happy b'day jackson

i remember arguing w/jerry houston(rip)down at new college about pollock. "o please," he sneered, "no one's going to know who that paint slinger is in 50 years! it's gonna be andy all the way, baby." i thought this was absurd. warhol? he didn't even paint anymore. i knew this couldn't be right.

we haven't made 50 years yet but nearly 35 years after our friendly argument, i'm feeling on the losing end here. i could argue that we were both right & i think that's true. but warhol has dominated art history discourse for the last 20 years the way pollock did in the 60s & early 70s. as we went sailing into the new millenium, pollock & warhol were the standards of the last half of the 20th century(much like picasso & duchamp were in the first half).



pollock's contribution to the way we see the world(& art)is well documented. imagine totally re-aligning the visual field, shifting perspective from the verticle(wall)to the horizonal(floor). the legs are knocked out from under the viewer. however, instead of compromising p.o.v. pollock gave the viewer a ringside seat at god's table, the visual field now seen from above & gushing forth from his dripping stick, sprayed & flung indiscriminately onto the white(white, WHITE!!, get it?) canvas below. how macho is that?

of course, andy did change all this. the myth of the macho creator artist took a hit back in that late 70s. warhol's use of reproduction, technology, industrial process all helped bring the "creation" myth down. in the new millenium, classical aesthetics(say, collingwood)are out the door & jessica simpson is being referred to as an artist. good friends(he knows who he is)are ensconced in the new rejection of the old "affective" fallacy: it's all "i like what i like & i don't care about history or anything else because i don't have to justify what i like." i suppose this would be ok if these folks had no dislikes.

pollock would have been 96yo today(andy would be 81yo on aug6th this year). i'm amazed. things seem to be going by a little faster than i anticipated(for example, jerry is already dead). i'm thinking that things that matter should start REALLY mattering at this point. that i'm still thinking about both of these artists, that i feel like they reoriented our way of looking at the world(& art), that each in different ways made living in the world challenging & fulfilling are just the gifts they gave to us w/o being asked. back during the day, the knock on pollock was "my kid could do that." you can't say that about warhol's art. all the various technological processes renders that waggish point idiotic. of course, lack of knowledge(historical, technological, aesthetic)has never slowed down anyone's opinion about art: " hey, my kid could think that."

yep. you are so right.