this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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Pollock is popular because of this exact thing. He "challenged" the idea of art as the Dada movement had done. You can absolutely hate it but like Warhol it made conversations and questions about process and astetics. By making a meme about it you have in fact thought about what art is and aesthetics you prefer. A Pollock painting made you do that.
People saying he do not select colors or use technique is just false. He would use a pulley system for large scale canvases and spread the colors quite purposefully. Remember this is the time of "happenings" like applying body paint and rolling on canvases, cutting up the canvas and applying newsprint, burning things, etc.
I don't even like Pollock but not to recognize him in museums within a moment of abstract expression would be a disservice. I've had plenty of students say. "I could paint that!". But there are two points they always misunderstand. 1. Pollock was an established painter who drastically changed styles. Many artists show that they can paint or draw in the traditional style but choose to push what is even art. Some people at this time said the "process" was art not the painting hanging in the museum. 2. Everyone who tries to replicate a Pollock typically just uses some random paints with some bushes and just sort of flings it around. If you actually look at a Pollock in person up close. Yes you can see unevenness is created from not having full control of the paint on the brush but thought seems to go into exactly where the paint will land so that you have even coverage or at angles with different brushes. They is motion in how the paint drips. I can say that many of them I've seen are very much not "random" as you would think it would be.
Again I don't care for the work as there are plenty of other abstract expressions to choose from like Hans Hofmann, Helen Frankenthaler who used Pollock as an influence.
I would assume that most people who criticize modern forms of art are criticizing the painting hanging in the museum. The more someone likes modern art, the more likely they are to learn about the artist and the process. The less someone likes modern art, the less they're going to learn about that, so the more the focus will just be on the painting itself.
That's "Pollock the influencer". Influencing has always been part of art, I'm sure. Would Dali's paintings have been as influential if Dali hadn't also been a moustache artist? Probably not. However, I think you invite chaos if you consider things other than the painting hanging in the museum.
Why? Because if "you thought about their art" is a major criterion, then Hitler is an important artist. Look how often people have made memes about Hitler and his art. If you go by how often the artist's art is posted, Hitler's probably a more important artist than Picasso.
Hitler didn't kill millions of people to make you think about his art. Pollock intentionally wanted to create art that makes people think about what counts as art. His methods certainly worked.
So now you have to get into the mind of the artist and if their fame influenced the knowledge of their art, but they didn't achieve that fame in order to promote their art, you can ignore their art? That seems very convoluted.
A better idea is just to ignore the artist and focus on the paint on the canvas.
Why? Why ignore the process? Why does the idea of thinking critically about what the art means and not just how the art looks make you uncomfortable? You don't have to do anything, but trying to make an equivalence between someone taking actions in their field to challenge established ideas and someone who is only known as an artist due to unrelated atrocities is ridiculous. You're making the exact same arguments that traditional painters made against impressionism, now widely recognized as masterful artworks (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc), which were similarly making statements about what could and could not be considered art. Just as with any of those other artists, you don't have to like Pollock's work, or agree with the statement he was making with it, but to act like it isn't art, or that the things we're saying with art don't matter, would be pretentious.
I don't like Pollock's art. I don't think the statement he was making was particularly revolutionary, and I think other artists he was contemporary with accomplished the same statement far better (Rothko). However, this "just focus on the paint on the canvas" thing is silly, and artists have widely rejected it. Art should mean something. It's why human design and intent will always be worth more than AI's best Monet facsimile.
Hey, if you want to focus on the biography of the artists, and everything that isn't on the canvas, you can do that. I think the focus should be on what's on the canvas, and how that makes someone think and feel.
Your way seems to be proto-influencer culture, where someone is famous for being famous, and being famous means their work is more important.
You clearly didn't read my whole comment. Your argument is the exact same that was made against Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, etc. It's not about the artist. I didn't say it was, and I don't understand why you replied like I did. It's about the meaning behind the art, the statement it is making. It has nothing to do with whatever influencer thing you're talking about, and everything to do with what the art is saying.
By rejecting the traditional realism of their time, artists like Van Gogh and Monet made a statement that perfection and realism weren't all there is to art, and that impressions of the subject can be beautiful. Artists like Rothko made the statement that the subject does not have to be literal, but can be the art itself. Cubism was all about this. Pollock is doing the exact same thing, but pushing it to an even more dramatic extreme.
IT ISN'T ABOUT THE ARTIST. Do me the basic respect of understanding this one part of my statement. It's about art meaning something because of what techniques were used, how it is presented, when it is presented, and the context that inspired it.
What is on the page is important, but why it's on the page and what message the art is conveying is equally so, and I'd argue much more. You continue to misinterpret this fact as not only less than quintessential to art, which any artist will tell you that it is, but insignificant and silly to consider.
How do you determine the meaning behind the art? Who gets to determine that?
Those are great questions to be asking. An artist may intend one thing, and the viewer gets another. That's the nature of art. There is no objective right answer. I always ask myself, why did the artist make the choices they did? What is this painting trying to say by the choices in techniques and composition? Those might be hard questions to answer, depending on how much context you have, but thinking about them anyways is valuable.
Personally, I get what Pollock was going for, but it falls flat for me, whereas Rothko and others made that point more effectively. When I first view a Pollock, for example, I think, what is the subject of this painting? There is no obvious center of focus, and the play between positive and negative space is relatively even. Perhaps the subject is color, or contrast, or randomness, or even art itself. I consider each option. On first glance, I see randomness. I look closer, I see that there is intentionality, but the technique was simple (dripping). The artist is clearly capable of more advanced techniques (the background is evenly applied with precise brush strokes, and perhaps I've seen another painting of his that uses different techniques) but chose something simple instead. Why? Maybe to say art doesn't need skill? Maybe to say that simplicity is beautiful?
There are no right answers, but by asking these questions I develop my critical thinking ability and understanding of art. You might ask these questions and still arrive at the answer, "I hate it, and it's dumb." That's okay. It is still art, and art can mean different things to different people. It just wasn't for you. Pollock isn't for me, but I still gained something by thinking about the meaning and the purpose behind his paintings.
If you are interested in developing a greater appreciation, or at least understanding, of art, study the history. Even a cursory understanding of the social, political, and artistic movements of a time can tell you a lot about why an artist made the choices they did. Impressionism was a movement born out of an era of photorealism and perfect proportion. Pollock's paintings came from an era of established subjects and rigid techniques. Regardless, you don't need to know the history to think about art.