at the risk of making this more confused....
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Strangelet
What I like about your definition is that it handles the problem of esotericism. What I mean is there are certain artists like Jackson Pollock who people generally want to call pretentious. Especially when they throw a fit when they see their splatter paint being hung upside down at the Met. Unfortunately nobody knows if his splatter paint really does say something about his worldview because its done in a language that only he is fluent enough to discern. You would have no problem calling him pretentious based on the experience of seeing his paintings.
What I like about my definition is that actually provides an objective measure on art where you can say an artist is pretentious or not definitively. Just as you can tell whether or not a lie is a lie definitively. And my experience is usually its pretty obvious when there's a deliberate facade or falsity about a work. And if it isn't obvious it soon will be. (right, moby?) This is why I'm hesitent to say AC is pretentious. For now.
|
i still think that reading an artist's intentions into his work, and reading the work itself, need to be two separate experiences. underneath the framework with which you consider Pollock, i'd probably agree that he would by definition have to be "pretentious." but i don't actually see him or his work as pretentious--largely because i see his splatter arrangements as conveying a pure visuality: his work retains such a visceral power even without having any knowledge of his process or stated intentions. the paint isn't an obtuse language meant to communicate some arcane worldview; the paint itself IS the communication. partly this is Pollock's genius (he accomplished what any artist wants, to become one with his medium); partly it's the abstract expressionist era he was a part of.
but this is tangential--the point being that if you simply
read Pollock's work, without trying to read
into it too much, then you can see what the work itself has to say (not that you don't know this, but for the sake of this point) ... i acknowledge that Pollock's methods were audacious without getting hung up on their audacity, and the issue of whether or not he was "pretentious," because to me, the paintings are amazing, and i HAVE to accept all the splatter as a totally pure extension of the artist's self.
this is similar to what i was saying about the Ghost record--the music is powerful enough to negate the word "pretentious" altogether. i could maybe retroactively apply the label "pretentious" to the band, but it is completely beside the point. whereas a less successful artist is going to need to deal with his work coming across as pretentious (not that we can't enjoy pretentious-seeming work anyway; we all do)--until he hits upon that ideal balance of audacity (inspiration) and execution that transcends the issue entirely.
i'm not really disagreeing w/ you, just attempting to clarify my stance .. if only for myself