I like Pollack. I feel what he’s doing and I am moved by it. Many people do. Do you think we’re all just a bunch of rubes?
When I see Pollock’s work, I see that he was wrestling with paint itself. It’s an act of control and play. He skirts up to the edge of that dance and feels deeply. I can feel that precision that daring of fighting gravity, of letting paint leap off his brush and land with intent and recklessness. The act of creation is physical. It’s intensity is emotional and visceral.
Comparing him to Kupka misses the point. Don’t get me wrong, his work is amazing, but they have completely different approaches to abstraction, trying to do completely different things. Kupka was exploring color relationships and spiritual geometry. Pollock was mapping human energy and gesture onto canvas.
This isn’t about whether anyone could drip paint - it’s about whether they could make those drips carry the weight of human experience. Maybe your dog can. Maybe I’ll look at it and be compel and feel something, maybe all this shit is made up in my head. Maybe I only feel it because some said “It’s a Pollack” with just enough reverence that my tiny brain just followed. But I think Pollock’s paintings work because they pull me into that that urgency, playful energy he was working with. I feel the motion, the decisions, the whole physical dance he was doing. He was trying to break free from artistic convention entirely, to bypass conscious control and tap into something more primal and immediate. He was excising demons and he was able to put that on a canvas.
Maybe you’ve been fortunate enough to not have to battle your demons. But I haven’t been. And works like this inspire me to continue. When I stand in front of one of his paintings, I feel that reaching - the way he’s grasping for something beyond rational thought. For something that psychically and spiritually liberated. There’s something raw and unfiltered there that bypasses my thinking brain and hits me somewhere deeper. I feel the energy, the emotion, the trace of human movement suspended in time, but also this sense of someone diving headfirst into their own unconscious and coming back with something wild and alive. Something hopeful.
Maybe you see all this and it means nothing to you. Maybe you don’t and don’t care. All that’s fine. But for me, I see it. I feel it. I value it. And I’m not a rube. And I hope you see my humanity.
My answer was, well kinda, yeah. By the end of it my opinion has changed.
I do still think that this is appreciated more as a performance piece than a painting, if that makes sense. You appreciate the action behind what produced this piece, and maybe by extension the piece itself but the meaning lies in the artist’s actions off the canvas. I do still think that yeah this is a pretty trash painting in as much as we define a painting. But you’ve given me a new perspective on it that I had not in fact considered before. I’m no stranger to wrestling demons but I never connected that to Pollock’s pieces before. I’m still not sure that I do, but I can understand and appreciate why you would.
There is also no good art without bad art. Even if I don’t think the result was successful, he was trying something new and novel and that has to happen to evolve our art. I don’t much like Picasso’s cubism either, but I can’t deny that it was a bold step in a new direction that then inspired other artists after him. Maybe this is similar.
I still don’t like Pollock much, I think his art really could have been made by anyone, and the only reason we know his name is because of luck and nebulous connections to CIA psy-ops, and every art magazine ceaselessly jerking him off in their articles when he was popular. But maybe I’m wrong. I do appreciate your new perspective on his work. Maybe the fact that it could have been made by anyone is part of the actual message that’s trying to be communicated in these pieces.
I appreciate you taking time to read, consider it, and making space for a different perspective. It was no easy feat writing a vulnerable defense of his work’s effect on me.
I like Pollack. I feel what he’s doing and I am moved by it. Many people do. Do you think we’re all just a bunch of rubes?
When I see Pollock’s work, I see that he was wrestling with paint itself. It’s an act of control and play. He skirts up to the edge of that dance and feels deeply. I can feel that precision that daring of fighting gravity, of letting paint leap off his brush and land with intent and recklessness. The act of creation is physical. It’s intensity is emotional and visceral.
Comparing him to Kupka misses the point. Don’t get me wrong, his work is amazing, but they have completely different approaches to abstraction, trying to do completely different things. Kupka was exploring color relationships and spiritual geometry. Pollock was mapping human energy and gesture onto canvas.
This isn’t about whether anyone could drip paint - it’s about whether they could make those drips carry the weight of human experience. Maybe your dog can. Maybe I’ll look at it and be compel and feel something, maybe all this shit is made up in my head. Maybe I only feel it because some said “It’s a Pollack” with just enough reverence that my tiny brain just followed. But I think Pollock’s paintings work because they pull me into that that urgency, playful energy he was working with. I feel the motion, the decisions, the whole physical dance he was doing. He was trying to break free from artistic convention entirely, to bypass conscious control and tap into something more primal and immediate. He was excising demons and he was able to put that on a canvas.
Maybe you’ve been fortunate enough to not have to battle your demons. But I haven’t been. And works like this inspire me to continue. When I stand in front of one of his paintings, I feel that reaching - the way he’s grasping for something beyond rational thought. For something that psychically and spiritually liberated. There’s something raw and unfiltered there that bypasses my thinking brain and hits me somewhere deeper. I feel the energy, the emotion, the trace of human movement suspended in time, but also this sense of someone diving headfirst into their own unconscious and coming back with something wild and alive. Something hopeful.
Maybe you see all this and it means nothing to you. Maybe you don’t and don’t care. All that’s fine. But for me, I see it. I feel it. I value it. And I’m not a rube. And I hope you see my humanity.
Thanks for this. At the beginning of the comment,
My answer was, well kinda, yeah. By the end of it my opinion has changed.
I do still think that this is appreciated more as a performance piece than a painting, if that makes sense. You appreciate the action behind what produced this piece, and maybe by extension the piece itself but the meaning lies in the artist’s actions off the canvas. I do still think that yeah this is a pretty trash painting in as much as we define a painting. But you’ve given me a new perspective on it that I had not in fact considered before. I’m no stranger to wrestling demons but I never connected that to Pollock’s pieces before. I’m still not sure that I do, but I can understand and appreciate why you would.
There is also no good art without bad art. Even if I don’t think the result was successful, he was trying something new and novel and that has to happen to evolve our art. I don’t much like Picasso’s cubism either, but I can’t deny that it was a bold step in a new direction that then inspired other artists after him. Maybe this is similar.
I still don’t like Pollock much, I think his art really could have been made by anyone, and the only reason we know his name is because of luck and nebulous connections to CIA psy-ops, and every art magazine ceaselessly jerking him off in their articles when he was popular. But maybe I’m wrong. I do appreciate your new perspective on his work. Maybe the fact that it could have been made by anyone is part of the actual message that’s trying to be communicated in these pieces.
I appreciate you taking time to read, consider it, and making space for a different perspective. It was no easy feat writing a vulnerable defense of his work’s effect on me.
This was a beautiful conversation. Thank you both.
I think performance art is how I’ve seen it explained a lot before.