On burning art
As Mrs Zen was flicking around the channels last night, she lit on a biography of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, which focused on his art collecting. Lloyd-Webber has a large collection of pre-Raphaelite art, most of it awful from what I could see.It got me to thinking. First of all about the shame it is that our shared heritage can be bought by rich men and sequestered. (To do Lloyd-Webber credit, he was willing to share his collection with museums and galleries; but that didn't quite dispel the idea that he was like a small boy with his Dinky toys, so eager was he to acquire fiendishly glum paintings). Second, I was led to think about the recent world-record purchase of a Jackson Pollock. No one else is going to say it, so I will. Jackson Pollock is shit. Modern art is shit. A guy throwing paint on a canvas is not an artist. Don't kid yourself he is. Art -- I mean the art world, not the thing itself -- is all about taste, what sells, what bollocks can be passed off as profundity. I'm not a revisionist. Don't get me wrong. I like progress, change, the modern, as much as the next person. But Pollock was a con artist. His paintings didn't express anything except his desire to be famous, rich and loved. They are like a secret no one wants to tell, the emperor's new paintings.
Anyway, that led me to thinking, if you bought that Pollock, or some other painting, and for whatever reason, burned it, would that be a crime against humanity? (My thoughts are coloured by the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, a senseless ruination of a work of art that could be said to belong to all of us.) Is destroying a piece of our shared cultural heritage a crime? If it is, is simply buying it also one? Is having something to yourself that should belong to all of us wrong?
Is that even a sensible way to think about art? Or anything? Is art produced for all of humanity, or only for whoever pays for it? I struggle with this question, because the notion of writing for pay devalues the writing for me (I can only think of writing for pay as hack work, and cannot think that I could be an artist if, say, someone offered me money to write about China). Yet I consider Vanity Fair a work of art, don't I? And Michelangelo worked for pay across his career. He wouldn't have bothered picking up a brush if he didn't get paid for it.
So is there a point at which I can believe that something paid for can cease to belong to the person who paid for it (or the person who paid them for it afterwards) and started to belong to us all?
Maybe I should conclude that first of all, pay only devalues art for me. It's something I feel. (Not that I feel it would be devalued ex post facto by being paid for! Only that if I did it with that end in mind it would be devalued. I have struggled recently with writing because I am conflicted between the need to write what I want to write -- currently nothing much, as it happens, and nothing much for some years -- and the need to be "publishable". I find it hard to convince myself that I would actually be publishable if I just wrote what I can. So I have ended up with a novel that I do not actually like because I felt I should compromise (I don't not like it because I compromised but because the outcome was no good) and now I feel I cannot achieve either end -- which is a fucking crap place to be at *mumbles*.) And second I conclude that considering art to be a "shared heritage" is just wankery. Culture is emergent, not something that you can box up and say "this is us". It accretes, and pieces fall away. If you burn a Pollock, nothing is lost, because culture is too amorphous for it to be much affected by losing one tiny part or another (only our habit of looking back at past cultures and summarising them in a way that overneatens the sprawl of human life leads you to think that it is); it will, after all, just be what it is minus the Pollock, plus the memory of it (just as it is now, with pieces sequestered and unseen for years).
posted by Dr Zen @ 9:46 am
21 Comments:
Pollock didn't throw paint at the canvas, and it's a bit Daily Mail to suggest he did. He actually took great care over the placing of his paint, and deserves as much to be thought of as an artist as Rothko or Mondriaan, whatever you think of the result. Cézanne would have recognised him as a descendant of his own in a direct line. It's only because it looked easy that we now have chancers like Hirst and Emin. It's not his fault.
Sorry man but that's bullshit. I've seen a doco in which Pollock explained his "methods". You need to saddle up and get out of town with that bollocks, son.
And Cezanne would certainly have recognised him for what he was.
If you are raised by an artist or within a community that reveres the creation of art the same way an evangalist worships the Creator, you have it drilled into you that if you do not take it upon yourself to study the process of creating art, you will never understand it, and therefore you will have no opinion of value on the subject. However, we all have instinctual preferences, whether it is Damon Hirst, Caravaggio, or Picasso. If someone decided to torch Guernica, it wouldn't make any difference to me. But if they even looked sideways at a Gerhard Richter, I would have to track them down and destroy every individual in their immediate and extended family, and maybe even a neighbour or two.
Pick up an Artforum magazine and you might have more compassion for anyone struggling to understand the world of art, even on a rudimentary level. Not only does the king have no clothes, but his tailor is speaking in tongues, and the townsfolk are taking notes.
Michael Frayn's "Headlong" is a great work of fiction not far off the subject.
Two types of art collectors one is in it simply for the money and see the art as an invesment then there is the art lover who sees themself as the tempoary custodian. Modern art is shit in the same way a lot of Punk music was shit.
I think that's close to true. Punk said "ditch the rules" but some will create beauty out of chaos, some will just create chaos
I'm always amazed at what is available at auction: art, historical papers, one of a kind things.
Do you not believe in the moral rights some countries have codified as belonging to the creator of a work irrespective of who "owns" the work? I believe destruction of a work falls in that category.
re Pollock
No one else is going to say it, so I will. Jackson Pollock is shit. Modern art is shit. A guy throwing paint on a canvas is not an artist.
I've been saying that for years. Well, except crap is my favored word.
re Pollock
That seems to be saying that there was deliberate method to his paint scribbling. That doesn't make it any the less crap.
So, when do we get to see the novel.
- -
Okay,
Father Luke
Sal, I have some serious problems with the whole moral rights thing. Whereas I believe that attribution is important, I don't wholly believe that art that is part of an ongoing cultural narrative "belongs" to the author.
As for Pollock's having some method to his madness, I'm reminded of Apocalypse Now: "I don't see any *method* at all."
Father Luke, I doubt you'll ever see my novel, although you're welcome to, because it's a dog.
Normally I think feelings aren't right or wrong, they just are, but I'm prepared to make an exception. I think you see this incorrectly, and I think it may be that you have a misplaced focus on the money rather than the art. There's a biblical concept that is aimed at the pastor or missionary who have devoted their life to service, but I think it's also apt in the world of art.
Don't muzzle the ox when he's treading the grain.
A sincere artist is performing a service for his culture and for humanity, however small. Sure, some perform that service better than others, and some of those will reap greater rewards, and others undeserving will do so by coming up with the latest fad or whatever.
There is no shame in seeking compensation for one's art. It's important rather to remember that you're not writing for money, you're seeking sustenance to continue your art, for if the art is of any cultural value at all, how are we to hope to see that art realized if the artist is otherwise engaged in trying to feed himself and his family?
Hope that makes sense.
It's important rather to remember that you're not writing for money, you're seeking sustenance to continue your art, for if the art is of any cultural value at all, how are we to hope to see that art realized if the artist is otherwise engaged in trying to feed himself and his family?
Oh, I like that reasoning, Anthony.
re Pollock
That seems to be saying that there was deliberate method to his paint scribbling. That doesn't make it any the less crap.
The point was that Pollock wasn't mindlessly throwing paint on a canvas.
Some folks don't like what he produced. That's fine, but it doesn't mean his art isn't art.
Folks love those Norman Rockwell bits and the Painter of Light, Kinkade. I don't much, but I know someone who thinks Kinkade is the top o' the heap.
Fine.
I prefer Kawase Hasui and Hiroshi Yoshida and Marcia Briggs but I wouldn't question the belief that Kinkade is an artist and his work is art.
I love Ruth Asawa's stuff and have since the first time I saw it. But if you search the commentaries on her current exhibit at the DeYoung, you'll find other people find it oh so bo-ring and question her "artist" credentials. We're planning to go over to the DeYoung soon-ish to see what she has there, but if we weren't already familiar with her, would we skip the show? Should we, based on negative reviews?
People don't like the Pollock's work? That's okay, understandable even, but to say because they don't like the art (when others do) that Pollock's work isn't art and should be tossed in the dung heap of history defines smugness.
LOFL. "I have some idea where I'm throwing this paint that I'm throwing at the canvas to make some splashes with" equals "I am an artist".
He was a fucking fraud, who a couple of people who didn't like representational art because it didn't fit their theory of aesthetics (following Bell's ideas of form over meaning) pumped up until no one felt they could say "this is actually shit" without everyone thinking they were a bumpkin or clueless. As I say, emperor's new clothes.
Well, P.T. Barnum was right - there's a sucker in every crowd...
I just ignore it - I mean, I wouldn't pay that much for something my dog or a monkey could do, but that's human nature. We tend to promote incompetents to positions of power, so why should a huge price for ersatz art be exempt?
we're raving maniacs, which takes me to my creation theory and why some still act like gibbering monkeys and others have half a clue... but duty calls.
I don't spend my money on stuff I loathe or don't respect. If others do, fine, and some of them might be acquaintances, but like calls to like and that's what floats my cork best. I think some of my photos are better than paintings, but they're still pix.
One of my favorite pieces of art is an unsigned print of a proud chincoteague pony - could have been the guy who illustrated for Marguerite Henry and it could be some unknown talent long gone. I love the print - that's what makes it precious art.
what do I know? I'm a working girl who lives on a shoestring, driven mad by creativity...
cheerio
Layla
The point was that Pollock wasn't mindlessly throwing paint on a canvas.
And my point was just because he thought through where he was going to throw it and what he threw first does not make it art. Anyone can do that. Some might even be able to do it better than he could. I've seen elephant art that was more aesthetically pleasing and the elephants chose their colors deliberately. When you see works by different elephants you can see they each have their own style and choice of colors. I just don't think that we ought to call something that elephants can do art in any serious sense of the word, and what Pollock did might have been emotionally (and financially) rewarding for him, but I can't take it seriously.
I can't stand Pollock's stuff but I love some pieces I've seen done with watercolor where the colors run together in marvelous ways. I would hang them on my walls and create a decor that would blend with it, but I wouldn't call it art, not in the sense that I think art deserves the name. It's decoration.
I call myself an artist because I have what I call the soul of one, and I hope to one day be one, but I may never get there. I won't consider myself an artist until I consider myself adept, skillful, practiced, GOOD, at what I do. In the works that Pollock is known for, he may have been adept, skillful, practiced, good, but not as an artist, merely as a thrower of paint.
Wow! I don't know what happened but I can comment now. I never could before. Is this a benefit to switching to beta?
I like Pollock.
Sometimes in a Pollock I see the composition and there's a distant sort of resonance. But that happens looking at a random view out the bus window, too.
Kinkade. He's technically competent and found a marketable niche (started just up the hill from me too) but I hate his work. I don't just not like it. I hate it. Every piece draws me in with its manipulation of light and its aura of overdone sentimentality and if I give it more than three seconds of my time I feel like, shit, I got fooled again. Fuckwad. I'd hate it marginally less if his popularity didn't prove how much our society combines excess wealth with a near-total lack of sensibility.
Kinkade isn't art, Don. That's Christmas cards.
Kinkade isn't Christmas cards, Zen. It's shite.
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