I liked the article. I tried my best to comprehend the whole thing piece by piece, but I must
admit there was a flux of complex ideas described with overly scholarly language, although that
is the norm with art talk… I was especially surprised when your name popped up at the end. Is
that really you??? You really did go off on that Picasso though.
Anyways, these are some notes I’ve tried to paste together in a very haphazard manner!
The whole article to me relates to a philosophical question: how far can the artist push
this notion of visual representation? What does it mean if the viewer can see nothing obviously
recognizable? In Pollock’s work, “all distinctions have been exhausted so no parts of the
painting compete with each other, there is only distinction between the more and the less
immediate.” Thus, a new kind of space achieved by a lack of anything concrete on the page!
The lack of recognizable figures, form, ground, etc. all epitomize this postmodern outlook.
Throughout class we scoured many different movements that all touch on similarly
complicated themes through whatever medium the artist chooses. The fact both Dávid and
Pollock’s works can address this same question freaks me out to be honest. One quote was,
“from this perspective, Pollock’s paintings are like a homeopathic remedy for those no longer
sure not merely of what they feel but whether they feel at all.” My thought is: is Pollock’s work
comforting or discomforting due to the immense line complexity, homogenous strokes, and the
“eyes having nowhere to rest”? I find the idea alarming, moreover, exacerbated by the
continuation of this quote:
“The need to vouch for the certainty of one’s feeling, the critic explains, is a reaction to living in
an urban world where every human activity is organized for profit, which flattens and empties
human endeavor until nothing is left except, the “dull horror of our lives.”” (Greenberg)
This relates to the problem of the viewer’s relationship to the painting as well. The first
paragraph about the blue string talks in depth about this, referencing drowning in a visual
ocean while witnessing Pollock’s visually over stimulating work. However, the hypocrisy of this
is of course is that Pollock’s paintings have such a distinct shallowness (disregarding “Gothic”).
So, is flattened pattern the answer? Is the idea that realism hurts too much, life hurts in
general, and so this artistic portrayal of life as we know it has shifted permanently to an
emphatic static? That this is the only possible solution to this pain? Is Postmodernism arguing
for a type of nihilistic, shallow hedonism as a reaction to the twentieth century?? Pollock’s
paintings are LITERALLY painted to appear visually SHALLOW. My mind is blown. Anyways, I feel
like if I read the journal another 15 times, I would graduate a much more intellectually
considerate art major.
Pollock’s paintings: