Word: pollock
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...that? As a rule, art grabs the popular imagination in either of two ways. One is to offer crescendos of feeling, real or simulated. That explains the long lines for any show billed "Van Gogh" or "Pollock." And in the '80s that partly explained the otherwise inexplicable fame of Schnabel, whose big, slapdash canvases seemed contrived for no greater purpose than to proclaim his muscular intention to proclaim muscular intentions. The other route an artist can pursue is to borrow from readily understood sources in pop culture. That would describe Basquiat's graffiti-derived gestures and Koons' life-size renditions...
...malefactions by relegating all of its female characters to the status of groupie or prostitute. By placing the maligned female voices in the film in the background, Kwon-taek falls into the same trap that has marred so many other artist biopics—recall Ed Harris’ Pollock...
...first time I saw Dorian Gray in that gallery, I couldn’t even look at No. 2 afterward. In comparison, the Pollock just seemed compleltely unstimulating: flat, bland, tame. I remember being very angry about this. I knew that the Pollock was a good painting, but I felt that Kline had somehow spoiled it for me. It was as if I had snacked on too much salty junk food and couldn’t taste anymore when I sat down to eat a nice meal...
...felt that Kline hadn’t beaten Pollock, he had simply outshouted him. He had taken one appealing aspect of Pollock’s painting—its base materiality—and excessively amplified it. And I think this kind of one-upsmanship is especially dangerous when it comes to base materiality or any similar strategy specifically designed to provoke a strong visceral response from the viewer. The problem is not that these strategies don’t suceed, but rather that they suceed far too well. At a certain point I think the visceral-reaction-inducing qualities...
...next time I visited that gallery, I realized that maybe Kline hadn’t really spoiled Pollock for me, and that to think so was merely the symptom of overly dogmatic thinking on my part. After all, Kline could only really spoil Pollock if they existed as two competing entities on the same spectrum of a single quality (in this case, base materiality). But of course the relationship between two works of art, let alone the works themselves, are never actually that simple. And indeed, on my next visit the Pollock no longer looked boring compared to the Kline...