East Hampton - Catch up on what has been going on at the Pollock-Krasner House:

Autographed Life Magazine On Long-Term Loan

In the opening scene of the Oscar-winning motion picture, "Pollock," the artist (Ed Harris) is the uncomfortable center of attention at the reception for his November 1950 exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery. He is approached by a woman who asks him to autograph a copy of the 1949 Life magazine article that made him famous. This scene is fictional-or is it?

Little did the screenwriters know that such a magazine actually exists! Its owners, Joseph and Suzanne Kraus Mancuso, have lent it to the Pollock-Krasner House, where it will be on view for an extended period.

The inscription, "To June," is to the novelist June Fairfax Davis Arnold (1926-1982), an admirer of Pollock's work, who reportedly got his signature at the gallery (although probably not at the reception depicted in the film). According to the Mancusos, who purchased the magazine from her estate, Arnold's husband disapproved of her being a Pollock fan, so she had to hide it. Perhaps that's why it has survived in such excellent condition.

Suzanne Kraus Mancuso, herself an artist, is also a "huge Pollock fan," and considers him the great-grandfather of her own artwork. Fortunately her husband shares her enthusiasm for Pollock, and fortunately they are sharing their treasured artifact with visitors. The museum is most grateful for their generosity.

BBC Television Show Analyzes Pollock's Fractals
On February 24, a BBC Television production crew arrived at the Pollock-Krasner House to film a segment of a three-part series called "The Code." According to its presenter, Oxford University mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, the show is about the structural systems that determine the form of everything from beehives and bubbles to music, computer animation and the weather.

The Pollock segment is in episode two, "Nature's Building Blocks," which deals with the encoded structure of shapes in the natural world and features Richard Taylor, a physics professor at the University of Oregon, discussing fractals, the self-similar patterns found in trees, coastlines, mountain ranges and other naturally occurring forms. First described by the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and popularized in his 1982 book, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature," fractal theory has been used by Taylor to explain the fundamental structure of Pollock's poured paintings.

Rick Montgomery (left) jogs the Pollockizer's pendulum, while Richard Taylor and Marcus du Sautoy discuss the physics behind the fractal "code" found in nature and in Pollock's poured paintings. (Helen A. Harrison)

According to Taylor, Pollock's famous statement, "I am nature," is literally true. In a spontaneous, non-calculated way, his choreographic body movements and use of flowing liquid material resulted in patterns like those found in natural phenomena. Taylor and some of his colleagues developed a computer program to identify the fractals in Pollock's paintings.

To show how fractal patterns can be manually created, Taylor built an apparatus, which he calls the Pollockizer, that generates a chaotic drip pattern. (This, in essence, is what Pollock did intuitively when he applied liquid paint according to the rules of chaos theory, which wasn't even formulated during his lifetime). The thing is actually a couple of modified clothes racks, from which a swinging pendulum releases paint in a steady stream. There's also a little lever that's used to disrupt the pendulum's regular swing. As Taylor explains it, when allowed to swing on its own, the pendulum follows a predictable, non-chaotic trajectory. But if you jog it, you create chaotic motion, which makes fractals.

Getting the Pollockizer to do its thing photogenically occupied most of the afternoon. Fortunately Taylor had brought along Rick Montgomery, one of his graduate students, who did the heavy lifting. As the weather began to deteriorate, and fractal clouds threatened to drop fractal snowflakes, Taylor stage-managed the proceedings and answered du Sautoy's questions about his analysis of Pollock's paintings. Both scientists have the knack of making arcane scientific concepts understandable. Those of us who would like to communicate art concepts more effectively can learn a lot from their approach.

Pollock-Krasner House Closed For The Season
The National Historic Landmark site, at 830 Springs-Fireplace Road in East Hampton, is closed from November through April. It will re-open for guided tours on Thursday, May 5, 2011. Information on hours and admission prices is available at www.pkhouse.org.

Special groups and coach tours may be accommodated in the off-season, weather permitting. The Study Center's art reference library and archives are open to scholars, students and other researchers by appointment year-round. Call 631-324-4929 to make arrangements.