Posted on 01/28/2012 5:09:29 PM PST by Borges
Even a century since his birth, American "splatter artist" Jackson Pollock still provokes heated debate about the very definition of art.
Was a man who placed a canvas on the floor and dripped paint straight from the can actually creating a work of art?
"It's very hard if you try to build the paint up to this extent with this many colors and not achieve mud," says National Gallery of Art curator Harry Cooper.
"He didn't achieve mud here — I think he achieved something quite beautiful," Cooper tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "And in the process, he opened up a whole new way of thinking about what a painting could be, how you could make a painting, what it could do in an abstract way."
The public perception at the time, though, was distinctly different than that of art critics.
"In the popular mind, he was Jack the Dripper," Cooper says. "I think all of those feelings and associations have remained with the work, no matter how many books and how many retrospectives he has."
In 2006, one of Pollock's works sold for $140 million — the most ever paid for a painting. He remains polarizing, a man whose work is as derided as it is desired.
Born in Cody, Wyo., on Jan. 28, 1912, Paul Jackson Pollock trained under the acclaimed American naturalist Thomas Hart Benton. During that time, Pollock's paintings were indistinguishable from Benton's — clear human forms with enhanced curves, as if windblown or carved like riverbeds.
Over time, Pollock's forms would become more surreal, like Picasso's. Surprisingly, the trademark splatter work doesn't make an appearance until Pollock's mid-30s.
"In fact, by the end of 1950 and '51, he's not doing the drips anymore," Cooper says. "He returns to the figure and spends his last years doing something quite different."
Pollock died tragically at the age of 44. After a lifetime struggling with alcoholism, he crashed his car while driving drunk. His death befit the legend that grew around his life.
"He was a macho man from Cody, Wyoming," Cooper says.
I have a Mark Rothko (laminated print) in my den...80% of the people who see it stop and make a comment.
I don't know what art is...no one does.
But the artist can achieve it (and like Van Gogh...they are driven to do so). And the rest of us (who are not stupid by choice) have an inclination to be moved by it.
So what is art? What is modern art? Or impressionistic art?
Who cares!
The point is...are you moved by it? Does it speak to you?
Pollack is a guilty pleasure of mine. I don’t like most modern art, much of which I don’t even think is art. But I find a beauty and sense of movement in Pollack’s work.
BTW, Pollack speaks to me...and enough others like me that it has value in the marketplace.
It abandons the visual for the abstract and visceral.
Pollack and his ilk pull us out of the pretty "pictures" into a world of mathematics and proportion and chaos and relationship and color.
And we are still moved!
My great Aunt (Grandmother’s sister) was quite an accomplished painter doing mostly seascapes and scenery. She sold quite a few in her time. She once, on a whim, took a bunch of her tubes with a little dab or two left in them and created a splatter painting. She was shocked when it was the first to sell at her next showing.
Two Pollocks walk into a bar...
Yes, there are cases where some modern artist's canvas has been mistaken for a painter's drop cloth. Those artists aren't Pollack. Give a critic a brush and paint and ask them to paint "like" Pollack and the difference between their work and a Pollack will be as clear as if you asked them to paint "like" Velázquez and compared their work to the Portrait of Juan de Pareja.
I saw a film send up of pollock’s style of painting in Art class 40 years ago.
An artist covers a 4X8 sheet of plywood with paint, then hires two men to carry the sheet into a mud bank on a river. From a pier the “artist” drips various colors of paint all over the painted plywood. When dry, he then takes a circular saw and cuts the plywood into various size “paintings”
An art gallery owner comes in to inspect and buy the “paintings.” After looking at all of them, he buys ONE extremely small painting.
After he leaves, the “artist” tosses all the remainder of the paintings in the river and they float away, one by one, never to be seen again.
Abstract and visceral can go hand in hand w/ visual and “pretty picture” creating breathtaking works of art that both moves us and presses the edges of the envelope!
Andrew Wyeth or even photography of Ansel Adams come to mind.
***She was shocked when it was the first to sell at her next showing.***
I remember in the late 1950’s when worm painting became popular.
Place a canvas flat on a table.
Put a bowl of earthworms covered in paint in the center of the canvas. The worms will crawl away and over the canvas.
Remove the empty bowl and with a small round brush, fill in the spot where the bowl was.
For color variation, change the color of the worms in another bowl.
Sign and sell.
Yes...but that was a while ago. Still wonderful...just dated.
Oldplayer
I’ve always liked the definition of art as the attempt to depict a truth beautifully. Modern abstract art seems to me to have headed in the self referential direction. It examines what is the truth about beauty. They colors, proportions and composition to answer the question: what is beautiful?
I saw my first Pollack in San Francisco about 10 years ago. It was truly stunning.
Now that's art!
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