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Comment by alextheparrot | Hacker News Reader

No one accuses me of being insane for going to a park bench and watching cranes and ducks skim across the river and just think. Why is it controversial for someone to like Pollock’s paintings which give the same type of space?

Maybe they don’t have intrinsic meaning, but a lot of the world doesn’t. Maybe they have meaning from their context, maybe the world does as well. At the end of the day, to me they are provocative and inspirational and help me think and I value thinking so I value Pollock’s paintings. Especially insofar as the paintings aren’t encumbered by the heavy realist Americana that Pollock reacts against from his studies with Thomas Benton (Though I do like Benton’s paintings as well).

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A lot of the post-war abstractionists are treated that way by people. From de Kooning to Reinhardt to Yayoi Kusama, they all get dismissed for one thing or another but I think all of them have some unique stylistic choices that breathe life into their art, Kusama in particular. They aren't traditional or easy to love, in fact, they are much easier to just scoff at. But the artists put serious thought into each work and came in with an idea and a vision and, a lot of the time, they realized those in truly unique ways. Just because they're not "pretty" or "technically impressive" doesn't mean they're bad or aren't art.

"doesn't mean they're bad or aren't art"

At this point is there even anything at all that can't be considered to be art?

The word has become almost meaningless.

That's an idea that has probably been around as long as humans have been making art (i.e. as long as humans).

"Certain disciples of the new school, much occupying themselves with the measured dividing of the tempora, display their prolation in notes that are new to us, preferring to devise new methods of their own rather than to continue singing in the old way. Therefore the music of the Divine Office is disturbed with notes of these small values. Moreover, they hinder the melody with hockets, they deprave them with descants, and sometimes they pad them out with upper parts made out of secular songs. The result is that they often seem to be losing sight of the fundamental sources of our melodies in the Antiphoner and Gradual, and forget what it is that they are burying under their superstructures. They may become entirely ignorant of the ecclesiastical modes, which they have already ceased to distinguish and the limits of which they abuse in the prolixity of their notes. The modest rise and temperate descents of plainsong, by which the modes themselves are recognized, are entirely obscured. The voices move incessantly to and fro, intoxicating rather than soothing the ear, while the singers themselves try to convey the emotion of the music by their gestures. The consequence of all this is that devotion, the true aim of all worship, is neglected, and wantonness, which ought to be eschewed, increases."

- Pope John XXII, docta sanctorum patrum, ca. 1324

I think the complaint is about attribution. If a friend takes you to the park to watch the cranes and ducks, it would be a stretch to call them a great artist for facilitating that potentially sublime experience, because anyone could have taken you. Similarly Pollock's paintings may be aesthetic, but if they are easily imitated, it's hard to argue the works themselves make their author a great artist.

To be fair to Pollock, he had the creative insight to make his work in a less permissive period of art, so it's fair to argue he was a great innovator or artist on that merit, but it's a different type of achievement vs 'timeless' pieces of art like (imho) Bernini.

>but if they are easily imitated, it's hard to argue the works themselves make their author a great artist.

By this logic no writer is a great artist, as anyone could just copy out their books by hand - their work is "easily imitated".

Imitation isn't cloning - writing a novel novel in the style of requires more skill than writing (/painting) out the same thing.

What's up for debate I suppose is to what extent a 'non-artist's splodges in immitation of, are stylistically the same but original, or just clones.

(Some might also argue that the entropy in such paintings make actual clones rather harder they are of than something more real and 'of something'!)

> Why is it controversial for someone to like Pollock’s paintings which give the same type of space?

Because the abstract style has actively pushed out other styles. The great majority of people in art museums will see nothing beautiful in the post-WWII sections. When 90% of people find 90% of what is lauded as "high art" worthless, of course there is controversy, or more accurately, anger at what is being pushed on them.

Modern art is far more than abstract though. A lot is figurative in various forms, from Picasso to Lucien Freud, and genres like photorealism and hyperrealism. Unless you have been to a museum specifically dedicated to abstract art.

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