The She-Wolf

Jackson Pollock, 1943 · Gallery 522 · Floor 5

Alright... so, the year he painted this, Jackson Pollock had a day job. At a museum. It's 1943. He's thirty-one, doing maintenance and a little carpentry at what would become the Guggenheim. Back then, just a short walk from here. Never had a show of his own. And this is what he's painting. The She-Wolf. So, start at the left. Her nose nearly touches the edge. Head down, with that black line running along her back. Follow it across. Under the heavy belly, those little white hooks? Teats. Then a red line goes straight through her middle, like an arrow. Over on the right, patches of gray cover parts of her. There's a wolf to follow, but the paint keeps interrupting. Yellow, red, green. Lines crossing over her. And underneath the belly, some of that white has run straight down. The drip paintings he's known for are still a few years off. The drips aren't. That summer, another Guggenheim enters the story. Solomon's niece, Peggy. She has a gallery too. Offers him a contract: a hundred and fifty bucks a month. So now he can quit the day job. By November, she's given him his first solo show. The wolf's in it. The Times calls it obscurantism. Translation: he's being difficult on purpose. Then somebody putting a book together asks Pollock if he'd care to explain the wolf. His answer, more or less: he had to paint it. Trying to explain it would ruin it. So... that was the explanation. MoMA had its eye on her. According to Lee Krasner, who later married him, the museum puts a hold on the painting. Then decides the price is too high. Six hundred and fifty dollars. Then, needless to say... they somehow find the money. The first Pollock any museum ever buys. He's gone from doing maintenance in one museum to having a painting in another. In less than a year. And Peggy's gallery, the one that gave him that first show? It was called Art of This Century. Have a look at the name of this room.

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