Apollo and Dionysus

At our stopping point we had watched Pollock go from his urban lifestyle to budding appreciation for a rural environment. The switch made a huge impact on his inspiration. In his urban environment he was surrounded by other artists trying to make himself known. The difficulty he was faced with was creating an artistic identity that was separate from the other artists. He easily seemed to find it, but it was only through his detachment of his fellow painters that he could really create an identity for his self. Lee Krasner even pointed out that Pollock's art was stimulated by his unconscious self. He sculpted the image of his inner self onto the canvas.
This is much like Nietzsche's idea of the two types of artistic inspiration: the Apollonian (visual) and the Dionysian (sensual). The former is represented by dreams while the latter by intoxication. Though Pollock indulges in alcoholic intoxication, this only seeks to distance him more and more from those around him, it is his escape from the world he is overwhelmed by. In the beginning he is inspired by his subconscious, that part of the mind which manifests dreams and Pollock becomes obsessed with perpetually trying to translate these dreams with paint. His entire life in New York is dedicated to standing out, getting noticed, and becoming famous. He does not want to become part of a whole, he wants to become an icon. He wants to become something that is superior to the community, he wants to become a singular entity for recognition. He wants to achieve the highest standards of the self and for that reason he falls into the Apollonian category.
Once he moves to the rural farmland, however, he shifts. He stops drinking, except for a few relapses, and slows down to appreciate everything around him. There are several scenes of Pollock looking out over the beautiful land, or watching the fox, or playing with the dog, or feeding the bird. In his studio he has pinups of animals in the background. He is engaging with his community. He is no longer in a social structure dependent on ranking. He is allowed to simply be. In the rural community, no one needs to be better than anyone else; no one needs to be famous. To the contrary, the people in a small rural community depend on one another to survive. They need each other and they create a strong sense of community, or wholeness. This is the real intoxication that Pollock realizes. This is not the intoxication of escape, but the intoxication of unity. He is allowed to let go of that inner urge to stand out and be alone. He is allowed to put down his guard and feel like the I is not as important the We. He has transitioned from the Apollonian inspiration of dreaming and the self into the Dionysian inspiration of intoxication and the unity of all life.
Nietzsche suggests the potential for these two ideas to co-exist. The idea is that after the individual learns what the self is, and is able to disregard it in favor of a larger more unified identity, the self can then find itself within that community. The I can find its importance as a node in the spiderweb of their environment. It is distinguished as something individual, but acknowledges that it is simply a part of the whole. This marriage is demonstrated when Pollock "cracks [his style of artwork] wide open". His new technique is one that disregards the need for composition, but still uses lines and colors. He is no longer trying to draw whats in his head, but he is able to detach his identity from his artwork and he allows his hands to move freely as if it were intoxicated. He does not think about where the line goes, he feels it and lets his hand move, but he pays close attention to space and feels when to use a splatter or a drip. He paints with his I and with his Us. In the interview, when he is questioned about his response to people's dislike of his work he replies "if we just left all our stuff at home, I don't see why you couldn't like it". The stuff he is referring to is the self. People look at a piece of artwork and try to find their selves in it, they read it like a dream. Pollock is trying to influence people to fall into the feeling of the work, the creation of it rather than interpreting the images as symbolic. He is creating a piece of work that is intoxicating, and as he becomes more aware of the energy his splashes and drips make, he sculpts the intoxication into something like a dream. Intoxication, while helping to disregard the self, is a stagnant thing which concerns the individual with the moment disregarding the chronology of time. The dream, however, uses time as a means of creating movement and with movement there can be direction. Through his choice of color and his direction he synthesizes between both dreams and intoxication.