Question: Why did Pollock number his paintings instead of naming them?
About the article "Jackson Pollock", section "From naming to numbering".

Candidate passages:
Continuing to evade the viewer's search for figurative elements in his paintings, Pollock abandoned titles and started numbering his works.
He said about this: "...look passively and try to receive what the painting has to offer and not bring a subject matter or preconceived idea of what they are to be looking for".
Pollock's wife, Lee Krasner, said Pollock "used to give his pictures conventional titles... but now he simply numbers them.
Numbers are neutral.
They make people look at a picture for what it is—pure painting."
When the Great Depression began on 1929, Pollock became deeply involved in the Ohio Unemployed League, a branch of the American Workers Party (AWP).
The goal of the League was to organize jobless workers, advocate for higher relief payments for the unemployed, and help the unemployed resist employer calls to take striking workers' jobs.
On April 1934, Pollock became a leader in the bitter and violent strike by automobile parts workers at the Electric Auto-Lite plant in Toledo.
Pollock and fellow League organizer, Ted Selander essentially ran the strike along with AWP leader Louis Budenz.
They helped plan mass marches which forced the plant to close.
When a local court judge, issued an injunction limiting the number of picketers, Pollock and Selander wrote a letter to the judge declaring that the Lucas County Unemployed League would "deliberately and specifically violate the injunction enjoining us from sympathetically picketing peacefully in support of the striking auto workers' federal union."
Pollock was arrested and convicted for picketing in violation of the court injunction on May 7, but his sentence was suspended.
He was arrested again on May 11, but released by the court without any decision in his case.
The strike erupted in rioting on May 23.
Pollock played a significant, but minor part in the negotiations which helped end the strike on June 2, 1934.
After the strike, Pollock lost his job and was blacklisted for his activities on behalf of the union.
Just a few weeks later, Pollock became deeply involved in the Hardin County onion pickers strike.
On June 19, 1934, onion weeders formed the first union of farm laborers in the United States, under the auspices of the International Quarrymen's Union.
The 30 employers belong to the Onion Growers' Association, refused to recognize or bargain with the union, so the union called a strike.
On June 22, a local court judge issued a sweeping labor injunction which restricted picketing in groups of two.
Local sheriff's deputies began mass arrests of the picketers for congregating in violation of the injunction.
The county sheriff, supplied with funds provided by the employers, hired Ohio National Guard troops who had recently served in Toledo during the Auto-Lite strike, and armed them with riot guns, machine-guns, and tear gas.
Protests from Governor George White regarding the use of public equipment for private use were ignored.
The troops helped break the strike by forcing workers off the picket lines, and arrests hundreds of workers.
When a truck full of replacement workers attempted to run down a group of picketers, the picketers retaliated by throwing stones.
Pollock was jailed, and a $1,000 bail set for this incident.
Pollock was held incommunicado for several days.
When the local sheriff did tell Sarah Pollock where her husband was, he denied her access to him.
When Pollock finally met with his defense attorneys, sheriff's deputies crowded close to listen in the conversations, and physically intimidate the lawyers.
The strike ended shortly thereafter without agreement, and the union disbanded. 
In 1955, Pollock painted "Scent" and "Search," his last two paintings.
He did not paint at all in 1956, but was making sculptures at Tony Smith’s home: constructions of wire, gauze, and plaster.
Shaped by sand-casting, they have heavily textured surfaces similar to what Pollock often created in his paintings.
On August 11, 1956, at 10:15 pm, Pollock died in a single-car crash in his Oldsmobile convertible while driving under the influence of alcohol.
One of the passengers, Edith Metzger, was also killed in the accident, which occurred less than a mile from Pollock's home.
The other passenger, Ruth Kligman, an artist and Pollock's mistress, survived.
For the rest of her life, his widow Lee Krasner managed his estate and ensured that Pollock's reputation remained strong despite changing art-world trends.
The couple are buried in Green River Cemetery in Springs with a large boulder marking his grave and a smaller one marking hers. 
When Pollock first created many of his famous works, the United States was already at the forefront of the kinetic art movement.
The novel styles and methods he used to create his most famous pieces earned him the spot in the 1950s as the unchallenged leader of kinetic painters, his work was associated with Action painting coined by art critic Harold Rosenberg in the 1950s.
Pollock had an unfettered desire to animate every aspect of his paintings.
Pollock repeatedly said to himself, ""I am in every painting"".
He used tools that most painters would never use, such as sticks, trowels, and knives.
The shapes he created were what he thought was ""beautiful, erratic objects"".
This style evolved into his drip technique.
Pollock repeatedly took buckets of paint and paintbrushes and flicked them around until the canvas was covered with squiggly lines and jagged strokes.
In the next phase of his work, Pollock tested his style with uncommon materials.
He painted his first work with aluminum paint in 1947, titled "Cathedral" and from there he tried his first "splashes" to destroy the unity of the material itself.
He believed wholeheartedly that he was liberating the materials and structure of art from their forced confinements, and that is how he arrived at the moving or kinetic art that always existed.  
In 1903, under the promotion of the Chamber of Commerce, Pollock had briefly served as acting Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council for around a year.
Soon afterwards, he was again nominated by the unofficial Justices of Peace and became a full unofficial member of the council in December 1905.
For nearly forty years onwards, Pollock had continuously represented the unofficial Justices of Peace constituency in the council.
In his long tenure in the Legislative Council, Pollock was active in public service and served in a number of committees as member or chairman, including the Peace Celebration and War Memorial Finance Committee, Housing Commission and the Standing Law Committee and etc.
During the First World War, Pollock also sat as a Judge in the Appeal Tribunal; he was later reappointed for the same post on the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.
As early as 1911 and 1912, Pollock was provisionally appointed twice as unofficial member of the Executive Council.
However, he lost the chance to be appointed a full unofficial member in November 1915 when he unsuccessfully pressured the then governor, Sir Henry May in a Legislative Council meeting for replacing a vacancy for unofficial member in the Executive Council through limited election.
Pollock was one of the most prominent activist on constitutional reform in pre-war Hong Kong.
He did not give up after his request was abruptly turned down by Sir Henry.
In January 1916, he sent a petition compiled with a few hundreds signatures to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Andrew Bonar Law, and called for reform in both the Legislative and Executive Council.
According to his proposal, he suggested that more unofficial seats should be created on the two councils.
These new seats should be elected by members of the Chamber of Commerce and the unofficial Justices of Peace in order to let them be more fully represented.
Also, Pollock supported the appointment of more Chinese to the two councils.
Pollock's proposal was also rejected by Bonar Law with no reason given.
The relationship between Pollock and Sir Henry, was so badly damaged that Pollock was never again chosen to sit on the Executive Council during the governorship of Sir Henry.
Pollock only became an unofficial member of the Executive Council after the retirement of Sir Henry, when his successor, Sir Reginald Stubbs, appointed him in 1921.
Three years later, Pollock was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the King's Birthday Honours in 1924.
Pollock was appointed acting Attorney-General for three times in 1919, 1925 and 1928 respectively.
In his capacity as acting Attorney-General, he sat in the two councils as "ex officio" member rather than unofficial member, and his unofficial seats in the Legislative Council was provisionally elected by his fellow Justices of Peace.
In 1917, he succeeded Sir Boshan Wei Yuk as Senior Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council; later in 1926, he also became Senior Unofficial Member of the Executive Council after the death Sir Paul Chater, and therefore became the Senior Member of both two councils.
Nevertheless, on 16 September 1928, Pollock had an accidental fall in his home at No.
367, the Peak.
He broke his thigh heavily and could not assume his duties in the councils.
As a result, another member of the Legislative and the Executive Council, Sir Shouson Chow, temporarily replaced him as Senior Member during his incapacity.
Pollock recovered from the fall in December and reassumed his duties again.
Besides his duties in the two councils, Pollock had served as chairman of the Hong Kong Branch of the Navy League, the Chess Club, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Constitutional Reform Association.
He had also served as Commodore of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, Secretary of the Odd Volumes Society and corresponding secretary to the Royal Colonial Institute.
Pollock was instrumental to the establishment of the University of Hong Kong as he was one of the founders of the University.
Pollock was originally a member of the council of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese.
In March 1908, along with Sir Paul Chater, Sir Kai Ho-Kai and a few other people, Pollock was appointed to the newly founded organizing committee of the University of Hong Kong which was chaired by Sir Paul Chater by then governor Sir Frederick Lugard (later Lord Lugard).
When the University of Hong Kong was officially founded in 1911, Pollock was appointed a life member of the University Court.
Pollock was said to be an active member who frequently attend the Court's meetings, and was noted for his enthusiasm towards the development of the University.
In acknowledging his contribution, he received Honorary Doctorates of Law from the University on 5 January 1925.
That is worth mentioning that Pollock had close ties with St. Stephen's College as he was one of the guests invited to the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the College's new school site in Stanley in 1928.
Furthermore, in 1933, under the assistance from him and Sir Robert Kotewall, the student-actors and student-actresses of the College were allowed to play on the same stage in a fundraising drama event regardless the opposition from the conservative Chinese community.