Free Jackson Pollock by Deborah Solomon

innocently parodying his teacher’s ideas.
    Three weeks after setting out, Pollock arrived home in Los Angeles bubbling over with
     tales about his trip. His parents, who by then had reconciled, were horrified to learn
     of his adventureson the railroad. “I would have been worried sick,” his mother wrote, “if I knew he
     had been bumming the freight train. He sure took lots of chances of getting killed
     or crippled for life. But he is here safe & I am sure glad.”
    Pollock spent the summer in Wrightwood, California, a mountain resort in the Angeles
     National Forest, where his father had rented a log cabin. Along with Tolegian, who
     had made the trip west in a mere nine days, he was able to find a job as a lumberjack.
     Every morning at dawn Tolegian picked up Pollock in an old, battered Ford and headed
     up a mountain path to the Cajon Pass, where the two young artists cut down trees,
     cleared away brush, and made way for a planned road. It was “sure hard work,” according
     to Jackson’s mother, “but better than nothing they just cut it down and trim it up
     so isn’t as hard as cutting into stove wood. Can’t cut very fast until they get used
     to hard work again and cools off a little, has been very hot.”
    One evening the boys were driving down the mountain path when they got into an argument.
     Tolegian told Pollock he was no good at working on a team: he pushed on the dragsaw
     when he was supposed to pull and pulled when he was supposed to push. “That’s all
     I had to say,” Tolegian later recalled. Pollock, enraged by this bit of criticism,
     pressed his saw against his friend’s throat and raised it slowly, forcing Tolegian
     to lift his chin until he could barely see the road. When Tolegian let go of the wheel
     for a moment to try to grab the saw from Pollock’s hand, the car swerved into the
     mountainside and was wrecked.
    With the approach of fall Pollock contemplated his return to New York with anxious
     reluctance. He had hoped to work at his drawing that summer, but somehow the months
     had slipped away from him. He had also hoped to save up some money, but there was
     “damned little left” from his lumberjack job. Writing to Charles in a dejected mood,
     he questioned the point of returning to the League when “more and more I realize I’m
     sadly in need of some method of making a living.” His mother had told him not to worry
     about money, for she was perfectly willing to help him out financially until he finished
     his schooling. “You’re entitled to it,” she often said, reminding him that his education
     was a necessarypart of his training as an artist. But Jackson could tell that his father thought
     otherwise. “Dad still has difficulties in loosing money—and thinks I’m just a bum—while
     mother still holds the old love.”

    For all his worries about his future Pollock returned to New York in the fall of 1931
     eager to begin his second year at the League. Benton had managed to get him a part-time
     job in the school lunchroom, easing any financial pressures while conferring further
     legitimacy on his studies. Mornings Pollock studied under Benton. Afternoons he worked
     in the lunchroom, clearing tables, sweeping the floor, and quickly establishing himself
     among dozens of schoolmates as Benton’s most ardent champion.
    The lunchroom of the League was a popular artists’ hangout, dominated by the figure
     of Arshile Gorky, an imposing, melodramatic Armenian-born painter who seldom came
     to school without his two Russian bloodhounds. Gorky worshiped the School of Paris
     and was already painting abstractly. His rivals accused him of copying Picasso, which
     invariably prompted Gorky to remark in his booming voice, “Has there in six centuries
     been a better art than Cubism? No!” Although Gorky never actually studied at the League,
     he could be found in the lunchroom most any afternoon with his friend Stuart Davis,
     who taught on the faculty.