kagablog

Casters are those little wheels that bring action to otherwise fairly immovable objects, such as pianos, bed frames, and shopping carts. (Alright, so a shopping cart isn’t totally immovable - but I get fingernail-on-the-chalkboard cringings when I imagine StarMarket full of casterless carts being pushed through the aisles.)

The point is that casters make it easier to move things. In fact, one of the key features of the caster is its ability to swivel 360 degrees. This allows me to zip around the room in my office chair in any direction and stop on a dime - or a paperclip or any other small object that jams the wheel.

In the 1940s and ’50s, Jackson Pollock was associated with the Abstract Expressionists, a loose-knit collection of artists creating paintings that left the realm of representation and focused on depicting forms not found in nature. Mr. Pollock was a caster to the art world. He, along with the other Abstract Expressionists, swivelled the focus of cutting edge art from Europe to the United States. His paintings had always been very active, with compositions that filled every nook and cranny of the canvas, but in 1947 he took this to an extreme when he created pieces made entirely by dripping and pouring paint onto the canvas.

In 1950, Hans Namuth filmed Jackson Pollock in action. (The Pollock images I drew in this cartoon are based on shots from that film.) This, along with a story in Life magazine, made Mr. Pollock quite famous (even infamous) as it provided a glimpse into the process of the “modern artist.” It was Namuth’s film that helped inspire art critic Harold Rosenberg to write an essay on “action painting.” Although this label has been applied to him ever since, Jackson Pollock did not like it. He felt this phrase implied that the process of painting was more important than the result - something Mr. Pollock vehemently disagreed with. All the same, his paintings are alive with motion and action, around and about the entire canvas.

The wheel-jamming paperclip in Jackson Pollock’s life was flagging self-confidence. It drove him to drinking and (ultimately) into a tree.

Finally, we find ourselves in ancient Greece, where we meet the action-seeking twins, Castor and Pollux. Their mother was Leda. Their father’s identity seems to be in dispute. According to some sources, Pollux’s father was Zeus and Castor’s was Tyndareus (Leda’s husband). These same sources don’t explain how twins could have different fathers, but we’ll leave that alone for now. One of their sisters was the lovely Helen — that thousand-ship-launching beauty whose abduction by Paris triggered the Trojan war.

Among other adventures, Castor and Pollux joined Jason and his Argonauts on the quest for the Golden Fleece. Eventually, Castor (being the mortal brother) met his paperclip of doom. Pollux was totally distraught about being separated from his brother, so Zeus cast them into the sky as the constellation Gemini. Today, Castor and Pollux are the names of two of the brightest stars in the sky.