jackson pollock, abstract expressionism and bukowski....go!

27 Sep 06 Wednesday
8:54 AM - jackson pollock, abstract expressionism and bukowski....go!
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

my friend ryan wrote an interesting blog that i responded to and then i decide to open up the conversation and see who though i was full of shite or what. i am lucky enough to have many intelligent and well informed friends. what do you guys think?

here's an excerpt of my friend's blog:

"....and i dont buy that the spark of creativity strikes hard and fast and requires the artist to move quickly to capture it. if a guy paints a 120' x 180' mural in 35 minutes, he's just trying to get done. theres no way a canvas that large could be covered with any thematic or creative concern that quickly. sorry. nope.

so i dont know. i know the guy did some great stuff. but i do think, if the film is accurate, he was f&*ing around to get done so he could get to his next important work, popping the cap off that beer.

but thats the advantage of painging, i suppose. bukoiwski liked his booze as much as the next guy, but i would think if he just randomly dumped keystrokes onto the page just to fill it up, he'd have a lot harder time convincing anyone it was genius"


ryan,
the genuis of pollock was not where he laid the paint, but that he understood the dimension of time in the act of painting. i would argue that pollock's paintings were an extension of cubism in that cubism dealt with time and space as honestly as one could.

cubism actually anticipates relativity when you understand that the initial painting of cubism "les madamoiselles d'avignion" begins by showing the face and the profile at the same time, something that relativity states postulates is possible if one is traveling at the speed of light.

basically, the marks that pollock is making on the canvas are a document of his movement around that canvas. the fact that is may be aestetically pleasing is entirely besides the point. pollock's work is about time and basic mark-making. pollock may have not always understood that, but thats why he is an important artist.
most people never really understood abstract expressionism outside of the art work b/c it was a bunch of artists talking to each other. to wit; mark rothko is an amazing painter. he's the one that did those huge fields of colour on a canvas.
the pictures dont look very impressive in a book and more often than not, some smart-arse says "oh, yeah, i could do that".
i happen to be lucky enough to see a rothko show in paris. those paintings are huge. rothko intended the works to be viewed up close so that one painting would fill your peripheral vision. mark rothko was a manic depressive working in a little attic studio in the villlage in NY before it was cool, back when it was a ghetto.
his paintings are actually many thin layers of colour undulating to make one deep, rich tone juxtaposed with another. rothko considered his works to be emotional landscapes that would bypass the senses and affect your feelings. sound like a manic depressive to you? yeah, me too.

on a side note; bukowski was a genius not because he was a drunk, but b/c he was an unrepentant drunk. if bukowski had gone written a book about sobriety, the first one would have been angst-ridden and great. the rest of his work after that would have been cheesy and bucolic.
bukowski was one of the beat writers in my mind. beat writers were all about the "everyman" that you could relate to, working outside of the confines of society and therefore able to get a clearer picture of the way we are as a race. bukowski's best moments are when he is either saying exactlty what he thinks, and he is an asshole, or commenting on his own failures.

so, enough of that.

by the way, on a side note: kind of going through a "rent" phase right now. holy crap, that show is amazing! that is all, carry on :)