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My favorite painting in the world is Jackson Pollock's Mural, his first major painting. It's owned by my alma mater the U of Iowa. The canvas is 9x20 iirc, just
by beat 8y ago
My favorite painting in the world is Jackson Pollock's Mural, his first major painting. It's owned by my alma mater the U of Iowa. The canvas is 9x20 iirc, just huge. They used to display it in a large central gallery, where you could look at it from more than 50 feet away, or get your nose right up to it.
One of the great things about this painting is how it is a totally different experience at different distances. From a distance, the sense of right-to-left motion is palpable. Get closer, and figures seem to pop out of it. But really close, you can no longer see the entire painting, but you can see individual brushstrokes (mostly 3-6" house painting brushes, I think). The subtlety and detail of each stroke is extraordinary. There are patterns across the canvas that are a result of large-scale patterns of strokes - it's almost like cursive handwriting.
- jdietrich 8y agoI had a similar experience seeing Summertime Number 9A in the Tate. It just looks like meaningless squiggles when reproduced on a postcard, but in person you can see the structure, the layers of line and shape. You may be interested in this video by the Getty Conservation Institute on the conservation of Mural: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWAbVpkV0jQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWAbVpkV0jQ
- bunderbunder 8y agoAnother of my favorite examples of the "reproduction doesn't do any justice" is Mark Rothko. Like Pollock, he's often held up as example of an artist whose work "doesn't look like anything" and "my kid could do that." And it's true, if you're looking at a poster of a Rothko, it just looks like some large splotches of color. But, in a gallery, people encounter the Rothko and just stop. Many of them will stare at those large splotches of color for 1, 2, 5, even 10 minutes. Turns out there's a whole lot going on there that just doesn't translate into print. Sadly, a lot of the techniques that abstract expressionists used don't translate well into the future, either. Layering just oil paint, that's pretty durable. Layering different kinds of paint, not so much. I've seen a fly dislodge a flake of paint from one of Rothko's paintings just by landing on it.
- largolagrande 8y agoYou might be interested by this video about the challenges faced by conservation scientists with Rothko murals : https://vimeo.com/111469325 https://vimeo.com/111469325