Western world. That this should have come about is in itself amazing, die more so as it was done through Congressional legislation, supported by the President.
This illustrated lecture was presented at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on 13 November 2016,... more This illustrated lecture was presented at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, on 13 November 2016, as part of a two-day course, “Abstract Expressionism: Expressions of Change,” in conjunction with the exhibition, Abstract Expressionism.
Jackson Pollock was famously reluctant to explain or interpret his work, yet there are a few writ... more Jackson Pollock was famously reluctant to explain or interpret his work, yet there are a few writings and interviews in which he made an effort to discuss his intentions. In one of them, he describes his unusual pouring technique as “a means of arriving at a statement,” although he does not explain what it says, or what it means. In spite of Pollock's aversion to talking about his work, interpretive clues can be found in his surviving written and oral statements. There is, however, some dispute about which of them are his alone, and which were scripted, or at least polished, by others. My paper is an effort to identify Pollock’s authentic voice, and to use his own words as tools to decipher what he thought was the meaning of his abstract imagery.
In 1949, the architect Peter Blake designed a building that he felt would be the ideal showcase f... more In 1949, the architect Peter Blake designed a building that he felt would be the ideal showcase for Jackson Pollock’s paintings. Blake intended it to be constructed on the grounds of Pollock’s home in Springs, on eastern Long Island, and built a scale model to illustrate his concept. Writing about the project in the January 1950 issue of Interiors, Arthur Drexler coined the misleading term “unframed space” to characterize Blake’s “treatment of paintings as walls,” which he saw as a modern version of the Renaissance fresco, “but this time without message or content.”
My paper addresses the misconceptions behind this interpretation of Blake’s project. The first is that, as Blake presented it in his model, the architectural matrix in which existing paintings are displayed is undefined. Second, the notion that Pollock’s work has no message to convey ignores the rich metaphysical content of his abstract forms. A central question raised by the “ideal museum” is whether, if it had been built, it would have been an appropriate setting for Pollock’s imagery.
This paper was presented at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, NY, on 13 April 2014. It deal... more This paper was presented at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, NY, on 13 April 2014. It deals with Noguchi’s participation in the Fair, the ways in which artists’ involvement reflected the planners’ agenda, and the role art played in promoting the Fair’s ostensible aim, “Building the World of Tomorrow.” The primary research material is in the 1939/40 New York World’s Fair Collection, New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts Division, http://archives.nypl.org/mss/2233.
This paper was presented at a symposium, “Transatlantic Conversations and Abstract Expressionism,... more This paper was presented at a symposium, “Transatlantic Conversations and Abstract Expressionism,” on 20 April 2013 at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, in conjunction with the exhibition, “Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet.” It discusses the kinship between Ossorio’s so-called Victorias drawings of 1950, which Pollock saw while he and Krasner were staying in Ossorio’s converted carriage house at 9 MacDougal Alley in Greenwich Village, and Pollock’s 1951 series of black pourings on unprimed canvas.
This essay examines the relationship between Jackson Pollock's "action painting" technique, which... more This essay examines the relationship between Jackson Pollock's "action painting" technique, which reached its apogee in 1947-1950, and the jazz music he loved. His spontaneous creation of free-flowing forms is often likened to jazz improvisation, specifically the bebop that was prominent at the time, and many people believe he listened to that music while he painted. Was Pollock responding directly to the rhythms and energies of jazz, or was the music's influence on his art more oblique and subtle?
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Videos by Helen A Harrison
Papers by Helen A Harrison
My paper addresses the misconceptions behind this interpretation of Blake’s project. The first is that, as Blake presented it in his model, the architectural matrix in which existing paintings are displayed is undefined. Second, the notion that Pollock’s work has no message to convey ignores the rich metaphysical content of his abstract forms. A central question raised by the “ideal museum” is whether, if it had been built, it would have been an appropriate setting for Pollock’s imagery.