On Jackson Pollock, Art.

On the iPod - Little Red Rooster - Sam Cooke

A fellow developer and old friend recently referred me to Very Short List a nice little page dedicated to high and low culture and Web gems. They were the ones who provided yesterday's link to The Go! Team's video for "Junior Kickstart." Well, I've got something from the same page for today as well.

They linked to a Jackson Pollock related site. At Jacksonpollock.org you can create your own Pollockesqe work thanks to the wonders of Flash and the inspiration of an Etch-A-Sketch.

It's a nice little site if you're looking to kill of time while waiting for a finance who swears she wants you to wake her up at 8 a.m. but then fails to wake up despite repeated phone calls to Missouri. But it also got me thinking about "Art," more specifically, the "art" of Jackson Pollock. Personally, I don't see what Pollock did as being particularly brilliant. Full of torment? A little bit off? Yes. Full of artistic vision? Not in my opinion. Is it art? I would say so.

While many in the art world believe his work is "brilliant" and "beautiful." I experience crap on canvas. But that goes to show how subjective "experiencing" art can be to the appreciator. I love the work of Joel-Peter Witkin, who can be considered off in his own right. The photographer uses the remains of human corpses to recreate baroque scenes, wildly distorts his negatives and then prints.



I love the work of Witkin and certainly see it as art, but is "Art" itself inherently subjective? I would argue that no, it isn't. Of course we experience art in a direct and tangible way that can be expressed in specific emotions. But that isn't any different from how we experience everyday life.

Our emotional reaction to an artist's work has nothing to do with whether it is art or not. It is quite possible to set aside our personal prejudices and evaluate art for its qualities rather than merely how we react to them at a personal or emotional level. That's how I feel about Pollock. I personally think his work is crap and that it doesn't do anything for me aesthetically, but his technique, vision and methods can very much be considered as artistic.