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Comment by erulabs | Hacker News Reader

Pollock is wonderful, particularly in person. But more than I enjoy the art (Silver Over Black, White, Yellow, and Red in person is enough to bring me to tears), I really enjoy listening to people's anger ranting why its not really art, or why anyone could do that, etc. If art is intended to garner a reaction - Pollock accomplishes that in spades.

I personally find it wonderful and beautiful - the sf-tech crowds mocking the abstract and psychedelic tend to be a bit unaware where the world they both live and work in came from!

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I really enjoy listening to people's anger ranting why its not really art, or why anyone could do that, etc.

The irony is that Abstract expressionism was used for Cold War propaganda after Harry Truman made his that-ain’t-art criticism of the pictorial works that were the State Department’s Advancing American Art exhibit.

Pollock et al. were politically acceptable demonstrations of American freedom of expression because they are not critically engaged with social conditions. Being critical of America’s social disparities was what spelled the end of Advancing American Art as a Cold War instrument. It was too much free expression for the Truman administration.

Don’t misunderstand me, I appreciate Pollock et al. But it’s why it took an immigrant to produce Frank’s The Americans to follow on the artistic groundwork layed by the Pubic Works Administration in the depression years.

Pollock is safe because it doesn’t raise important questions about meat space. Rants about what is art are as far as it goes. It’s more tampon in a teacup than it is Maplethorpe’s X.

> But it’s why it took an immigrant to produce Frank’s The Americans to follow on the artistic groundwork layed by the Pubic Works Administration in the depression years.

I never put this together before, thanks!

So what do you make of jazz, hip hop or punk rock? Those are full of social criticism, and also seem to reinforce the idea of free expression under capitalism. And there are lots of visual artists and dancers and writers too. I'm looking at the VOA music stream [0] and it seems to be full of free speech of all kinds.

It might be fair to say that Jackson Pollock is too apolitical {for our times,to be taken seriously,for you}, but I personally don't see the conspiracy you're laying out here.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkGTvcz3OuuoOGWctHo5veA

Ironically, the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities investigated Advancing American Art exhibit looking for a leftist conspiracy. Or to put it another way there is no rationale for proposing a government conspiracy. It was ordinary government operations described in newspapers and magazines of the day and documented in the Congressional Record and the National Archives.

"Establishment funding sources dry up when the artists they're supporting develop an anti-establishment message" is hardly a conspiracy theory. It might be true or false, but it's not a conspiracy theory, that's the wrong concept to associate with it.

It definitely could be a conspiracy theory, if the allegation is that funders are conspiring together to exclude artists who are too political (and if the allegation is false).

But it may be true, and not a conspiracy theory. I've no idea. I've never looked into the issue.

No, if the allegation is true, it still would be a conspiracy. The key factor is the secrecy, not the reality of the situation. If it is provably true, that moves it out of the realm of a theory to history, but it would be a conspiracy regardless.

But if done openly per the OP, then we aren't talking about a conspiracy at all, just politics!

My opinion of Pollock changed drastically when I saw something in person. For me, it was Greyed Rainbow, which is completely uninteresting in a book and quite enthralling in person.

I don't think this phenomenon is limited to abstract expressionism though. Even being from Iowa, I didn't understand what was special about American Gothic until I saw it in person.

I had a similar reaction to Mark Rothko's work. On a page it seems silly and stupid but standing in front of a giant canvas that is seemingly perfectly imperfectly painted is just something else. It engulfs your entire vision and is really something that needs to be experienced in person.

I have experienced them in person.

Still don't get it.

Looking for an source that can explain it to me.

I remember going to the National Gallery in D.C. and while asking for a map the person at the desk told me "you should go to the tower, we have something very special there". It was an exhibit of some Rothkos and a video about his life and significance to help the viewer interpret his works.

I found the paintings terrible, but knowing I usually understand them more once I understand the artist I went to go watch the video. During the video there was a couple rude guys who started snickering at the video. Usually I get kind of upset about this sort of thing, but to be honest, I actually agreed with them. I came away from the experience feeling like I had just been part of a huge prank.

I learned that day that Rothko's painting are trash.

A couple years later I was in a small museum in another country, and across the room saw a painting of a couple of poorly rendered squares in flat shades and thought, "I bet that's a Rothko." Sure enough it was, and now I can recognize his paintings from 20 meters away. So I guess his work is recognizable and unique and I've learned some very begrudging respect for his work that way I guess -- they're at least recognizable trash.

> I learned that day that Rothko's painting are trash.

May I ask how you came to the conclusion the painting are trash - and not just that you personally didn't like the paintings?

Can a stone plucked from a riverbed be beautiful?

Why? If you look closely, it is imperfect. If you look around you can find others, very similar. Perhaps any river could have produced it. It isn't saying anything. It isn't telling you anything. It isn't being anything other than a stone. Yet surely, it can be an object of beauty, causing thought, curiosity, contemplation and feelings.

If a stone, why not a canvas deliberately created from inspiration and feelings? Isn't abstract art even more artful than simply copying what your eyes can see?

Maybe you just don't like Rothko? People like different things and that is fine. I don't think there is a anything to "explain" about Rothko and that genre - the point of the paintings are the physical form and colors itself, there is nothing "behind" which need explanation.

I had a similar reaction. When I would see Pollocks in books, I would dismiss them as being overrated, but when I finally saw one in person, I was really overwhelmed. There's something about the presence of it that really pulls you in. Maybe it's the size of the pieces that does it.

Giotto is the same. His paintings seem lifeless in a book with 10" pictures. But there's a room in the Uffizi which features Madonnas by Giotto, Cimabue, and Duccio. They are mind-blowing. First of all they are not 10 inches but 10 feet tall. Second, Giotto's Madonna and Child almost feels as if they are alive. Seeing his work side-by-side with contemporaries it's instantly obvious why Vasari considered Giotto as the reviver of the art painting. [1] (The others were no slouches either.)

[1] https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/giorgio-vasari/the-liv...

> I really enjoy listening to people's anger ranting why its not really art, or why anyone could do that, etc. If art is intended to garner a reaction - Pollock accomplishes that in spades.

What's the difference between art and trolling? Is trolling a art to you?

Also: Piss Christ

If art is meant to provoke a response, art which provokes death threats must be the greatest art of all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ

> Gallery officials reported receiving death threats in response to Piss Christ.

Also, knowing what we know about what Pell was getting up to, this must be the greatest work of irony-as-art yet:

> During a retrospective of Serrano's work at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in 1997, the then Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell, sought an injunction from the Supreme Court of Victoria to restrain the National Gallery of Victoria from publicly displaying Piss Christ, which was not granted.

That poor guy is being crucified. After being betrayed, hauling the device of his own execution up a hill, being whipped, crowned with thorns and mocked. Being submerged in piss is the least of his worries and indignities... yet it still manages to be a pretty picture.

Hah that's so well said. I had typed a response about why that piece of art didn't really do much for me, but it was like 3 paragraphs long - this is a perfect way to put it!

> I really enjoy listening to people's anger ranting why its not really art (...)

This reminds me of Barnett Newman's "Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III" which has elicited its fair share of visceral reactions as well, with some people going so far as to vandalize it in museums - 99 percent invisible did a great story on it a while back

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-many-deaths-of-a-...

"If art is intended to garner a reaction - Pollock accomplishes that in spades."

Sadly, that's not difficult to do, especially if the artist has critics, media, museums, and galleries propping them up and giving them publicity.

The history of 20th Century art is full of shock art antics which rile up the public.

One of the most telling examples is Piero Manzoni's "Artist's Shit"[1], which (true to its name) consists of tin cans containing Manzoni's excrement.

Manzoni sold the cans for their weight in gold ($37 each in 1961), but since then they're selling for as much as €275,000 each.

Poetically, some cans have since burst because of the gases built up inside, making the "art" worthless.

The estimation, outrage, and value of such "art" in the art market, in the eyes of critics, and in the view of the public aptly summarizes a lot of modern art. Perhaps that's why they sell so well.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_shit

Edgy art like this is mostly used as a money laundering racket by the ultra rich, a way to piss away money by the rich, and a way to feel cool by aimless middle class hipsters. I love it all, but some people refuse to acknowledge this.

I actually rather like Pollock. And the paintings really are something that needs to be seen in person, not unlike a large Monet water lily canvas. But I still find it hard to believe that Pollock was once a student of the American regionalist Thomas Hart Benton. No two could be more different...

> I really enjoy listening to people's anger ranting why its not really art, or why anyone could do that, etc. If art is intended to garner a reaction - Pollock accomplishes that in spades.

If that's a defense of Pollock's art, I think it's not a very good one. Obviously a lot of people, myself included, disagree that anything that elicits a strong reaction must be art. I hope there's a better reaction to his art, like maybe it's aesthetically pleasing, provocative or innovative?

For the record, I don't dislike Pollock's art, though it's not really something I admire either.

> I hope there's a better reaction to his art, like maybe it's aesthetically pleasing, provocative or innovative?

FWIW, “provocative” means “elicits a strong reaction.”

But you know what I meant: just provoking a strong reaction is not enough. Stepping on dog shit also provokes a strong reaction of disgust, but dogs aren't really artists. (Well, I'm sure some dogs are...)

> the sf-tech crowds mocking the abstract and psychedelic tend to be a bit unaware where the world they both live and work in came from!

I think many of us view the thousands of men and women behind the Apollo missions, for example, as the world where we came from. Much more than Jackson Pollock (although I have no strong opinion on Pollock as an artist).

And I see already the sneering that dang was referring to (and I'm sure it's happening in the other direction down-thread).

The men and women of the Apollo program were much more distant from SF than Unix and Berkeley and LSD. I fully understanding desiring to be a closer decedent of Richard Feynman than Timothy Leary, but that's just a desire, not a truth. I myself am an engineer who previously lived in SF, so no sneering - however I came from poverty, southern california, east LA, etc - which is a very different world than my University of Chicago comp-sci friends.

It takes all kinds :)

Ehh, if you're going to stress the SV connection to the modern tech industry, I'd say that William Shockley, Robert Noyce, and Gordon Moore had far more influence - even culturally - than Timothy Leary.

And I wasn't comparing us to luminaries like Feynman, but rather to the working men and women of the Apollo program.

Fair enough - I was generalizing heavily. I'd not heard of Robert Noyce before, but I'm glad to have some weekend reading!

In response to your comparison then, I suppose I would say we're as close (or closer) to the hippies of burning man and esalen than we are to the engineers of the Apollo program. It's certainly a mixture of both - I just think the former tends to be marginalized is all.

> we're as close (or closer) to the hippies of burning man and esalen

I might concede this for SV, but not for the American tech industry as a whole. SV has an outside cultural influence on the rest of us, but even it doesn't dominant in places like NYC, RTP, etc.

> I really enjoy listening to people's anger ranting why its not really art, or why anyone could do that, etc. If art is intended to garner a reaction - Pollock accomplishes that in spades.

That's like if a bunch of anti-vaxxers gathered to protest Norman Rockwell's "before the shot." Technically, it does says something about the art's ability to "garner a reaction." But that's a tautology.

If there's a critical mass of ignoramuses who are doing the reacting, that doesn't reveal much of anything about the art.

> If art is intended to garner a reaction - Pollock accomplishes that in spades.

So does The Human Centipede series.

That's probably been more successful in that regard, in fact.

So do Bukkake films.

I do not see your point.

My point is that equating art with trolling, and vice-versa, leads to absurdity.

Or not, depending on what you want "art" to encompass.

Dada as a specific example was basically trolling in response to the absurdity of the world at the time.

Indeed. Despite multiple assurances that they could have done it as well, I'm still not aware of any modern art coming out of HN.

I too could have invented calculus (after learning about it in school).

"Despite multiple assurances that they could have done it as well, I'm still not aware of any modern art coming out of HN."

I've made abstract art for decades. I don't share it with HN as that's not really what HN is for, and I'm pretty private about it anyway.

I very much doubt I'm the only artist on HN either. Just because you haven't seen HN users' art doesn't mean they don't make any.

That said, I fully agree that many non-artists underestimate how difficult it is to make some art. Also, there's something to be said for doing it first and stretching the definition of what counts as art, no matter how technically "easy" it was.

The quintessential example of this being Malevich's "Black Square".[1] After Malevich, it could be argued that much of the rest of modern art whose main point was to show that "anything can be considered art" could be seen as just minor variations.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Square_%28painting%29

> I too could have invented calculus (after learning about it in school).

Incidentally, this is written as if it's obvious, but it's not at all a given that you can invent something even after you've been taught it. If you can, then it's a serious credit to your teacher.

> I'm still not aware of any modern art coming out of HN.

You think software isn't art?

Missing the point. Nobody is asking whether Jackson Pollock could code. The suggestion is that HN commenters are talking a big game about cutting-edge visual media, but they're not creating high quality visual art in such a way as to authenticate their specific opinions on other people's visual art.

I've worked pretty hard on producing video support for my live synth music, and have got better at it over time. Doesn't make me a painter, though. In many ways my stuff is pretty pedestrian compared to working video artists: I tend to go for your basic 'light show effects', crowd-pleasing stuff. My imagination as far as coming up with really novel environments… that's what could use some work.

Plenty of people in tech are also artists. I know I can draw pretty well, and I'm also a hobbyist.

I suppose there is a reason they call software’s thinking artificial intelligence if we’re getting into the details

What are you talking about?

Artificial comes from a Latin root meaning “of or belonging to art”, which I found funny given your question

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