I’ve never thought much of Pollock’s paintings. I look at them and I see random squiggles of paint. (Although, looking at that link more closely I see that he did have a good grasp of composition and being less abstract–I submit Stenographic ). All my life, though, I’ve heard about how he’s such a great artist and a pioneer in the field of abstract whateverism. I’m not sure where this comes from. What is it that raises him up from “drunk with a tube of paint and a canvas” to Great Artist of the Twentieth Century?
I don’t feel qualified to give an artistic critique of them. But his paintings mathematically show a fractal structure which is very difficult to replicate. You or I could easily throw random squiggles of paint on a canvas, but if we did it, it wouldn’t have that mathematical structure. When Pollack did it, though, somehow, it did. Either he developed some technique known to him alone for producing those squiggles, which naturally resulted in those fractals, or he had an intuitive grasp of the subject (before it was even formally developed by Mandelbrot), and consciously worked them in. Either possibility is, I think, notable.
I would say that right up to Pollack, painters were looking for new ways to break rules. Impressionism had broken the “it’s gotta look exactly like the thing you’re painting” rule (and focused instead on how the artist and view perceived the thing). Fauvism broke rules about color, Cubism about dimensionality, etc. Artists like Dubuffet, Modigliani and Picasso co-opted and adapted previously derided “primitive” or tribal influences - the rules were being broken left and right.
Where to go from there? Pollack broke through with Abstract Expressionism, showing, frankly, that there were new rules to break - and still get an emotional response from the viewer. When I look at a Pollack - and seeing them live is a completely different experience than seeing a photo, especially when the painting is 20 feet or more wide - I can tell that my eye is being moved in a deliberate way around the painting. The painting is charged with energy - the motion of the drips and splashes fairly jump off the campus. If you are open to it, it can be a wonderful experience.
Think about it - pretty much any graphic designer/artist can knock off some Americana scene, but for some reason Norman Rockwell’s work stands out as being somehow more…painterly and iconic, I suppose. Same with Pollack’s - after he opened the door to squiggles, everyone tended to say “my 3-year-old could do that” - but you know what? They can’t. His stuff is more painterly and iconic in its way. Seriously - go check some out - that’s the easiest way to find out.
With some of the Abstract Expressionists,especially Pollack, you might think of th painting itself not as the artwork but as a sort of record of what he understood the important moment to be-- the moment of creation. It’s often called ‘gestural painting’ or ‘action painting’. He moves about and does a little dance over the canvas using his whole body to move the paint around-- a semi-automatic process that because of his interest in the subconscious we might tie loosely to something like Surrealism. The important moment was the painting (gerund) and the painting (noun) is simply an artifact or record of that moment. It’s a kind of performance art.
I didn’t like his work for the longest time, I just couldn’t see the point, there didn’t seem to “be” anything there. Then I saw some in person, and it was a completely different experience.
To me, it’s a feeling of sensory overload. It reminds me of being at a concert, where you can follow along with the notes for a while, focusing on distinct sounds and following harmonies and melodies and rhythms (squiggles and dribbles and drops of paint, his colors interacting, the larger patterns they make, the texture underneath)-- until they just absolutely pull out the stops and crank it up (you back up and look at the whole piece, all at once). And at that point there’s no more making “sense” of what you’re experiencing, you just have to ride it out.
I think he sustains that moment, that crashing everything-happening-at-once feeling. Keeping energy going like that is incredibly difficult. It’s much easier to fall into a monotonous, predictable pattern.
I’m not trying to suggest they’re all identical - this website has several different pieces and one detail shot. I think they add up to different overall impressions, sometimes calm, sometimes angry - there’s a lot of difference between Lucifer and Blue Poles. The text in that website is really foreign to me. A lot of those quotes are 50 years old, I’d be curious to know if people still find that frame of reference valuable to their understanding.
I remember the first time I got curious about Pollock and looked up the paintings on-line. Even in low-res online images, I can tell that they are extremely complex and that there are both subtle and gross compositional differences between each of them. This has a completely different emotional feel for me than this, or this, and I’m sure I could never duplicate any of them.
That’s a great summary. For me, the value Pollock’s stuff is literally greater than the sum of it’s parts. It’s work where you have to stand back and feel it’s presence, it’s wholeness, it’s gravity.
mm
I’ve seen Pollock’s paintings in person as well as in reproduction, but I remain unimpressed but his work as I am by most modern art. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel a work of art that requires an explanation is flawed. I think a work of art should be judged by the work of art itself - not be the artist’s statement or a critic’s explanation of what its intent was. The intent is either in the work or it isn’t.
You really, if at all possible, have to see them in person.
My wife was like the OP, until we stood in the Tate Modern’s Pollock room and she actually saw some for the first time (I was already sold from HoA101). First thing that struck her was how big they were - then how textural. Then, I think, the compositions hit her and she was sold. It was great to watch. I wouldn’t call her a fan of his work now, but I think she understands what *I *see in it, and why.
I’ve been thinking. . . I don’t really care about him on a personal level, more an intellectual level, but I do love the fact that 60 years on people are still thinking “WTF?” If I were an artist working today that would be my goal. “How can I change art in a way that in 60 years I will still be reviled and despised by many, confuse and disorient most, and be loved by a select few because a few really like my stuff and a few just like appearing pompous?” To still be the annoying avant garde 60 years on-- that rocks. Interesting that art tastes change so slowly compared to music-- think of what was considered outrageous in 1950, or even 2005. Same thing with Duchamp-- I love that in 2007 I can stick a slide of the Fountain up on the screen and some students will laugh at the cheek and some will irritatedly say “that’s fucking stupid,” 90 years later.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with your statement about intent, as an appreciator of Pollock’s work, I have to say it’s not because of theory or critical explanation, it’s because of the work. I’m a naïve subject -I saw Blue Poles when I was fourteen and although I’d seen a lot of art work I sure as heck hadn’t consumed very much art theory or history, and I was sold on it right then.
So even if it’s true that a piece of work should be able to be appreciated independent of outside media, I submit that it is indeed possible to judge Pollock’s work, and favourably, on its own merits. For me, it requires no explanation. Context, theory and history might certainly enrich my appreciation of it, but the same holds true for any given piece of representational art.
Why? All art is made at a particular time and place with a particular audience in mind. If you’re not taking context into account you’re probably missing out on a big part of what the artist is trying to say.
Doesn’t that pretty much rule out parody as a legitimate artform? After all, most parodies don’t work if you’re not familiar with what’s being parodied, which means they require extra-textual knowledge in order to be properly understood.
I think art can be judged by itself, but that’s just one mode of appreciation. That crazy stuff from Sanxingdui? I don’t know a damn thing about that culture or its criteria for excellence but I know that I dig it. Same goes for Cycladic stuff and any number of African art traditions,or Mesoamerican stuff. I don’t know a thing but I can dig it on aesthetic grounds. I don’t know much about music and I have preferences. Most people can’t be expected to take an art history/ art appreciation course. Formalism is a perfectly cromulent methodology for considering art.
(I’m not an art history hater, of course. I usually prefer my art vastly overcontextualized, but sometimes I just like looking at the interesting thingies)
Personally I share Little Nemo’s preference, in the work I make and the art I seek. I want art to be a refuge away from theory and intangibles, I want it to state the artist’s experience (statement, whatever) in physical reality.
OTOH, though, I’ve seen and read about (because you don’t necessarily HAVE to see them) some pretty amazing things that relied heavily on explanations. I wouldn’t feel comfortable evaluating something in that genre without considering the artist’s intent.
Abstract Expressionism does not exist in a vacuum of context. It’s important to understand what it’s not, just as much as what it is. To a painter like Pollock, he was saying–among other things–look a the canvas itself, not at what you believe it represents. Before AE, a painting was alway *of * something. With AE, the painting itself became its own object; like a sculpture. Pollock’s paintings are about the surface of the canvas, not what’s “behind” the canvas, as in a representational painting.
To those who responded to my previous post, obviously what I wrote is my own personal opinion. If you enjoy a work of art for other reasons, that’s good and I certainly don’t think my opinion is right and others are wrong.
I will concede Pollack is not the worst example of what I described. But I think he’s an inspirational pioneer figure to some of the artists who are producing some of the worst examples.
I was once visiting a modern art museum (it was in fact the same one exhibiting Pollack’s works). One of the exhibits was a piece of canvas that was painted yellow. That was the work of art. Next to it was a plaque explaining the work. The artist had been dying of AIDS. He spent the last few months of his life working on this painting. Every morning he would get up and paint the canvas a uniform coat of yellow. Then he’d let it dry. Then in the evening, he’d sand off as much of the paint as he could. He’d get most of it off but a little would remain each time, so it slowly built up a yellow coating on the canvas. He repeated this every day until he died.
The plaque explained that the artist was trying to communicate a message about something - I don’t recall exactly what - the transcience of life and art or something like that. But when I read it, all I could think was that that man had wasted his last months on earth. He could have been doing something useful or meaningful or fun or entertaining with the same time and energy he spend essentially digging up and filling in the same ditch over and over and over. I tried to sympathize - the man was dying - but all I could think was what a waste of time.
Because all it really was was a canvas painted yellow. The artist, or anyone else, could have achieved the same result with an hour’s work. Everything else was a story about the bizzarely elaborate method this man had devised to paint the canvas yellow. If the painting ever became seperated from the plaque, nobody would even know what it was he had done. The painting itself was unimportant; it was just a prop to anchor the manner in which it had been painted.
I can see your point. But I feel that while a parody requires knowledge of something outside of the parody, the parody itself doesn’t require an explanation. Was that distinction clear? You have to know the subject of the parody in order to get the joke, but you don’t need the artist to explain that it’s a parody or why parody is funny.
