Jackson Whole

Who was Jackson Pollock? The question bedevils American art. The discovery in the late 1960s of eighty-three drawings made while the artist was undergoing Jungian therapy in 1939-40 excited hopes that Pollock himself would finally step out from behind the myths. Now on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art, in an intelligent exhibition organized by Michael Mezzatesta for the Duke University Museum, the "psychoanalytic" drawings are steeped in Picasso and the art of Native Americans. Many show turbulent images of horses, bulls, and eagles. What they don't contain is the key to Pollock. Which is a blessing. Pollock is marvelously mixed-up, in ways that seem particularly American. With his Jungian analyst, he was often silent.

MARK STEVENS