Jackson Pollock Pissed in Peggy Guggenheim's Fireplace. And Painted her an Early Mural

After her divorce from Max Ernst, super collector Peggy Guggenheim moved into a duplex apartment at 155 East 61st Street in 1943, instantly making it a new hub for New York’s art world elite. Her curatorial eye had already landed on Jackson Pollock — whom she discovered working as a janitor at the Museum of Non-Objective Art (later the Guggenheim Museum) — and she commissioned him to create a monumental painting for her new entryway. She wanted a mural painted directly on the wall, but Marcel Duchamp convinced her to commission it on canvas instead.

An early work, Mural doesn’t yet show the drip-and-pour technique Pollock would become famous for — instead there are controlled swirls and forms, energetic but contained. The finished piece measured 20 feet long and 8 feet high, which turned out to be slightly too large for the space. After a day of difficult installation, Peggy got it in place and immediately threw a party to unveil it, inviting the crème de la crème of New York’s art world.

Pollock, a legendary alcoholic, arrived at the unveiling blind drunk. He later boasted that he walked up to the fireplace, unzipped, and urinated directly in front of the assembled guests.

Peggy eventually donated Pollock’s Mural to the Iowa Museum of Art.

Location: 155 East 61st Street, New York, NY 10065