Explain Jackson Pollock to me

Cafe Society
21

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
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.
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These days, for many, the artwork is not just the “final product” but the process as well. Some would argue that its really always been about the process and not about the final product, but I would say there have just always been two different ways to appreciate a piece. Anyway, the one you saw clearly was intended to be appreciated not just as a physical produced object, but rather as a process of producing a physical object.

Just because it was intended to be appreicated in that way does not mean you have to appreciate it in that way, of course. But given the choice between an interesting interpretation (“it’s communicating an epiphany on the sysiphan nature of life in the face of death” or whatever) and a boring intepretation ("It’s yellow and it doesn’t communicate anything) I’ll take the interesting one.

By the way, both interpretations’ formulations constitute rather banal statements. But even if the point of a work can seem banal when formulated in a sentence or two, the appreciation of the work isn’t an appreciation of its interpretation, especially its formulated interpretation. Rather the appreciation depends on the extent to which and way in which the work (as interpreted) has drawn you into an experience not otherwise accessible to you, in a way which informs (or perhaps deforms!) those experiences that are accessible to you.

I am not an art critic or anything. This is just how it seems to me.

-FrL-

-FrL-

22

[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
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.
[/QUOTE]

You are totally right, and that work of art sounds like bullshit to me. But I didn’t see it, I don’t really know.

Bringing the context back to Pollack, you don’t really have to know anything about Abstract Expressionism to appreciate what he is doing. It helps but isn’t necessary.

You don’t have to know anything about artistic technique and how damned hard it is to make a painting like one of his paintings. knowing that his use of color and movement and texture is…stunning to say the least, is not at all necessary. But it helps.

All that matters, all that really matters, is that if you stand in a room with an original Pollack, you feel something.

Now you say you don’t, fair enough. Not all art is for everyone. But I personally know MANY people, that are moved by it. Most of them don’t know anything about art. So I would say that it is able to be appreciated on it’s own merits.

If it doesn’t move you emotionally, then you should at least concede that technically and historically it has a lot of meaning. Because just because those things aren’t necessary to appreciate the piece, doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. They are, in fact, the only objective way that you can criticize any work of art. The emotional resonance is a totally subjective thing. So your ruling out all objective criticism of art seems a little less then fair, because no one is going to veiw 2 pieces of art the exact same way from a subjective standpoint.

S’all I am saying

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[QUOTE=NAF1138]
If it doesn’t move you emotionally, then you should at least concede that technically and historically it has a lot of meaning. Because just because those things aren’t necessary to appreciate the piece, doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. They are, in fact, the only objective way that you can criticize any work of art. The emotional resonance is a totally subjective thing. So your ruling out all objective criticism of art seems a little less then fair, because no one is going to veiw 2 pieces of art the exact same way from a subjective standpoint.

S’all I am saying
[/QUOTE]

I think you’re my hero.
That yellow painting, though, it makes me want to cry. How fascinating, that he chose yellow. It makes me think of hope, of starting each day with a fresh coating of hope and having most of it rubbed off by the end of the day. And then starting over, again, the next day. And the accumulated effect being that the joy remained, even though he was gone.
It would never, ever, ever occur to me to try something like that.
I’m curious about what SpazCat thinks of the views presented thus far.

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[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
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.
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That part in bold was exactly what I was thinking of when I made the analogy. If you have zero knowledge of what’s being parodied, chances are, you will need someone to explain to you that the work in question is a parody. This usually isn’t an issue with contemporary parody, because you’ll usually have some vague notion of what ever pop-culture issue is being parodied, even if you’ve never been directly exposed to it. I’ve never seen American Idol, but just by being conscious and minimally aware of my surroundings, I know enough about it to recognize a parody of it if I see one. But two hundred years from now, when everyone’s forgotten American Idol ever existed, if I come across the same parody, I’ll have no idea at all that it’s a parody, and it likely won’t make any sense to me at all. Has the parody then somehow become less good, just because what it references is no longer known? Or is it still just as valid, even if I need someone to explain to me the precise context in which it was created?

A lot of abstract art works on the same principle. If you understand what was the mainstream in art when it was created, you don’t need specific instruction on what the artist was trying to do: it will be obvious to you, because you’re already immersed in the context in which it was created. Sixty years later, that context is not automatically familiar to you, and you need to make the extra effort to understand the context in which the painting was created, to understand how that painting was created as a reaction to that context.

It’s an interesting choice to me, too, and I’d like to see it in the flesh. I imagine the process of painting, sanding, and repainting would give the color some interesting texture and tonality. But the use of yellow in particular resonates with m, as I’ve always had a deep dislike of the color yellow. It carries connotations of disease and decay for me, and I find it very off-putting in general. The context of the artist dying of AIDS while painting it almost makes me think it was a deliberate connection there, despite the fact that I’ve never met anyone else who has my particular revulsion for that color.

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[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel a work of art that requires an explanation is flawed.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t think Pollack necessarily needs explanation. I like his paintings for the simple reason that they are beautiful.

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I don’t understand this insistance that a work of art has to put across its message 100% without context. Why is context such a bad thing? And why arbitrarily declare context, among all the different aspects of art appreciation, as a bad thing? It almost sounds like a game; an arbitrary rule you’ve set yourself as a *challenge * in understanding art. Why?

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[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
. . . I feel a work of art that requires an explanation is flawed. . . .
[/QUOTE]

This, frankly, strikes me as ridiculous; like saying a French poem shouldn’t require knowledge of French in order to understand it.

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Mark me down as someone who thought Pollock’s work sounded like BS before I actually saw any. However in real life they actually work but I have no idea why.

There is a good bio-pic Pollock starring Ed Harris which is just about the best movie about an artist that I have seen. Who The Fuck Is Jackson Pollock? looks interesting too.

29

I haven’t seen any of Pollock’s works in person, but I can say that some of them appeal to me strongly while others are just ‘blah’. Through some alchemy of color and technique, I seem to feel an emotion or intent behind some of them that just rubs me the wrong way. I find this fascinating.

A comment on the ‘yellow painting’ as well - I’d definitely buy that (dead) guy a beer and want to talk about his process. Imagine getting up in the morning and not knowing whether you’d be dead by evening, or perhaps by the next morning. So you put on a coat of paint in the AM and scrub it off in the PM. One day you die; perhaps unexpectedly; the painting serves as a record of your time of death; like a clock that doesn’t get rewound. I think that that story adds a lot to the ‘value’ of the work. The story may not resonate with you personally, but for those who dismiss that aspect of a work, I bet that there is a lot of purely representational art that does not resonate with you, and that you do not value as a result. De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum and all that.

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[QUOTE=lissener]
I don’t understand this insistance that a work of art has to put across its message 100% without context. Why is context such a bad thing? And why arbitrarily declare context, among all the different aspects of art appreciation, as a bad thing? It almost sounds like a game; an arbitrary rule you’ve set yourself as a *challenge * in understanding art. Why?
[/QUOTE]

By context do you mean a historical perspective, or the artist’s intent? Are you talking about work that was incomplete in its time without some kind of explanation? Or one from another culture that would be difficult to understand without some help?

I’ll say that for me, sometimes context helps me appreciate a piece more, but sometimes it seems like an excuse or justification.

A person doesn’t need to know anything to appreciate Michelangelo’s David. No amount of words can elevate a mediocre piece to that level.
That Ed Harris movie is a good one - he was a deeply flawed human being. I also love the Basquat film.

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[QUOTE=Miller]
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.
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But parodies only have meaning when the work being parodied is still a familiar one. Over time, the parody elements become forgotten. If all the work is is a parody, then it’s not likely to survive.

If a parody does survive, it’s more likely to be something like Alice in Wonderland, which contains some pretty clever parodies, most of which stand up on their own even if you don’t know the original. “You are old, Father William” in Alice is a direct parody of a poem, but the original has been forgotten. But it isn’t necessary to know the original to enjoy Carroll’s version.

For another example, Mark Twain’s parody of Sir Walter Scott in Huckleberry Finn is not noticed by most modern readers (and is also considered the weakest part of the book). But Hucklberry Finn transcends parody.

As far as parodies being art; Lord of the Rings is still in print while Bored of the Rings (one of the greatest parodies every) is not.

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[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
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.
[/QUOTE]
You are absolutely correct, but that’s hardly Pollock’s fault, is it? Any time you get a pioneer who’s found a new direction, you’ll get the followers and wannabees and never-should-have-beens following in his wake.

Hollywood does the same thing in spades.

33

[QUOTE=fessie]
By context do you mean a historical perspective, or the artist’s intent? Are you talking about work that was incomplete in its time without some kind of explanation? Or one from another culture that would be difficult to understand without some help?

I’ll say that for me, sometimes context helps me appreciate a piece more, but sometimes it seems like an excuse or justification.

A person doesn’t need to know anything to appreciate Michelangelo’s David. No amount of words can elevate a mediocre piece to that level.
[/QUOTE]

You seem to be looking for hard and fast rules; for something that works universally from Michelangelo to Pollock, from good works to bad works.

There is no such thing.

34

I see a difference between a work of art that requires some particular knowledge and one that requires an explanation. To use some of the examples given, a parody requires a knowledge of the subject being parodied and a French novel requires the knowledge of how to read French. But some art requires more than just knowledge of the world - there are works of art that cannot be understood without a specific explanation of what the artist meant. An example of this would be the yellow painting I described above - you could understand everything there is in the world about the color yellow but you would never get the meaning of that painting unless somebody explicitly explained it to you. Watch a bunch of Irwin Allen movies and you’ll get Airplane!; learn to read French and you’ll understand A la recherche du temps perdu. But you could stare at that yellow painting for years and never figure out on your own what the artist meant without reading the plaque next to it - so to me the meaning is in the plaque not the painting.

This is exactly it. You’ve explained what it is that you can appreciate and I do not. It’s fine that you appreciate the process but I think the work should be judged just the work. I don’t see how it makes a difference to the listener if a composer spent twenty years writing a concerto or whipped it off in an afternoon - to me, the beauty is in the music being played not the effort or ease that went into it.

35

I remembered a Mr Boffo comic I once read. Boffo’s in an art gallery looking at the statue. It’s a oblong brown lump. The artist is telling him, “To me this work symbolizes the epitome of absolute evil.” Then he turns to Boffo and continues, “But not everybody feels the way I do about potatoes.”

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[QUOTE=Little Nemo]

This is exactly it. You’ve explained what it is that you can appreciate and I do not. It’s fine that you appreciate the process but I think the work should be judged just the work.
[/QUOTE]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think I haven’t made my point completely clear to you yet. When you say “I think the work should be judged just the work,” what you’ve said does not actually disagree with the possibility that one might take process into account when judging some works of art. This is because for some people, for some works, the process is (at least a component of) the work. In these cases, there’s literally no such thing as judging the work independently of judging the process involved in it.

-FrL-

37

[QUOTE=Frylock]
Hehe.
[/QUOTE]

Well that was fun.

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Try this as a thought experiment. Imagine walking into a room to experience a work of art that you have not being told anything about. You don’t know the name of the artist, when or where the work of art was created, whether it’s won critical or popular acclaim, what its monetary value is, what the context was for its creation, or under what circumstances it was created. All you experience is the work itself.

Now this to me would represent the ideal of how to experience a work of art. You experience it solely as what is before you with no bias based on your expectations or the opinions of others.

39

That is certainly one way to experience art. There is no reason to intentionally limit yourself to only that type of experience though.

Sometimes the process involved in creating a work of art is part of the art. However, people are smart enough to tell the difference.

We are capable of appreciating different works of art in different ways and for different reasons.

It seems that you are filled with fear that if we appreciate the yellow painting by taking the process into account, that we will have no way to differentiate it from art which is more impressive without the context. But you really need not worry. Just because we appreciate a work of art does not mean we automatically are saying it is a great technical achievement. Though we appreciate a wider range of art than you do and have a greater variety of experiences, that doesn’t mean we are blind to the differences.

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[QUOTE=fessie]
I’m curious about what SpazCat thinks of the views presented thus far.
[/QUOTE]

I can definitely see why Pollock’s work is still around now. The fractal theory is interesting–I don’t see how his more abstract pieces can be perfect fractals, but they are neat representations of something that wasn’t understood until much later. And the movement bit is something, too. I’ve only seen his works as reprints in books or websites, never in person. I guess something like Convergence would have to be seen in person to be completely “felt.” Kind of like last summer when I saw the original of Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott last year. Before it wasn’t one of my favorite pieces, but when I saw it in person and saw all the details on the boat and in the background, I was sold.

Actually, a lot of my confusion about Pollock can be found in the previous sentence. My favorite artist is Waterhouse, and it’s quite a mental shift to go from Pre-Raphaelite to Abstract Expressionism without a pause in between. But I am starting to get Pollock now. Muchas gracias.