What makes a Pollock?

At first, I thought Pollock’s work was just an ugly jumble of lines with no rhyme or reason…No matter which direction I looked, the painting still seemed unattractive and messy to me, and didn’t seem to require much talent to produce. I really couldn’t see where all the hype was coming from, especially $140 million worth of hype. Could splashes of paint on a canvas really be worth that much? After seeing the movie in class, I still don’t think that that much money should ever be spent on a single piece of artwork—no matter how good—but I have changed my mind about Pollock to some extent. I’m still not able to look at pieces of his and expound upon its intricacies like the critics in the movie, but I am able to better appreciate his style. After seeing him paint, I understand that the lines of paint on his canvas interact with a sort of purpose, and the swirls of one color really intertwine with the others to make an intricate picture. Also, the article we read in class about fractals showed me that his works really did have more depth than I thought. I would never be able to look at a work and recognize that it has the right fractal number to be a Pollock, but understanding that science proved to me that he wasn’t always just messing around and unexpectedly producing a piece of art. The work he did really did require a special talent, whether it appears that way at first or not.

Because I’m not a Pollock fanatic, it is hard for me to comprehend Terri Horton’s Pollock dilemma because I understand both sides of the debate. If I were in Horton’s shoes, I would be just as outraged that the elite art world refused to acknowledge what seems to be a Pollock simply because of its connection to Horton. It’s my personal opinion that the painting she has is a trashed Pollock—it seems most likely to me that someone would’ve dumpster-dived it and thus the cycle of events leading to Horton’s hands. On the other hand, if I were an art buyer, I wouldn’t buy her piece because it just wouldn’t be a good investment. No matter how much scientific evidence or hearsay is brought up, the art world simply won’t accept the painting on principle. Thus, spending the exorbitant amounts of money usually doled out for Pollock’s would be just plain stupid because the prestige isn’t there—anyone who sees your painting will always be able to claim it’s a fake just as much as you claim it’s real. Honestly, it makes me glad I’m in the sciences and not such a confusing, sensitive environment.

Since Nietzsche is the most recent philosopher we discussed, he popped into my mind when thinking about Pollock’s style. Nietzsche wrote about the conflicts of the Apollonian and Dionysian in art, and that when the Dionysian takes over, the art has a state of disorder/chaos and energy. We even used the word “drunk” to describe the Dionysian state in class. Pollock himself was an alcoholic and apparently more often than not drunk when he painted. I think the way in which he threw himself into painting in his workshop, forgetting everything else and letting the creative energy flow, is very much Dionysian. The final pieces he created seem to me to be jumbled and intertwined and full of energy, captivating the audience. I would therefore included Pollock and his work as following Nietzsche’s art philosophy.