Pollock v. Warhol- The Greats

I have a feeling that you have never taken the time to acually look at a Jackson Pollock painting. I mean, really look at it and try to see the amount of work that went into creating what looks, at a casual glance, to be dripping smears of pigment. Pollock may well be the greatest American painter of the 20th Century.

As for Warhol, he had undoubtable talent as a craftsman. But he had more talent for exploiting the tastes of the art-buying public. Much of his later stuff is, frankly, hilarious. And he was laughing all the way to the bank. But that doesn't mean his art is not "art." Try painting a realistic Campbell's soup can. Go ahead. There's room for humor in art as well as in life and Warhol recognized this early.

Warhol in North America and Picasso in Europe are the two primary exponents of art for profit's sake, rather than art for art's sake. Like Warhol, Picasso started out as a very promising -- if unimaginative -- realistic painter. His early work is good, but not outstanding. Then he caught on to the public mood and his painting began to stand out, or -- to put it another way -- to be outstanding.

I suspect you, 247eyes, are not a connoisseur of the fine arts. That's all right. You help assure that there will always be room for the work of people like Norman Rockwell.

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247eyes - You have posted a number of threads of this forum using the term "clueless". I agree you are clueless and what you are clueless about is how to do research. I suggest you talk to your teachers about the proper way to research a topic. Asking a bunch of strangers on the internet is meaningless. We could tell you anything and you would not even be able to figure out if we are making it up or telling you facts.

Try reading books. It takes many books to do research. Some websites are excellent, others are bogus. You need to find facts, as well as opinions, in order to form your own thoughts about a topic.

You need to understand the techniques of learning so you will not be an easy target for the con-artists of the world.

By the way, it took me about 15 minutes to find all the answers you need for the Broadway question by just using the internet. I suggest you ask a librarian to show you how to use search engines. You can do it with a little more effort on your part.

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Pollock and Warhol-Both indeed art but both indeed mostly utter rubbish.

I reckon Constable and DaVinci would turn in their graves to be considered in the same field as P+W.
I, as well s 247eyes have not searched deeply for the answers to their work.I went to art college but it didnt mean I had to like their work.
If I have to be told how to understand art then its not done its job, I should either love it or hate it.
I can remember in 6th form having to go through a Warhol phase when all I wanted to do was scream,'Its rubbish, I can do this'.

It takes ALOT more talent to paint something like the works or Monet, Degas etc and I hold them alot higher than artists like P+W.
I understand Pollock used to fill a whole canvas with his dribble paint then cut out the best bit for an actual painting which must mean a good 80% of his work was rubbish.
Warhol made it up as he went along.Soup cans, humorous but not neccesarily interesting.
Repeated screenprint of Marilyn Monroe, how difficult is it to make a hit of 'something' thats beautiful to look at and thats already established as an icon??!

I know art has to progress and I even think Damien Hirst and that God awful bed by Tracey Emin is art but to me its crap art.

Give me the Masters of yesteryear anyday!!!

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Material Girl, what you are on about is personal taste, not an objective assessment. When you say, "I should either love it or hate it," that merely reflects one's personal preference. That is absolutely fine. There are a lot of so-called "great" works of art that I, personally, despise. All that means is that the artist has, somehow, failed to reach me personally. But that doesn't mean I would criticise these works from that personal point of view. When I look at a painting, I ask what was the artist trying to accomplish here (besides making a commission, I mean) and how successful was he in this effort. I may hate the result, but if the end was achieved, the work is a successful work of art. The second question I ask is how difficult was it to create this piece. You may despise those Warhol Maralyn Monroe screen prints on a personal level but it really takes some work to produce a series like that. There are any number of things I'd never hang on my wall, even if I could afford the outrageous prices, but that doesn't mean I don't respect the author for what he has done. There are any number of Monets I wouldn't care to own, either. Water lilies do get so boring after a while. That doesn't mean I don't respect Monet's work; I just personally don't much care for it.

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to m.andrew: i went to the met yesterday afternoon and saw "Autumn Rhythm" and i saw "Campbell's soup" at the met's website. i have seen pollock's painting several years back. i dont really see the effort that went into making "autumn rhythm" its just a blob of paint in some kind of design that i cant make out. i can sort of see why warhol's soup was given some credit- it was new for the time. he was daring and brave to do that and he was merited. how on earth is paint dripped all over the place considered great art in the first place.??
i can tell anyone one thing, art is universal and extremely complicated yet simple. e.g. autumn rhythm and campbell soup

Merry Andrew wrote:

I have a feeling that you have never taken the time to acually look at a Jackson Pollock painting. I mean, really look at it and try to see the amount of work that went into creating what looks, at a casual glance, to be dripping smears of pigment. Pollock may well be the greatest American painter of the 20th Century.

As for Warhol, he had undoubtable talent as a craftsman. But he had more talent for exploiting the tastes of the art-buying public. Much of his later stuff is, frankly, hilarious. And he was laughing all the way to the bank. But that doesn't mean his art is not "art." Try painting a realistic Campbell's soup can. Go ahead. There's room for humor in art as well as in life and Warhol recognized this early.

Warhol in North America and Picasso in Europe are the two primary exponents of art for profit's sake, rather than art for art's sake. Like Warhol, Picasso started out as a very promising -- if unimaginative -- realistic painter. His early work is good, but not outstanding. Then he caught on to the public mood and his painting began to stand out, or -- to put it another way -- to be outstanding.

I suspect you, 247eyes, are not a connoisseur of the fine arts. That's all right. You help assure that there will always be room for the work of people like Norman Rockwell.

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art is too complicated, ill never understand it. i think everyone has talent, they just express it in different ways and people see talent differently. i slightly agree with you about the talent part but everyone has talent. i just cant see it very well.

material girl wrote:

Pollock and Warhol-Both indeed art but both indeed mostly utter rubbish.

I reckon Constable and DaVinci would turn in their graves to be considered in the same field as P+W.
I, as well s 247eyes have not searched deeply for the answers to their work.I went to art college but it didnt mean I had to like their work.
If I have to be told how to understand art then its not done its job, I should either love it or hate it.
I can remember in 6th form having to go through a Warhol phase when all I wanted to do was scream,'Its rubbish, I can do this'.

It takes ALOT more talent to paint something like the works or Monet, Degas etc and I hold them alot higher than artists like P+W.
I understand Pollock used to fill a whole canvas with his dribble paint then cut out the best bit for an actual painting which must mean a good 80% of his work was rubbish.
Warhol made it up as he went along.Soup cans, humorous but not neccesarily interesting.
Repeated screenprint of Marilyn Monroe, how difficult is it to make a hit of 'something' thats beautiful to look at and thats already established as an icon??!

I know art has to progress and I even think Damien Hirst and that God awful bed by Tracey Emin is art but to me its crap art.

Give me the Masters of yesteryear anyday!!!

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actually what i do is that i try searching on my own for a while and then when i'm getting no where, i come here. my teacher warned me of that- people changing the facts to suit their thesis. i want to read the books but my project is due in 2 days and i dont think ill get anywhere in 2 days with books. on the broadway thing, i too went to all the sites you suggested. i do the work before i come here, if im desparate and i think im not getting anywhere, i come here. i just wrote the same thing twice. weird. well, thanks for all of your help.

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Ive done screen printing, it doesnt take much effort.

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The labor on one piece of work is not a valid measure of the work as art. Indeed, some very intensively laborious pieces can be quite ordinary art.

An artist friend had someone ask how long it took him to paint a certain canvas. The work looked simple, even though it had many layers built up to underlay the final coat.
He answered, forty years. This work was, then, the point he had gotten to after forty years of working with paint on substrates such as canvas, and looking at the world and himself, and making mental, emotional, and physical connections about what he saw.

I disagree with an early statement about great art being something always immediately understandable, knocking you out (paraphrasing). Art is almost always done within a context of what has been done before by artists over the ages, and by artists in one's area, and one's personal exploration tends to be reactive to that, be part of a long term 'discussion' as well as a matter of self expression. Ease of understanding for the person walking down the street is not usually the first thing an artist is thinking about; if it is, the work is often rather commercial looking. Much good art is complex in meaning, allusion, illusion, connections, references, even underlying construction - however many or how few hours it took to do, or how simple the ingredients.

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Excellent post, Osso! Most truly great art is intensly personal. Of course, if the viewever doesn't share the same emotions as the artist, the end result could easily be incomprehensible to 'the man in the street.'

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On Warhol, I presume he was making a statement (or perhaps a question - I haven't read that much about him and his work) about the nature of what is art, and that question is certainly part of the long time history of art. He seems to me to have had wit in his choices too.

edit to add more on Warhol - I don't myself think of him as "great" so much as I think of him as significant.

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(thanks, MA..)

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Interesting topic -

I guess I'd have to say I know very little about art as far as names of artists, techniques, etc., but corny as it sounds, I know what I like.....

I was in an expensive restaurant (I wasn't paying) last month, and there was an original abstrat painting on the wall. Now, normally, I don't care for abstract art, but for some reason, this one just enthralled me. I don't know why, and I guess it doesn't matter really. It just seemed so right for its setting. Placed in another environment it might have been gastly.

There are some artists that I like only one or two of their works. Walter Crane for example, I mentioned him on another thread. There is only 1 painting he did that I love, the others are nothing to me.
Even someone like Van Gogh - I can't say I appreciated everything he's done.

I'm big on colors, they just sing to my soul. For others it's the line, the medium and I don't know what else.

Warhol - never liked him. hmmmm.
Pollock - don't understand him, but then again, never made an effort. However I can see where his work can be a powerful influence.

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247eyes - if you can hang in until you read this article all the way through, not stopping after a few paragraphs, you might begin to understand the context of Pollock's work. I found this one review by googling -
Jackson Pollock breakthrough artist. It was the first article there, I think, and there were a lot of others to choose from.

http://www.haberarts.com/pollock.htm

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that was a good post Osso and then an interesting link.

Pollock's work is interesting with layer upon layer interweaving, creating subtle changes and a rich surface. They do need to be seen 'live' though as reproductions kill them.

I'm not so keen on the soup cans and multiple Marilyn's but they do make a statement about a shallow society.

Painting is a language, in the same way as you need to learn French or Italian you need to learn its vocabulary, structure and pace. You wouldn't expect to read a novel in French when you haven't studied it and you need to study art in order to fully understand paintings.

'I know what I like' without explanation and reason is a very shallow understanding.

I visited a gallery last month, run by a real old fashioned 'grande dame' who advertises 'paintings not pictures' and there is a big difference. It's the difference between Bach and Country and Western music.

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Good points, Vivien. Nobody is saying that C&W isn't music and no one's saying that a Norman Rockwell magazine cover isn't 'art.' But there are abvious differences in intent, execution, and a host of emotional factors which differentiate one from the other. I personally dislike atonal and so-called 'minimalist' musical compositions. But that doesn't mean I don't recognize them as worthwhile additions to the musical heritage of the human race. Likewise, one may dislike Pollock or Warhol and still recognize their works as significant contributions. And, as I think I said in earlier post, if one prefers country & western to Bach and Norman Rockwell to, say, Picasso [getting tied of ragging on Pollock] that is perfectly all right. Individual taste is an individual thing. However, no generalizations can be drawn from such personal taste. I don't try to tell anyone that it's much more enjoyable to listen to Maria Callas (I'm listening to her as I type this) than, say, Patsy Cline. That's my personal preference. Now, if we were to discuss the why of it. . .

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Good points, Vivien. Nobody is saying that C&W isn't music and no one's saying that a Norman Rockwell magazine cover isn't 'art.' But there are abvious differences in intent, execution, and a host of emotional factors which differentiate one from the other. I personally dislike atonal and so-called 'minimalist' musical compositions. But that doesn't mean I don't recognize them as worthwhile additions to the musical heritage of the human race. Likewise, one may dislike Pollock or Warhol and still recognize their works as significant contributions. And, as I think I said in earlier post, if one prefers country & western to Bach and Norman Rockwell to, say, Picasso [getting tired of ragging on Pollock] that is perfectly all right. Individual taste is an individual thing. However, no generalizations can be drawn from such personal taste. I don't try to tell anyone that it's much more enjoyable to listen to Maria Callas (I'm listening to her as I type this) than, say, Patsy Cline. That's my personal preference. Now, if we were to discuss the why of it. . .

Pollock v. Warhol- The Greats

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