Picasso, Duchamp, Hoffman Root of Modern Art

..Sorry, my previous post doesnt express what I meant to say. Francis Bacon, to me, is shocking in the violence of his images.


I see motion in his portraits. One I remember looks as if the subject has been captured in a blur...as if he had just turned and been caught moving by a camera.....if that makes sense.

Shepaints, I agree on both points (motion and shock).

pollock
JLnobody, it was the angle of the can - his feets were all wrong.

By the way what was Pollock trying to say?

If you've ever watched the short film showing Pollock at work or even Ed Harris who used that film to recreate the action in he film "Pollock," you immediately see that he had a very good idea what would result from the dripping and drooling of paint. Accidental plans can productive and sometimes fun! Intuitive, extemporaneous and improvising are words that apply. Pollock's later paintings were as successful, especially the "black" paintings as they called to much attention to the technique.

art influences
Seaglass, what was Pollock trying to say? Beauty (in the broad sense of the word).
BTW, could someone comment on my tentative observation that the American art experience has focused more on developing NEW techniques than has the European. Cubism, and all the other European creations are more stylistic or philosophical in spirit than are the drippings, stainings, and gluings (of dishware) of the Americans. It is very easy for me to overstate this impression--that's why I'm asking for input now, rather than criticism later (especially from LW and Firenze). America has been predominantly a culture of technology rather than spirit, and, unfortunately this "new alchemy" has diffused around the world. What say you'all?

Pollock was the first painter to create a textural surface in a spatial context. Viewing his paintings in person, you don't see the texture and color as static. The forms float and have their own dimensionality. They swim in front of you and are somewhat dizzying. One can feel if they were to approach it that you could walk into the painting into another plane of reality -- perhaps even another dimension.

influences
LW, I've not seen a Pollock "in person," but what I DO enjoy from studying repros is how small sections (details) of the overall constitute wonderful designs by themselves. I do not enjoy the overall impressions--which is what Pollock undoubtedly wanted the viewer to enjoy--they are "dizzying" and, pardon the confession, often look too homogenous, like wall paper. I had his Lavendar Mist as my PC desktop image for months, trying to come to appreciate it, but with only minor results. I've replaced it with something by an abuzzer, and prefer it.

The two things that one loses from reproduction is contrast and scale (unless the painting is the size of a coffee table book page!)
They can get the color pretty accurately but the contrast of the actual painting becomes altered in the process of photography, printing and transfer to digital imaging. A digital medium transfered directly to a digital screen image would likely be the best (in very high resolution). The lighting of the painting for photography is perhaps the most crucial and is where the alterations of the actual image begin. Pollock's paintings suffer more than almost any I can think of in reproduction. They just don't even come close. The paintings in the film "Pollock" were photographed rather well but they weren't the original paintings -- they were recreated by movie studio artists!

influences
Thanks LW, that is helpful. I CAN imagine how Pollock's work would be a major casualty of the reproduction process. BTW, I'm going to be away for about 9 days. I'll take my PC hoping to find a phone jack somewhere to check in. These threads are so interesting, I don't want to get too far behind.

...Re: action painting.....A professor of art, specifically painting, at one of the reknowned art colleges here lost his sight. It didnt stop him from producing art.

He developed a method of painting whereby he would tack a huge canvas to the wall, dip his brush into buckets of paint and then dance to folk music. His gestural brush strokes were guided by the rhythmn of the music.

I thought it wonderful that his blindness didnt stop his creativity....and with a life time of art experience, he could almost envisage his works....

picasso
Very interesting, Shepaints. Reminds me a bit of Beethoven composing some of his best works after losing his hearing.

Reminds me of Beethoven still composing after he went deaf. The only curiousty would be how he mixed colors -- I'm sure they could be marked but he'd have to remember what proporations would come up with what colors. Amazing. People joke about elephants being given paint brushes in their trunks but elephants do have a brain and hand to eye coordination so they are bound to come up with some expression. It's been proven with apes that animals are more cognizant of what they are doing than we first imagined.

...yes, I thought of the Beethoven analogy too......

Light, I believe the professor used a single colour. His assistant stood by with a bucket of paint so that he could recharge his brush whenever he needed. I think he used black and his work looked a little like those black abstract expressionist works by Frans Kline....only....more rythmic....like Pollock...He would do a quaint
sort of folk-like dance as he painted and full arm movements against the canvas tacked on the wall.....

By the way, Kline was pretty amazing....I've been looking at his
portrait of Nijinsky (1949) realist , then his work changed completely and by 1950 he did an abstract expressionist portrait of same (1950). His work is very bold and assured.

Someone gave me the advice to paint with bold strokes....they
look better and more complete....even if you dont feel confident and assured!

Artist/teachers that have had much influence on me were all pretty much alcoholics. I was always amazed (and caught up, with how a dissapate lifestyle could manifest itself in creative works)Two of my teachers as a kid were artists named Baziotes and Costigan , who, always needing money , were always teaching at the art academy in Pa during the early 1960s, This impressed me to no end, how drink was a consistant companion to many.
All I remember about Picasso and Duchamp , were their reported capacities, and Duchamp and Picabia would often wind up in jail for D&D.
Took me 2 decades to realize that there was no real relationship between creativity and destructive behavior.

So in order to celebrate my own lack of destructive behavior . this February, Im takin up snowboarding
This is actually a test post to see if Ive got everything held on properly.
PS -so far this site is easier to navigate than that other place, you know of which I speak.

Pollock's art became stagnate and repititious the more he drank in his final years. Whether he had just explored all variations of the technique and lost the inspiration, only to fall back into the bottle is open to interpretation. They movie revealed that he was a classic binge alcoholic and it is a clue that all his cognitive as well as sub-conscious mind had to be operating in order for him to create his imagery. Alcohol shut down all the cognitive faculties so it was likley he was unable to process what came up from the sub-conscious. He could have all the strange fantastical, but unfortunately demented dreams and not be able to successfully express them on canvas. His black paintings were the beginning of this phase and although some of them are striking, after that his imagery began to loose all cohesiveness. If you want to know what Pollock's genius consisted of, try dripping paint on a blank canvas and build up the textural layers of colors. I'd wager you can't come close. My teachers and many artists I've worked with were not especially alcoholic but they did usually drink rather heavily at times. Then, some of the just enjoyed their social cocktails.

Kline is a favorite of mine -- not Kline, but an artist who painted in broad, dark gestural strokes was a friend of mine in Laguna Beach. I had one of her canvases on my wall for several years. This was after abstract expressionism had waned. The Gerhard Richter's of the art world are now few and far between but the genre is not dead.

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LW, a small technical (or philosophical) point. As long as the abstract expressionist genre is practiced by anyone (I'm one of those who try to work in that genre), it is not "dead," except perhaps in the minds of art historians. This means it's dead in theory but for some alive in practice. And as far as I'm concerned the latter counts for more.

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Farmerbuddy. I'm delighted to see you've crossed to the other shore. Now we have two shores.

Art historians havn't killed off abstract expressionism but the collectors did. They stopped buying it. It's coming back with the collectors. I just saw a really early Paul Jenkins original at one art galler I frequent and it was a very subjective piece. He's living in Europe still and doing very well with selling paintings, incorporating impasto with his famous stain technique. I'd like to start another gallery in Laguna Beach possibly with nothing but abstract expressionism -- there's several more serious galleries doing well in the area.

art
The collectors may kill ABism as a commercial enterprise (while the art historians define it as officially passe),but as you know the heart of art, as a spiritual function, does not require commercial success--enough romantic preaching. If you ever did put together such a gallery, it would be a WONDERFUL gesture. I would not only try to get you hang something of mine, I would buy something off your walls.

Everr since the one art site went subscription, I now get my 'prices realized" data from Maine Antiques Digest http://www.maineantiquedigest.com/#top

Each month they will present the auctions throughout the US and UK. Ive noticed that, as the economy has been tanking, regional artists of the Arts and Crafts genre have been taking off in price, and many important regional artists such as Eakins have been setting records.
Wait for a Treadway Galleries, or Rago, or Craftsman Galleries for data on prices for a lot of the modernist work. Seems that many of the other big-time galleries are in financial problems or are going out of business entirely. I suppose its a tough business