Yeah, I get that, and I’m happy to accept his work at face value. But I still wonder if I actually read that, and if it was from a credible source. I found nothing on Wiki.
As a person who has never been moved emotionally by any form of physical art, I realized long ago that one can call anything art.
People will always have different criteria for it. People who feel emotions when looking at a piece will prize it simply for that. Those of us who are not moved emotionally may be more likely to require a certain amount of technique or precision to call something art. Either way, everyone is correct in their personal assessments.
Exactly. And I just realized I’ve been misspelling Pollock throughout this thread. 
One of the things I love about Pollock are the micropatterns in his work. Seeing a Pollack in person, there is this almost infinite level of detail in his work that is not apparent in a reproduction. You can get in close, like inches away, and appreciate the minute details of the work in a similar way to when you step back and take in the work as a whole. It’s a different experience than a Rothko, where I take in the painting and “shimmer” of it as a whole, but it triggers similar reactions in my brain. Why? I don’t know. I just enjoy it.
I have to defend Rothko the same way I defend Pollock. What they did may seem simplistic and banal, but each was the first to what he did. Until Pollock dribbled paint on a canvas, nobody had ever thought of doing so . . . and considering it “art.” Until Rothko painted his big fuzzy rectangles. nobody had ever thought of doing so . . . and considering it “art.”
Regardless of what kind of art you create, it matters if you’re the first to do it. Originality counts for a lot. Of course, though both artists were original, neither’s art is (in my opinion) meaningful. To be both original and meaningful . . . that’s reserved for the great ones.
The play called “Red”? I saw it on Broadway last year and thought it was awful. Alfred Molina was great, but the play was a piece of dreck.
:smack::smack::smack:
I *hate *that.
Dammit, and I made the error again, after pointing it out myself, on third reference to him.
See, to me it’s not about them being the first or among the first to do it. Other drip painters and color field painters don’t do it for me. Pollock’s compositions have always made sense to me, visually: there is an order-within-chaos to most of them (I admit, I don’t like all Pollocks) that the imitators lack.
There’s been studies done, in fact.
I used to work around the corner from Tate Modern, and that’s where I first really got into Rothko. I probably have recalled this wrong, but I think the collection at TM was from a restaurant commission in New York, which he later withdrew. And I can see how this would have worked on both levels - simple art that wouldn’t distract from conversation or feel too busy, but it’s very meditative when you get a chance just to sit in front of a piece.
I also loved Richard Long’s clay splatters - again, one of those you have to see it kind of things.
I don’t see why the fractal pattern thing would cause a different response in person versus a reprint.
I also find it odd that people like the idea that something visual can somehow influence your mind to the point you think you are having a religious experience. That sort of thing is exactly why I refuse to ever even use an iPad–seeing otherwise rational people become so irrational.
…what?
OK, I don’t quite know what you’re getting at there, either, but have you not had an experience with an artistic medium, say, music, that has given you a sense of euphoria, of having a near religious experience, a moment of ecstasy, a glimpse of the sublime? If you haven’t, that’s fine, but I suspect that you can somewhat identify with the feeling in music, since (from what I gather of your posts), you are a musical person. It’s the same thing with the visual medium. Some of it just tickles our brains in the right places. There’s no explanation to the how and why of it, it just happens. And these are the sort of things that make the human experience so wonderful.
I used to think Rothkos were without artistic merit, then I went to the SFMOMA and saw one, and I still think they are without artistic merit.
You have to drop acid or eat magic mushrooms to understand.
PBS did a series several years ago, with Simon Schauma (sp?), called “The Power of Art”. I didn’t catch all of them, but the one on Van Gogh was excellent. He did one, which I think was the last, on Rothco, and I still didn’t get it. Worth the watch, though, if you can catch the reruns.
I really wish I had seen the first episode, which I think is devoted to prehistoric art, starting with the Cave Paintings at Lascaux.
I used to work at the National Gallery of Art. There is one thing that all “great” artists have in common.
They have advocates. They have well-educated art “interpreters” who discover a rationale for what the painting means and why it is important to society. The intentions of the artist while creating the art are generally entirely irrelevant to these interpretations.
The best story I have to illuminate this is a lecture by a graduate student presenting his thesis paper. The thesis was that the “Bullseye” series of paintings by Jasper Johns represents the “glory hole” that was a common means of anonymous gay sex in the New York culture of which Johns was a part at the time. It actually sounded quite plausible to me, but there were several in the audience (which was virtually all academics) who were upset and even offended by the interpretation, and muttering things about “inadequate scholarship”. In any case, the guy got a rough reception.
Afterwards, I chatted a bit with the presenter. Knowing that Johns was still alive, I asked him if he had tried to contact Johns and ask about the intent and meaning of the Bullseye art. His reaction was mild shock – no, he hadn’t and hadn’t ever even considered it. I found this kind of odd myself, and asked others around the Gallery about it. And found it a pretty universal feeling among curators and art historians. The artists’ intentions and opinions about their art are irrelevant to the meaning of it.
I know this doesn’t necessarily answer the OP, but the best answer I can give is that some academics found a rationale for it, convinced others, and started a trend. We have all seen trends that are entirely mysterious to those not swept up in them.
Personally, I think the best story to illuminate it is Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”…
Coolidge’s “His Station And Four Aces” does it for me.
The metaphor of dogs playing poker is a powerfl one…and it evokes the emotions…sometimes I beging crying, after seeing this masterpiece…it jst moves me, I don’t know why.