I’ve been pondering this question ever since I saw the movie “Who the #$%& is Jackson Pollock?” Why is he considered a great artist? Why is dripping paint on a big canvas considered art worth millions of dollars?
I don’t know much about art, but I do find Jackson Pollock’s work to be emotionally evocative.
Whenever people criticize abstract art, I want to ask them to try it themselves and post the results. If you can’t do it just as well, then maybe there’s something to it. People like to say “my 3 year old could do that”, but I have a 3 year old, and I’ve seen her “art”, and no, she couldn’t.
I was going to post something similar.
Years ago I heard something and I like to repeat it to others. Whenever someone looks at art and says “I could have done that” I reply with “But you didn’t”.
So in reply to “Why is dripping paint on a big canvas considered art worth millions of dollars?” I’d say a good answer is “because he did it first”.
Yes yes, I know, he wasn’t the first to do it, but he was the first to do it the way HE did it. Using different types of paints, different types of canvases, different methods for applying the paints etc. It made his art different the others. Also, since it was more or less all he did, he churned out more then the others.
One last thought. Was his work that much more expensive or sought after before the movie Pollock came out then it was after?
Just looking at Wiki, in 1973 something sold for 2 Million, Pollock came out in 2000 and in 2006 No 5 1948 sold for 140 million.
I absolutely adore Jackson Pollock. Wonderful stuff that speaks to me. If I ever hit the lottery, his will be the first art I’m buying.
Different strokes and all that. Maybe the OP would prefer something by Thomas Kincaide?
The market value is a separate issue from the aesthetics. Somewhere there may be a a pair of paint-splattered shoes worn by Pollock, or maybe a loose scrap of canvas that was on the floor where Mark Rothko slit his elbows that has an abstract expressionist bloodstain. These too would be worth a lot of money. But value is not virtue.
Art is supposed to evoke an emotional response and if it does that to enough people then it becomes accepted as valid. (whatever those people think for whom it fails to work)
In terms,of paintings, the art is created often by applying paint to a surface in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. It may take a recognisable form and be done with a brush or, in the case of Pollock, be done by dribbling it on with abstract intent.
Doesn’t really matter. If it works, it works. And having seen them up close I certainly find them pleasing.
He made for *great *jigsaw puzzles.
Same here. First time I saw a Pollock in person, I was floored. There is just a nice visual rhythm and level of microscopic detail to his work that speaks to me. I hate deconstructing art, because so much of it really does depend on a visceral reaction, and Pollock’s work hits me in the gut for some reason. It’s just meditative and beautiful and rhythmic. But it doesn’t look like random splashes to me. It looks deliberate, though improvised, with a clear order in the chaos. His work is compositionally sound and balanced. I’ve tried splashing around paint on a canvas. It doesn’t look like Pollock. It looks like crap.
Me, too. I’m not a huge abstract art fan, but Pollack’s art just wows me.
The late Thomas Kincaide. He’s a local guy here with a very troubled end of life story. Doesn’t make his art any better, but what a messed up life for the “Painter of Light”.
That’s a little condescending, don’t you think?
Personally, I’m not a fan of Pollock or Kinkade. I’ve seen Pollock’s work in person and I remain unimpressed by it. Separate out the story of Jackson Pollock the tortured artist and the actual art is greatly diminished. I’ve never been a fan of selling the art by selling the artist.
When I was a child, Pollock’s Blue Poles was controversially purchased by the Australian National Gallery in 1973, the year I turned 8. I remember, vaguely, hearing about the controversy. People were upset about it, saying things like, well, what the OP says.
Somewhere around that time, there was a big full-colour spread in a magazine that my parents bought. The gist of the article was “The gov’t has wasted two million taxpayer dollars on this garbage”, which was a pretty common sentiment at the time.
I was 8, maybe 9 at the most, and I fell in love with that picture. I thought it was beautiful. I cut the picture out of the magazine and put it on the wall over my desk, where it stayed for nearly a decade. Now, my family wasn’t what you’d call arty and no-one around me had any particular interest in paintings; this was something I discovered by myself and that I loved because it spoke to me. I stared at that picture for hours.
Since I lived in Melbourne and the painting was in Canberra (and my family was very poor) I couldn’t go and see it in real life. But I made the decision to see it in person if and when I could. I did, in my twenties, go and see it. I’ve been back to visit it several times. It’s stunning. It is gorgeous. And I am very proud that 8 or 9 year-old me could see something that many adults apparently cannot.
If you don’t get why Pollock’s art is great, it’s your loss. Those of us who do have something which brings us great pleasure. Your loss.
I’ve seen the film, by the way, and my opinion is that the painting is not a Pollock. It doesn’t ring true to me. At most, it’s an inferior work, something that Pollock threw out, but I doubt even that. I think it’s by someone who thought “I could do that.”
I actually don’t know much about Pollock’s life at all, and I think his work is amazing. I certainly knew next-to-nothing about him, other than he was a “splash painter”, when I first saw his work in MOMA and was floored by it.
You sure you weren’t reacting to his reputation as a “tortured artist”? 
The floor of his studio has been preserved:
I doubt JP would have approved. He was very particular about what was for display and what needed to be discarded.
Some wag once crafted a human ear out of chipped beef and pit it on display next door to a Van Gough exhibit. Guess which had a higher attendance?
No, it was a lot condescending. The OP asked for it. Asked a loaded question, get a loaded answer.
I’m thinking about the Angry Penguins effect. Some people believe a work of art is great because it’s presented in a context where they’re told it’s great.
Without question. There are a bunch of people out there with absolutely no taste in art, music, food or cinema.
We’re two of them. 
Yes some people do. And some people think that art that doesn’t speak to them can’t be great and must be the result of something other than the art itself, be it the context its presented in, or the biography of the piece, or the marketing, etc. This is equally as condescending. There’s plenty of modern art I don’t like. In fact, my modern art tastes are rather conservative in my estimation. There’s little modern art I like after the 1960s or so. I hate conceptual art. I still like aesthetic “beauty” in my art, and I don’t get it from people like Hirst or Koons or even old standards like Warhol.
That said, it seems that some people really get something from it, so who am I to say they’re succumbing to some sort of “Angry Penguins” effect (the first I’ve heard it called this) or buzz or something else.
First, here’s my post from another “modern art is stupid” thread:
And then:
If your juxtaposition of (a complaint about condescension) with (the claim that people partially enjoy Pollock because of the backstory) was intentional, I say bravo!
As it stands, I don’t know the backstory at all.
Please don’t perpetuate the myth that Kincaide was the “painter of light” that title belongs to another. How anyone would have the gall to select that for himself I don’t know. It is the equivalent of a hack playwright calling himself “The Bard”