I read this little story somewhere online a while back but can’t recall when or where…it is supposed to have happened while Mr. Jackson “Action” Pollock was still on his way up reputation-wise, had acquired his famous barn-cum-studio and was already well into the toils of alcoholicism:
It seems that one day in the mid-20th, two art-world nabobs got into a discussion of Jackson Pollock and his work. One of them was an acquaintance, and a fan of Pollock’s art; the other was a detractor (and if I could recall either of these guys’ names I’d be better able to look this up myself). As they were fairly close by the place where JP lived and worked, the pro-JP nabob suggested they visit the artist in his home and workspace.
They drove up there and walked into the famous barn – where they were confronted by the spectacle of the great man himself, sprawled on the floor, apparently passed out and sleeping in the arms of Lady Ethyl about fifteen feet from a canvas he’d been working on. There was a paintbrush clutched in one hand with a white paint blob still moist in the bristles. Our two looky-loos tiptoed past the snoring genius and checked out the paintings scattered around the site; after a while they started back for the door and tiptoed past JP again, right when the anti-JP nabob said something like “But it’s still just random splattering.”
Upon which Pollock heaved himself into an upright position and flicked his paintbrush at the canvas in front of him. A white paint blob flew off the brush, through fifteen feet of air and landed –viola! just so!–in the upper right hand corner.
“Random…splattering, motherfucker” Pollock muttered in a drunkard’s growl, grinned, and collapsed into a snoring pile of snores on the floor.
I love that story, and I really hope it’s true. But is it? And where did I read it or hear it in the first place? I know there are some of you Dopers who know a lot about art and art history; can you confirm or debunk this charming anecdote?
Uh…whut? He threw a cello at the canvas? Or was it the blob of paint he threw at the cello? He used a cello for a paintbrush? It was a drunken cello that flicked the paint?
Nah - it’s the same story as Giotto’s Circle, where biographer Vasari relates that when someone from the Pope asked for an example of Giotto’s talent, he took a piece of paper, drew a perfect circle on it, and handed it to the messenger. ETA: Giotto - Wikipedia
Pollack splattered with intention and design. This story is meant to show the craft he brought to what folks want to dismiss as simple splatters.
Yeah, it was just me being a snarky fucker about a misspelling. Sorry.
As for the story, I’ve heard something vaguely similar–Pollack has a “splatter” detractor, he responds by flicking paint with amazing accuracy at a canvas–but I don’t remember where I heard it, and I’m almost certain the barn/unconsciousness weren’t part of it. The whole thing strikes me more as legend than fact.
It does remind me of my favorite poem about art; I forget who wrote it.
I won’t debate whether Pollack’s paintings are good, because, as with all art, that’s a matter of taste. But they certainly required a great deal of talent, as evidenced by the very large number of people who have tried and failed to do the same thing.
This. I’ve tried the Jackson Pollock emulator and even an art troglodyte like me can see that compared to the real thing, they are lifeless. Now, it may be it’s because I’m moving a mouse around rather than a physical brush with physical paint, but I don’t think so.
Supposedly, mathematicians have analyzed Pollock’s paintings and demonstrated that they are not just random spattering. There are patterns to where the paint is on the canvas.
But that doesn’t address the real issue. Is patterned spattering anymore a work of art than random spattering? Is there a point to the work? Even if you can prove that Pollock was putting paint exactly where he wanted it to be, it doesn’t prove that he had a good reason for it being there.
I’ve seen some of Pollock’s works, up close and in person. I’ll admit that I personally don’t see whatever it is that other people have seen in them. That doesn’t mean the artistic merit isn’t there. It may just be that I don’t see it.
I’ve seen movies of Pollock at work. A great deal of the time, he didn’t use a brush; he applied the paint directly with his bare hands. Now, I don’t know at what stage in his development he began to do that-- I assume that at some point he used a brush, since he was probably taught to paint that way early on. You can probably track his development vis a vis barehanded painting, and find out whether it was before or after he bought the barn, and if it happens that he had given up the brush before he bought the barn, you know the story can’t be true.
Patterns, in fact, of a sort which weren’t even known to mathematicians until after Pollack was already painting them.
There’s some debate about what exactly this means. It could be that he was deliberately seeking to emulate other sorts of fractal patterns (which, after all, are not uncommon in nature). It could be that he had no conscious idea about the patterns, and just had some sort of intuitive appreciation for them. It could be that the patterns weren’t intentional at all, but somehow an emergent property of his painting process. But regardless of how the patterns got there, they’re quite difficult to replicate.