[OC] Personal opinion on Jackson Pollock's drip art
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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.
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Give Pollock crap all you want, but the guy popularized one of the most fun painting techniques ever, regardless of how you feel about his stuff.
Seriously, splatter painting is really fun to do even if there's no real reason to it, and if anything, who says art has to have a reason behind it? Just straight-up having a play around throwing paint on something (in fact, there are entire places dedicated to that exact thing cropping up over the last few years) is as valid as drawing a scene out with an actual story behind it.
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I have a MA in Fine Arts many many years ago actually, so I'd consider I have some actual weight in the field and not only shallow opinions confused as equal to knowledge and facts.
But I should know better than to vent because every time this sort of post is a living illustration of the Dunning–Kruger effect on a bandwagon.
Respect.
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A fursuit of an alpaca, or made with alpaca fur? Or both?
an alpaca wool fursuit sounds like it would melt the wearer.
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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.
I'm not trying to use him to disgust.
Don't lie to me, c'mon.
"If you accept that how much art is talked about is a useful metric, then you would have to accept Hitler as an important artist"—don't pretend you aren't stirring the pot.
Either, Hitler is talked about quite often, in which case, yeah, he's more significant than Picasso. Good job Hitler, I guess.
Or, he isn't, because nobody gives a shit about his stupid castle paintings, in which case I don't understand why you keep bringing him up.
People talk about him, they don't talk about his art, so no, we don't have to contend that he's an important artist, actually. But fine, you want me to accept through some lense you've constructed that Hitler is very important: Sure. He is. Now what?
What is the next part of this argument? Because the self-evidence of this is lost on me.
The Nazis were effective artists.
Their big boob building, which was meant to be the capital of world commerce or whatever, is ugly as all hell. I reject this entirely.
Their beach resort building is a big, flat rectangle.
If the point of these were to be as boring, depressing, lifeless, drab, uninspired, and hostile to people's mental health as possible, well, they certainly moved that conversation forward.
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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.
It's about the meaning behind the art
How do you determine the meaning behind the art? Who gets to determine that?
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I'm not trying to use him to disgust.
Don't lie to me, c'mon.
"If you accept that how much art is talked about is a useful metric, then you would have to accept Hitler as an important artist"—don't pretend you aren't stirring the pot.
Either, Hitler is talked about quite often, in which case, yeah, he's more significant than Picasso. Good job Hitler, I guess.
Or, he isn't, because nobody gives a shit about his stupid castle paintings, in which case I don't understand why you keep bringing him up.
People talk about him, they don't talk about his art, so no, we don't have to contend that he's an important artist, actually. But fine, you want me to accept through some lense you've constructed that Hitler is very important: Sure. He is. Now what?
What is the next part of this argument? Because the self-evidence of this is lost on me.
The Nazis were effective artists.
Their big boob building, which was meant to be the capital of world commerce or whatever, is ugly as all hell. I reject this entirely.
Their beach resort building is a big, flat rectangle.
If the point of these were to be as boring, depressing, lifeless, drab, uninspired, and hostile to people's mental health as possible, well, they certainly moved that conversation forward.
Don't lie to me, c'mon.
I'm not lying. I'm picking a well known person who isn't famous because of their art, but whose art is often shown on the Internet. I'll grant you that the art is often shown for shock value, but I'm not trying to "use him to disgust". I'm merely making the point that if you talk about how much "buzz" an artist's work gets, he's going to be right near the top.
Either, Hitler is talked about quite often, in which case, yeah, he's more significant than Picasso
Hitler is definitely discussed more often than Picasso. I'd even say that Hitler's art is discussed more often than Picasso's art. It may be for shock value, but again, if you're using "this person's art is talked about often" as an indicator for how relevant their art is, then he's going to be in the conversation.
Or, he isn't, because nobody gives a shit about his stupid castle paintings,
People don't give a shit about his castle paintings as paintings in themselves. That's the point I'm making. They're not talking about his art because his art is worth talking about. But they're talking about his art because of who he is. If what matters is how often an artist's art is discussed, then his art is important. I don't think it should be, but those are the rules that are being suggested.
People talk about him, they don't talk about his art
They talk about him and they talk about his art:
https://old.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/pm0rxq/nice_painting_though/
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-just-enjoyed-one-of-hitlers-artworks
https://www.tumblr.com/cleanmemes/56159658268
Hitler is very important: Sure. He is. Now what?
I dunno, you've decided he's important. Now I guess you go discuss his art? I'm having no part in it though.
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I just like the way it looks.
The bell curve is in fact 3 dimensional and you took the upper 0.1% of the orthogonal axis to the one depicted.
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Give Pollock crap all you want, but the guy popularized one of the most fun painting techniques ever, regardless of how you feel about his stuff.
Seriously, splatter painting is really fun to do even if there's no real reason to it, and if anything, who says art has to have a reason behind it? Just straight-up having a play around throwing paint on something (in fact, there are entire places dedicated to that exact thing cropping up over the last few years) is as valid as drawing a scene out with an actual story behind it.
Also that scene from The Big Lebowski, which yeah, looks like a ton of fun!
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I feel like this really needs to be asked: So?
There were ulterior motives. Okay. And?yea. cia propaganda made people call this slop "fine art" and then say "so what?"
good job
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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.
I must like the emperor's new clothes!
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It's money laundering
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taped banana
It was called "Comedian" and it was a fantastic piece of art.
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Counter offer: that's all expectation bias.
You read
War is hell. War in the deep of Russian winters is worse than hell. It is blind, cold, desperate chaos and you're supposed to fight in this inferno while being able to tell friend from foe, but they all look the same, their blood looks the same in the snow and dirt beneath them.
then you conjure up the feeling with some art museum self-gaslighting. Maybe the art is the prompt?
Modern dance and modern art (including free form poetry etc) that try to leave rules/form/structure behind are, to me, rorschach content with accompanying flavor text that makes them smell faintly of the artists' farts. This is to other forms of art what whiteclaws are to flavor.
I quite strongly doubt that any abstract or contemporary art in isolation gives any specific, repeatable feeling to anybody outside of maybe "chaos". Its fine if you like it (I don't obviously) but I think adding specific feelings that you wouldn't get without the title is oversell and over-hype. It's like establishing the canon for a book or story using the fanfiction for that story or just the authors opinion: if you didn't actually write it in the main work, it doesn't count (I see you J.K. Rowling, Brandon Sanderson, etc). Put the story IN THE STORY.
But then, this is all just one man's polemic.
Counter offer: that's all expectation bias.
Counter counter offer: The title and description (and sometimes a biography of the production of the piece) are an integral part of the art.
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Very succinctly so I don't end up writing another wall, I generally agree with you on these points. Where we differ I think is that I feel context can add depth and richness (as in the Jester painting) but that the work itself should contain some INTRINSIC depth and richness.
The analog discussion I think we are having is "are placebos good medicine?". Do you feel better after taking them? Sure. I suppose that makes it hard to say they are not medicine. At the same time, it's the act of consuming them that gives them the effect, not anything to do with the content.
the work itself should contain some INTRINSIC depth and richness.
This may apply to some art, but it is not necessary for all art.
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I must like the emperor's new clothes!
"New". Heh.
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It's about the meaning behind the art
How do you determine the meaning behind the art? Who gets to determine that?
Those are great questions to be asking. An artist may intend one thing, and the viewer gets another. That's the nature of art. There is no objective right answer. I always ask myself, why did the artist make the choices they did? What is this painting trying to say by the choices in techniques and composition? Those might be hard questions to answer, depending on how much context you have, but thinking about them anyways is valuable.
Personally, I get what Pollock was going for, but it falls flat for me, whereas Rothko and others made that point more effectively. When I first view a Pollock, for example, I think, what is the subject of this painting? There is no obvious center of focus, and the play between positive and negative space is relatively even. Perhaps the subject is color, or contrast, or randomness, or even art itself. I consider each option. On first glance, I see randomness. I look closer, I see that there is intentionality, but the technique was simple (dripping). The artist is clearly capable of more advanced techniques (the background is evenly applied with precise brush strokes, and perhaps I've seen another painting of his that uses different techniques) but chose something simple instead. Why? Maybe to say art doesn't need skill? Maybe to say that simplicity is beautiful?
There are no right answers, but by asking these questions I develop my critical thinking ability and understanding of art. You might ask these questions and still arrive at the answer, "I hate it, and it's dumb." That's okay. It is still art, and art can mean different things to different people. It just wasn't for you. Pollock isn't for me, but I still gained something by thinking about the meaning and the purpose behind his paintings.
If you are interested in developing a greater appreciation, or at least understanding, of art, study the history. Even a cursory understanding of the social, political, and artistic movements of a time can tell you a lot about why an artist made the choices they did. Impressionism was a movement born out of an era of photorealism and perfect proportion. Pollock's paintings came from an era of established subjects and rigid techniques. Regardless, you don't need to know the history to think about art.
