Hans Namuth’s Photographs and Film Studies of Jackson Pollock: Transforming American Postwar Avant-Garde Labor into Popular Consumer Spectacle

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This essay needs some work. Here are some recommendations:

1) Issues of taste and class need a lot more elaboration if this argument it to hinge upon this supposed "demise of modernist avant-garde culture." The rise of a cultural middlebrow, (thanks to the MoMA, Life/Time magazines, the rise of television, the New Yorker, the public intellectual, design culture, domestic commodity marketplace, etc.). Starting with Greenberg's discussion of the relationship between the avant-garde and the ruling class (from 1939) and then jumping to the dawn of the 1950s with Namuth's photography, it seems there needs to be a discussion of these intervening years (WWII,  the rise of the Cold War, economic realignments, etc) and their impact on taste & class. An exploration of these issues would seem to be crucial in describing the  "convergence erased distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture." If it is not the "ruling class," then who is the class on the rise in terms of taste? See Lynn Spigel's TV by Design for example.

2) The issue of labor is mentioned in the abstract, but needs more theoretical development throughout the paper. Pollock's working class/blue collar cosplay is a its own kind of dandy-ism, one that certainly has aesthetic similarities with the cinematic examples you cite from later in the 1950s.  Artist as  manual worker versus artist as intellectual seems worth exploring. How does it relate to the economic conditions of the 1940s/50s. Why might this be appealing? Caroline Jones's book Machine in the Studio might be useful to extending the discussion of artistic persona in relation to labor/class.

3) In the discussion of the film Pollock, it seems that you have argued that the photos of Pollock already completed his transformation into the consumer spectacle, so critiquing the film for doing it again doesn't really further the argument. It might be more interesting to connect your argument how subsequent artists negotiated the "demise of modernist avant-garde culture," in light of rise of celebrity/print/tv culture in the 50s/60s.

4)For Rose, Huyssens, and Greenberg, their texts have an immediate political context that might warrant greater attention. Why did Rose opt to revisit the Pollock/Namuth relationship in 1979, for example? For Huyssens writing in the late 80s, what are the stakes of the debate? Likewise, what political conditions may have influenced Greenberg's 1939 publication? What do these lines between high/low or avant-garde/culture industry mean at these different junctures. Likewise, what does they mean for us today?

5) The claim (on line 471) that Pollock is the first of modernist vanguard culture to be co-opted by the consumer spectacle seems like an overreach. The relationship between surrealism and consumer culture (fashion/department store design) comes to mind as a precedent.

Overall, I think this is an interesting topic, but it needs more attention to historical context and a more robust discussion of class, taste, and the rise of the middlebrow in relation to your focus on high/low & avant-garde/culture industry.

Author Response

Please see attached.