But there was another, morbid, side to his meaningfulness. To "die at the top" for being his kind of artist was to many, I think, implicit in the work before he died. It was this bizarre implication that was so moving. We remembered Van Gogh and Rimbaud. But not it was our time, and a man some of us knew. The ultimate sacrificial aspect of being an artist, while not a new idea, seemed in Pollack terribly modern. and in him the statement and the ritual were so grand, so authoritative and all-encompassing in their scale and daring that, whatever our private convictions, we could not fail to be affected by their spirit.