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Peggy Guggenheim figured she should at least give the guy a shot.
The New York City socialite and art collector had crisscrossed Paris in 1940 as the Nazis closed in, purchasing a treasure trove of modern art. She returned home eager to put it on display – and, if possible, to sponsor a “New York School” of young artists who might put America on the global artistic map.
One of the candidates was a tempestuous oil painter named Jackson Pollack. He self-medicated his emotional ups and downs with alcohol – definitely not a recommended self-improvement strategy.
Guggenheim reluctantly gave him a small stipend so at least he could eat. Then, in 1943, she offered him a single gigantic project – a mural that would hang in her office lobby. She gave him exactly six months to fill that enormous 8-by-20-foot canvas.
Pollack froze.
No ideas came to mind. Twenty-four hours before the deadline, the canvas was empty. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an artistic volcanic explosion. Pollack completed the entire work in a single night.
No one had ever seen anything quite like it.
It’s called Mural 1943. It’s also the image that accompanies this post. At first glance it appears – in the words of art critic Debra N. Mancoff – to resemble 100 raw eggs thrown against a wall. But then you begin to notice a surprising coherence of colors and waves – kind of like a Saturday night session of free jazz, seemingly random but always returning to a dominant theme.
One observer said the mural reminded him of a man wrestling a bear to the ground. Pollack himself, standing back after his all-night blitz, described it as “a stampede of every animal in the American West, cows and horses and antelopes and buffaloes.”
Regardless of what creatures the picture tended to inspire, it gave birth to a movement that came to be called abstract expressionism.
And Jackson Pollack was the tortured soul at the center of it all.
Within a few years, he abandoned the use of an easel. He moved his canvases to the floor so that he could have complete access to them – walking up from all four sides, sometimes walking on the canvas itself, dribbling paint, pouring it, throwing it, utilizing sticks and knives, blending in sand, glass, cigarette butts, coins, and other objects that occasionally fell out of his pockets.
Pollack threw his body into painting. Every gesture, every movement, every unfettered human emotion was reflected in his work.
Art critic Harold Rosenberg, attempting to describe this commitment of the whole person to the creation of a single work of art, called it “action painting.” Mancoff notes that between 1947 and 1952, Pollack produced “a magisterial series of monumental works that were unparalleled in scale, bold expression, and raw vitality.”
His fame exploded.
Pollack, however, crumbled in the spotlight. He never found inner peace. Driving drunk, he died in an accident a mile from his home in 1956 at age 44. Just as the public became fascinated with the star-crossed actor James Dean, who also left the world too soon at the wheel of his car, Pollack became a symbol of heroic but tragic self-expression.
During his early years, you could have taken home a Jackson Pollack painting for $150. Today you’d be lucky to buy one for $150 million.
“Tragic self-expression” is a great way to describe action painting. You certainly wouldn’t use those words to describe the way most people pray.
Unless of course, you’re talking about Psalm 88.
No one knows for sure who wrote it, or what occasion precipitated its words. Even though at least half the Old Testament’s 150 psalms fall into the category of “lament” – a cry of the heart that expresses anger, frustration, or sadness in the presence of God – Psalm 88 explores depths that are found nowhere else in the Bible.
“I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death,” the psalmist writes in verse 4. “ I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your [that is, God’s] care” (verse 5).
“You have put me in the lowest pit,” he goes on, “in the darkest depths. You have taken from me my closest friends” (verses 7-8). “Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?” (verse 14).
Gut-punch wails like these are found on the lips of other Bible characters, including Job, Elijah, and Jeremiah – not to mention the cry of God’s own Son on the cross: “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”
But those stories all have hopeful endings.
That’s the most disconcerting thing about Psalm 88. There is no final word of assurance or flourish of hope. “You have taken from me friend and neighbor – darkness is my closest friend” (verse 18).
Darkness is my closest friend? Is that any way to end a psalm?
American Christians struggle with such raw honesty. By and large, we prefer Bible texts that go on and on about God’s grace and mercy.
Years ago I visited a local synagogue to ask a rabbi a few questions about Passover. I was hoping for about 10 minutes of his time. He graciously gave me two hours. During the course of our fascinating conversation, he said something I have never forgotten: “You Christians are too nice when you pray. Why are you so afraid of taking on God face-to-face?”
According to the book of Genesis, Jacob – Abraham’s grandson – spends a whole night wrestling not with an 8-by-20- foot canvas, but with the angel of the Lord. The next day he is renamed “Israel,” which means “he wrestles with God.”
Jacob’s descendants have been wrestling with God ever since.
That’s what the author of Psalm 88 is doing. He’s modeling “action praying” – involving his whole person in the act of confronting God. He’s unleashing his fury, doubling down on his impatience, dribbling in some disappointment, then mixing up the whole batch with anything else that happens to “fall out of his pockets” – generous dabs of fear, resentment, and despair.
And God welcomes it. Which is why this master class in action praying has never relinquished its spot between Psalms 87 and 89.
All that remains is this cluster of questions:
Are you too nice when you talk to God?
Are you reluctant to let him know how you really feel?
Are you ready to throw your whole person into your next round of prayer?
This we know for sure:
God can handle it – and he’s ready to hear from you right now.