[OC] Personal opinion on Jackson Pollock's drip art
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Damn, my dude. You sure have impressive reading skills to find all of that in "this is shit".
Not to mention the truly phenomenal, remarkably exceptional, astonishingly outstanding writing skills required to wield, utilize, employ, and make strategic use of a dictionary, thesaurus, lexicon, and vocabulary compendium in order to lend, bestow, confer, and imbue an exaggerated, inflated, and artificially magnified impression, illusion, and semblance of substance, gravitas, and argumentative weight.
+! im a fucker whos fucking good at fucking writing.
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First thanks to everyone engaging! Having a great time with some real cool people here.
|"However, I think you invite chaos if you consider things other than the painting hanging in the museum."
Not true. A huge amount of art is the preservation of an artifact from something previous and not about the "thing" hanging on the wall. Also "conceptual art" is just that the art is the "concept" not result. Ice, kinetic sculptures, happenings, change over time. You can see different art at different points in time. They invite you to consider what it was before and after. Sand mandalas are created in art spaces and then destroyed. When is it "art"? When they pore the sand into shapes or sweep it up? The answer can be "all" because it happened and "none" because it doesn't exist or even when I think it looks like art.
|"Why? Because if "you thought about their art" is a major criterion, then Hitler is an important artist. Look how often people have made memes about Hitler and his art. If you go by how often the artist's art is posted, Hitler's probably a more important artist than Picasso."
Maybe I'm not explaining well here. Have you ever seen a movie you sort of disliked but you couldn't stop thinking about it? It sort of continues to impact your thoughts, I'm talking a month later you are thinking about it and still debating if it was good or bad or keep remembering the way it made you feel. That is what I mean. Maybe that was the point of the movie/art. Haneke is my favorite filmaker who creates almost movies that "haunt" you. I would say Hilters paintings didn't engaged us. They didn't expand our understanding of art through his paintings. He is famous for being the fascist Nazi leader but his paintings are a result of his fame as a figure. Jim Carrey's art will likely never be in famous museums, most likely never push or be part of an important art movement, etc. but It gets lots of press because a famous person is making paintings. I'm speaking more of the impact of the art not awareness it exists.
Dali would absolutely be famous as an artist. His brush work is comparable to that to the old masters. His ideas , compositions, colors are incredible. He was a figurehead in the surrealist movement. Maybe not the pop icon without the branding of the mustache and "look". but that came later.
Sand mandalas are created in art spaces and then destroyed. When is it "art"?
When it's done, before it's destroyed.
Have you ever seen a movie you sort of disliked but you couldn't stop thinking about it?
Yes, but sometimes that's because it was so bad that they couldn't get even basic things right. I don't think you'd argue that an incompetently made movie is a work of art because people can't stop thinking about it. Although, sometimes things can come full circle and something can be such a train wreck that "art" emerges from the public's response to it, see for example The Room.
I'm talking a month later you are thinking about it and still debating if it was good or bad
No, I don't have that experience. I've seen movies that I can acknowledge were well made that didn't appeal to me. I've seen badly made movies that I still enjoyed. I've seen movies that other people thought were amazing that I thought were crap. But, I'm never conflicted about whether a movie was good or bad.
I would say Hilters paintings didn't engaged us.
And I would say the same about Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.
They didn't expand our understanding of art through his paintings.
And I would say the same about Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.
He is famous for being the fascist Nazi leader but his paintings are a result of his fame as a figure.
And I would say the same about Jackson Pollock. Would his paintings be as famous if he'd lived to 80 years old instead of dying tragically young? Would his splatter art be as famous if he hadn't made a name for himself (i.e. achieved some degree of fame) doing traditional art first?
Imagine if an unknown 20 year old with no background at all in art had created the paintings that Pollock had created. Imagine she'd been painting her house and thought the paint drops on the ground looked interesting, so she put a canvas over the plastic and did some dripping intentionally. Would that art be hanging in a museum? Almost certainly not, because she wouldn't have the fame, story or background necessary to get the art world to take her seriously.
As for Dali, I'm sure he'd be well known. I love his stuff. But, you can't separate the art from the artist. Would his art be less famous if he just looked like a short, chubby peasant from Spain, and he'd lived a quiet life? I think it definitely would be less famous.
What I'll acknowledge is that there are "artist's arists", artists whose work is considered very important and influential by other artists, but not by the general public. You'll find that in all kinds of fields. There are standup comedians who have never been able to draw a big crowd, but who other standup comedians think are absolute geniuses. That's a situation that's pretty interesting because the whole point of standup comedy is to make people laugh. If a standup comedian can't reliably do that, then are they actually a good standup, even if other comedians think of them as a genius and highly influential?
The other issue is how you can't untie art from the reception of that art. Take "Voice of Fire", which is hanging up in Canada's National Art Gallery. Artists may think it was important or influential, but the general public thinks it's absolute crap. But, the controversy of the gallery paying $1.8M for it made it incredibly famous. As a result of that fame, it is now valued at more than $40M. IMO the reason it is valued at $40M today is the result of it being selected for the art gallery, and the controversy around its selection. If there had been no controversy about its acquisition, it would probably be valued considerably lower today.
But, does any of that change the "paint on canvas" value of that art? I don't think so. All of that is related to the circumstances related to the art: the fame of the artist, the circumstances around the creation of that art, the price other people have paid for it, any controversies around that, etc.
The point I'm making is that although you can't separate the art from the artist, or from the circumstances surrounding the art, including its history, etc. You should still try to do that when evaluating it as "paint on canvas". Talking about the buzz surrounding a piece of art opens the door to all kinds of things that are not relevant to the paint on the canvas. If you argue that a piece of art is important because people are talking about it, then that opens the door to saying that art by Hitler, Ringo Starr and Jim Carrey are important. And then you have to get into an impossible scenario where you dissect why it is that someone is famous, and how much of the fame of their art is the result of their own personal fame. While it may seem obvious with people like Ringo Starr that his art would be completely ignored if it weren't for his fame, it's much less obvious with someone like Dali or Andy Warhol, or some of the people who made huge money with NFTs.
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+! im a fucker whos fucking good at fucking writing.
Of course you are, dear.
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Regardless of how people feel about Pollock's work, there was art before expressionism and art after. He and others undeniably changed the conversation about art forever.
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Yeah, yeah op. You have no idea of the what's and why's or any context for why plenty of modern art looks like it does and why it is important in art history. You know what you like. And you like what you understand. And if you don't understand it, you feel intellectually lesser and have a knee jerk reaction to protect yourself - by taking a meme format that says you have all the smarts and people that understand it are below yourself.
You can keep doing that, or you can get curious and ask the what's and the why's and see if you can appreciate things from it that aren't immediately obvious. That is how people grow.
Guy got paid by the CIA, stole the whole idea, but rich people buy it, must be art!!
Bet you explain Matisse the same way.
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Can't tell which people hate more, the art, the artist, or the admirers of the work.
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Its paint splatters. Which the artist has no control over.
Only if it is deliberate can you claim it has depth. Otherwise it is nothing more than a happy accident that it looks to have depth.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Well, you absolutely have control over splatters once you understand the way they happen. A liquid at a given viscosity moving at a given speed will have predictable, but minutely variable, outcomes.
In other words, every raindrop hits in a predictable way, and the only reason you can't predict exactly how the resulting splash will look is a lack of ability to make the same predictions on a molecular level. But, if you could see and hold in the human brain, the outcome is absolutely predictable even at that level; we just can't pull it off without outside assistance.
Look at airbrushing. It's tightly controlled spatter. You're using air to make the drops so small that we can predict and control the outcome so that it can be used to give a range of end products. But if you get in really tight to what's going on, it's high speed splattering.
I would also disagree that a happy accident can't have depth visually. But I think you likely misread how I was emphasizing, so it isn't really useful to say more than that.
However, Judge for yourself if he was bullshiting about his degree of intent in his efforts. It isn't like there aren't other interviews and information about what he did, on both technical and analytical levels. Him saying he has intent doesn't mean he's speaking truth, nor would it being truth change whether or not one agrees with his intent, or how successful one feels he was in achieving it.
But he at least came up with an explanation of intent, and his movements when working are controlled enough to indicate he at least thought he was working with intent, and isn't that the same thing as intent on a practical level?
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What if I told you that art is much more than aesthetics. Clearly this is news to both OP and yourself.
Did you just not read my comment?
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Yeah, yeah op. You have no idea of the what's and why's or any context for why plenty of modern art looks like it does and why it is important in art history. You know what you like. And you like what you understand. And if you don't understand it, you feel intellectually lesser and have a knee jerk reaction to protect yourself - by taking a meme format that says you have all the smarts and people that understand it are below yourself.
You can keep doing that, or you can get curious and ask the what's and the why's and see if you can appreciate things from it that aren't immediately obvious. That is how people grow.
wrote last edited by [email protected]This is only tangentially related, but it astonishes me (it doesn't) how often people defending AI art wield Pollock as a weapon out of jealousy for his relative success and not because they actually like him. Same with the toilet. And the banana.
[edit] I think I might have meant to respond to a different comment of yours, but ah well.
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I feel like this really needs to be asked: So?
There were ulterior motives. Okay. And? -
I upvoted the OP message. And I upvoted yours too, because both of you are so right.
The OP message you responded is a person in the middle of the curve bell that things they are at the end of the curve, while they are in the middle.
Right. Because any statement about art is equally valid just because anybody can form an opinion.
What's up next in brave culture truths and insights of arts? James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Erik Satie, Arnold Schönberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauchenberg, Jenny Holtzer, Man Ray, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Hockney are all shit and everybody who thinks otherwise are a simpleton because we are so smart hue hue hue.
A circle jerk of ignorance. Enjoy.
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This is only tangentially related, but it astonishes me (it doesn't) how often people defending AI art wield Pollock as a weapon out of jealousy for his relative success and not because they actually like him. Same with the toilet. And the banana.
[edit] I think I might have meant to respond to a different comment of yours, but ah well.
I always find it funny when somebody mentions The Fountain as an example of this stupid "modern art" (as in contemporary) and I get to tell them that it is from 1917. Like dude, if you missed out on the last hundred years of what art is, maybe you should humble down on your opinions.
People don't have to like everything, but I find it frustrating how people think their uninformed opinion is as valid as someone that knows and understands what it is, why it is what it is, and how it is important in a historical context.
There are plenty of topics I know very little about. I may have ideas and opinions about things, but I would never imagine myself being superior to people who are actually knowledgeable of the field.
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Of course you are, dear.
A shame communication has two parts.
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So now you have to get into the mind of the artist and if their fame influenced the knowledge of their art, but they didn't achieve that fame in order to promote their art, you can ignore their art? That seems very convoluted.
A better idea is just to ignore the artist and focus on the paint on the canvas.
Why? Why ignore the process? Why does the idea of thinking critically about what the art means and not just how the art looks make you uncomfortable? You don't have to do anything, but trying to make an equivalence between someone taking actions in their field to challenge established ideas and someone who is only known as an artist due to unrelated atrocities is ridiculous. You're making the exact same arguments that traditional painters made against impressionism, now widely recognized as masterful artworks (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc), which were similarly making statements about what could and could not be considered art. Just as with any of those other artists, you don't have to like Pollock's work, or agree with the statement he was making with it, but to act like it isn't art, or that the things we're saying with art don't matter, would be pretentious.
I don't like Pollock's art. I don't think the statement he was making was particularly revolutionary, and I think other artists he was contemporary with accomplished the same statement far better (Rothko). However, this "just focus on the paint on the canvas" thing is silly, and artists have widely rejected it. Art should mean something. It's why human design and intent will always be worth more than AI's best Monet facsimile.
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I am going to MOMAs all over to laugh at the stupid shit some artists pull off. Laughed my ass off at the taped banana. I am not even interested in what the artist thinks or means. I am entertained, that is what I expect of art.
Like in London, there was this big-ass room dedicated to a giant chair and a giant table, you could walk under. Heated, in the middle of a freezing winter. Like, the homeless were freezing out on the streets, and here we are as a society, heating a room for a chair and a table nobody could use. Just take in the absurdity, and you have to laugh at this shit to compensate and stay sane.
wrote last edited by [email protected]taped banana
It was called "Comedian" and it was a fantastic piece of art.
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Sand mandalas are created in art spaces and then destroyed. When is it "art"?
When it's done, before it's destroyed.
Have you ever seen a movie you sort of disliked but you couldn't stop thinking about it?
Yes, but sometimes that's because it was so bad that they couldn't get even basic things right. I don't think you'd argue that an incompetently made movie is a work of art because people can't stop thinking about it. Although, sometimes things can come full circle and something can be such a train wreck that "art" emerges from the public's response to it, see for example The Room.
I'm talking a month later you are thinking about it and still debating if it was good or bad
No, I don't have that experience. I've seen movies that I can acknowledge were well made that didn't appeal to me. I've seen badly made movies that I still enjoyed. I've seen movies that other people thought were amazing that I thought were crap. But, I'm never conflicted about whether a movie was good or bad.
I would say Hilters paintings didn't engaged us.
And I would say the same about Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.
They didn't expand our understanding of art through his paintings.
And I would say the same about Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.
He is famous for being the fascist Nazi leader but his paintings are a result of his fame as a figure.
And I would say the same about Jackson Pollock. Would his paintings be as famous if he'd lived to 80 years old instead of dying tragically young? Would his splatter art be as famous if he hadn't made a name for himself (i.e. achieved some degree of fame) doing traditional art first?
Imagine if an unknown 20 year old with no background at all in art had created the paintings that Pollock had created. Imagine she'd been painting her house and thought the paint drops on the ground looked interesting, so she put a canvas over the plastic and did some dripping intentionally. Would that art be hanging in a museum? Almost certainly not, because she wouldn't have the fame, story or background necessary to get the art world to take her seriously.
As for Dali, I'm sure he'd be well known. I love his stuff. But, you can't separate the art from the artist. Would his art be less famous if he just looked like a short, chubby peasant from Spain, and he'd lived a quiet life? I think it definitely would be less famous.
What I'll acknowledge is that there are "artist's arists", artists whose work is considered very important and influential by other artists, but not by the general public. You'll find that in all kinds of fields. There are standup comedians who have never been able to draw a big crowd, but who other standup comedians think are absolute geniuses. That's a situation that's pretty interesting because the whole point of standup comedy is to make people laugh. If a standup comedian can't reliably do that, then are they actually a good standup, even if other comedians think of them as a genius and highly influential?
The other issue is how you can't untie art from the reception of that art. Take "Voice of Fire", which is hanging up in Canada's National Art Gallery. Artists may think it was important or influential, but the general public thinks it's absolute crap. But, the controversy of the gallery paying $1.8M for it made it incredibly famous. As a result of that fame, it is now valued at more than $40M. IMO the reason it is valued at $40M today is the result of it being selected for the art gallery, and the controversy around its selection. If there had been no controversy about its acquisition, it would probably be valued considerably lower today.
But, does any of that change the "paint on canvas" value of that art? I don't think so. All of that is related to the circumstances related to the art: the fame of the artist, the circumstances around the creation of that art, the price other people have paid for it, any controversies around that, etc.
The point I'm making is that although you can't separate the art from the artist, or from the circumstances surrounding the art, including its history, etc. You should still try to do that when evaluating it as "paint on canvas". Talking about the buzz surrounding a piece of art opens the door to all kinds of things that are not relevant to the paint on the canvas. If you argue that a piece of art is important because people are talking about it, then that opens the door to saying that art by Hitler, Ringo Starr and Jim Carrey are important. And then you have to get into an impossible scenario where you dissect why it is that someone is famous, and how much of the fame of their art is the result of their own personal fame. While it may seem obvious with people like Ringo Starr that his art would be completely ignored if it weren't for his fame, it's much less obvious with someone like Dali or Andy Warhol, or some of the people who made huge money with NFTs.
I don't think you'd argue that an incompetently made movie is a work of art
You are making a fundamental mistake: that art is venerable by nature. I.e., if it is not venerable, it is not art.
I would insist that an incompetently made movie is a work of art, actually. It's very interesting to me that you wouldn't.
then that opens the door to saying that art by Hitler, [...] are important.
Fascist art is actually very interesting because there is a perverse artlessness to it.
The nazis were not good artists. They liked big, masculine, square stone blocks. They liked big nipple domes that communicated power through their sheer size and their size alone. They hated degenerate, jewish ornamentation and artistic flavor.
Their depiction in recent Wolfenstein games is notably cool as shit, but also entirely unlike them: the gothic-esque qualities of those pillars and tall buildings would have been seen as degenerate, damaging the masculine austerity they wanted to project.
Their art, their marble statues of strong, muscly soldiers, venerates status and power in a purely aesthetic, unthinking kind of way—you're not meant to think about it.
Now, why point this out. You keep bringing Hitler up in an obvious attempt to disgust, as if the words "Hitler" and "important" in the same sentence are itself a crime, but "important" doesn't have to mean "good." It doesn't even have to mean "likeable."
Hitler is a very notable historical figure, I'm sure you can imagine why, and his art, and the art of his fascist contemporaries, is an important reflection of what they were like as people: boring and stupid.
Why should I care if Ringo Starr or Jim Carrey are "important" or not? They don't deserve to be? Does "importance" come with a trophy or something?
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You either die dignified and impoverished, unrecognized in your own lifetime, or you live long enough to afford a custom alpaca fursuit.
A fursuit of an alpaca, or made with alpaca fur? Or both?
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Why? Why ignore the process? Why does the idea of thinking critically about what the art means and not just how the art looks make you uncomfortable? You don't have to do anything, but trying to make an equivalence between someone taking actions in their field to challenge established ideas and someone who is only known as an artist due to unrelated atrocities is ridiculous. You're making the exact same arguments that traditional painters made against impressionism, now widely recognized as masterful artworks (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc), which were similarly making statements about what could and could not be considered art. Just as with any of those other artists, you don't have to like Pollock's work, or agree with the statement he was making with it, but to act like it isn't art, or that the things we're saying with art don't matter, would be pretentious.
I don't like Pollock's art. I don't think the statement he was making was particularly revolutionary, and I think other artists he was contemporary with accomplished the same statement far better (Rothko). However, this "just focus on the paint on the canvas" thing is silly, and artists have widely rejected it. Art should mean something. It's why human design and intent will always be worth more than AI's best Monet facsimile.
Hey, if you want to focus on the biography of the artists, and everything that isn't on the canvas, you can do that. I think the focus should be on what's on the canvas, and how that makes someone think and feel.
Your way seems to be proto-influencer culture, where someone is famous for being famous, and being famous means their work is more important.
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Hey, if you want to focus on the biography of the artists, and everything that isn't on the canvas, you can do that. I think the focus should be on what's on the canvas, and how that makes someone think and feel.
Your way seems to be proto-influencer culture, where someone is famous for being famous, and being famous means their work is more important.
You clearly didn't read my whole comment. Your argument is the exact same that was made against Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, etc. It's not about the artist. I didn't say it was, and I don't understand why you replied like I did. It's about the meaning behind the art, the statement it is making. It has nothing to do with whatever influencer thing you're talking about, and everything to do with what the art is saying.
By rejecting the traditional realism of their time, artists like Van Gogh and Monet made a statement that perfection and realism weren't all there is to art, and that impressions of the subject can be beautiful. Artists like Rothko made the statement that the subject does not have to be literal, but can be the art itself. Cubism was all about this. Pollock is doing the exact same thing, but pushing it to an even more dramatic extreme.
IT ISN'T ABOUT THE ARTIST. Do me the basic respect of understanding this one part of my statement. It's about art meaning something because of what techniques were used, how it is presented, when it is presented, and the context that inspired it.
What is on the page is important, but why it's on the page and what message the art is conveying is equally so, and I'd argue much more. You continue to misinterpret this fact as not only less than quintessential to art, which any artist will tell you that it is, but insignificant and silly to consider.
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I don't think you'd argue that an incompetently made movie is a work of art
You are making a fundamental mistake: that art is venerable by nature. I.e., if it is not venerable, it is not art.
I would insist that an incompetently made movie is a work of art, actually. It's very interesting to me that you wouldn't.
then that opens the door to saying that art by Hitler, [...] are important.
Fascist art is actually very interesting because there is a perverse artlessness to it.
The nazis were not good artists. They liked big, masculine, square stone blocks. They liked big nipple domes that communicated power through their sheer size and their size alone. They hated degenerate, jewish ornamentation and artistic flavor.
Their depiction in recent Wolfenstein games is notably cool as shit, but also entirely unlike them: the gothic-esque qualities of those pillars and tall buildings would have been seen as degenerate, damaging the masculine austerity they wanted to project.
Their art, their marble statues of strong, muscly soldiers, venerates status and power in a purely aesthetic, unthinking kind of way—you're not meant to think about it.
Now, why point this out. You keep bringing Hitler up in an obvious attempt to disgust, as if the words "Hitler" and "important" in the same sentence are itself a crime, but "important" doesn't have to mean "good." It doesn't even have to mean "likeable."
Hitler is a very notable historical figure, I'm sure you can imagine why, and his art, and the art of his fascist contemporaries, is an important reflection of what they were like as people: boring and stupid.
Why should I care if Ringo Starr or Jim Carrey are "important" or not? They don't deserve to be? Does "importance" come with a trophy or something?
You are making a fundamental mistake: that art is venerable by nature. I.e., if it is not venerable, it is not art.
Anything can be art, but most things are not good art. I'm not interested in wasting my time with bad art. A badly made movie is art, but everything is art, so what does it matter?
The nazis were not good artists.
The Nazis were effective artists. Just look at their rallies. Their aesthetic was ideal for what they were trying to achieve. It's not the sort of thing I'd want around my house. But, the Germans were coming out of a time when they had been defeated in WWI and then humiliated by having to make reparations to the French. Their style was "we're powerful, manly men", which appealed to people as a contrast to the humiliation of post-war Germany.
You keep bringing Hitler up in an obvious attempt to disgust
I'm not trying to use him to disgust. I'm just pointing out that if the frequency with which art is discussed is important, then he's an important artist. I think if you focus just on the paint on the canvas, he was not at all important. He doesn't seem particularly skilled, and he didn't seem to do anything interesting or new.
Does "importance" come with a trophy or something?
If you consider "whose art should we study?" to be a trophy, then I suppose it does. I'm sure that question gets asked pretty often, and I think if your answer is Hitler, or Jim Carey, or Ringo Starr, you're not making good use of your time.
