Childhood Of The Art Historian, parts 436 - 439

Richard Britell

436.  Vasari about Giotto: The great Florentine painter Cmabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Bondone and asked if he could take the boy as an apprentice. Little Jackson Pollock would read that and be fired up with ambition to study anatomy, and perspective, and then God willing, he would get commissions to paint the ceilings in huge churches in Cody, Wyoming where he was born.

437.  No, yelled Buboni, getting all worked up about his ideas in his usual way, if Jackson knew how to draw like the old masters as a child then today you would have never heard of him, and if he had worked real hard to develop his drawing skills he would be doing the one thing that would ruin his chances in life.

438. You may think that I a joking in what I am saying about Jackson, but I am really serious about this. Many of the things he did in his youth were the opposite of what the successful young student would be expected to do.

439. Take his high school days. Did Jackson study real hard to prepare himself for his eventual prominance in the world of Art in New York City of the fifties? No, he did just the opposite.