Easter and the Totem

In Easter and the Totem, Jackson Pollock makes room for bright colour, broad brushed shapes and forms that hover on the edge of recognition. Painted in 1953, this large, upright oil on canvas measures 208.6 × 147.3 cm and belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. ^[1]

MoMA describes the forms at either side as quasi-figurative: they suggest presences without resolving into clearly identified people. Its account emphasises the expansive space, bright colours and substantial areas of black. These provide a useful way into the painting. Look for the relationship between a shape that seems almost bodily and the surrounding colour that keeps it part of an abstract composition. The brush gives those encounters a different character from the interwoven poured lines for which Pollock is best known. ^[1]

Black as a colour of light

Curator Ann Temkin draws attention to the energy of the black. In her MoMA commentary, she connects Pollock's treatment of it with Henri Matisse's idea of black as a colour capable of conveying light. Here, in her reading, black contributes its own vivid force to the painting. It can be considered alongside the brighter hues as an active colour, with a presence and intensity of its own. ^[2]

Temkin also proposes that the tall form at the far left resembles an Easter Island figure. Her wording leaves that identification open. The resemblance offers one possible association for the title; it does not establish the figure's identity or supply a complete narrative. Keeping that possibility provisional allows the form to remain available to the painting's other relationships. Its upright presence can matter before the viewer decides what, if anything, it represents. ^[2]

How colour makes space

Bernice Rose's account of Pollock's colour offers a broader way of considering such relationships. In Jackson Pollock: Drawing into Painting, she distinguishes the colour physically present on a surface from the changing sensations that colour produces in the eye. Contrasts can make a painting seem to pulse, expand or gather atmospheric depth. She sees colour and tone working together, with black and white setting the extremes of both kinds of relationship. ^[3]

For a viewer, Rose's distinction shifts attention from naming the colours to considering what they do together. A colour can appear as a separate area while also participating in an atmospheric or spatial effect. Her account of black and white as constants within these changing relationships helps clarify how strong contrasts can coexist with expansiveness in Pollock's painting. ^[3]

William Rubin makes the comparison more specific. He contrasts the relatively dispersed quantities of saturated colour in Mural on Indian Red Ground with the larger bright areas that Pollock used later. In Easter and the Totem, Rubin particularly admires the juxtaposition of broad panels of colour. His favourable judgment helps explain why this canvas deserves attention within Pollock's work with colour: the relationships depend on substantial adjacent areas, giving colour a different compositional role from its distribution through an all-over network. ^[4]

Figures that remain open

An illuminating earlier companion is Stenographic Figure, dated about 1942. MoMA describes its bright, airy character and preserves two readings of its imagery: a reclining female figure, or two more upright figures. Scratchy calligraphic lines cross the surface. The museum's willingness to retain those alternatives is helpful when approaching Easter and the Totem. Recognition need not settle into a single, permanent reading for a painting to suggest a human presence. ^[5]

The alternative readings also make its calligraphic surface important. The marks invite the eye to move across the canvas even while it tries to gather them into figures. Suggested bodies and independent lines can hold a viewer's attention at the same time. ^[5]

Lee Krasner likewise understood the appearance of figures as part of a continuing practice. Interviewed by B. H. Friedman in 1969, she recalled seeing recognisable imagery during the development of many abstract paintings. She named Easter and the Totem and Male and Female when discussing continuities with the black-and-white works. Her testimony connects these paintings through recurring possibilities of imagery; it offers no fixed identification of the figures in Easter and the Totem. ^[4]

Matisse and the variety of 1953

Kirk Varnedoe's 1998 account places the brighter brushwork of Easter and the Totem beside the very different Ritual, also painted in 1953. He associates the former with Matisse and the latter with Picasso. He also identifies a return to brushwork in these canvases, while describing Portrait and a Dream, from the same year, as combining upright brushwork with pouring. These comparisons make the date useful: it brings several different approaches into view at once. ^[6]

For Varnedoe, the relationship between Ritual and Easter and the Totem recalls the earlier difference between Birth and Stenographic Figure: the contrast between a densely compressed, Picasso-related figuration and a lighter, more open treatment associated with Matisse. ^[6]

Varnedoe developed this argument further in his essay for Jackson Pollock: New Approaches. He points to the Matisse retrospective at MoMA in 1951–52 as a likely context for Easter and the Totem. The connection remains an interpretation of Pollock's response to another painter. It is most useful as a way of considering colour, spaciousness and the renewed possibilities of brushed form. ^[7]

Varnedoe's larger argument challenges the assumption that every stylistic change corresponds to an event in Pollock's personal life. The differences within 1953 are evidence for his case. Easter and the Totem and Ritual respond to different artistic possibilities, although they occupy the same moment in the painter's biography. ^[7]

Exhibition and later home

Pollock's own 1956 formulation, recorded by Selden Rodman and reproduced by Francis V. O'Connor, was: “I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time.” ^[8]

O'Connor records Easter and the Totem among ten paintings, all dated 1953, shown at Sidney Janis Gallery from 1 to 27 February 1954. They included Ocean Greyness, The Deep, Greyed Rainbow and Unformed Figure. Emily Genauer's 7 February review singled out Easter and the Totem and The Deep as the two best works. She admired their composition, texture and luminous colour, despite her continued hostility to the drip paintings. Robert M. Coates's 20 February response balanced criticisms with a favourable judgment of the exhibition's strengths. In March, James Fitzsimmons praised its development while finding some paintings unsuccessful; his particular favourites were Ocean Greyness and Sleeping Effort. These distinctions preserve both the praise directed at this canvas and the varied response to the exhibition around it. ^[8]

The painting entered MoMA in 1980 as Lee Krasner's gift in memory of Jackson Pollock, accession 425.1980. Her memorial gift gave this distinctive late canvas a permanent museum home. ^[1]