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I just saw an interesting video on "How Jackson Pollock became so overrated."[1] Summary: It was due to the enormous influence of a single critic who was a Pol

I just saw an interesting video on "How Jackson Pollock became so overrated."[1] Summary: It was due to the enormous influence of a single critic who was a Pollock fan. As an artist, I find it incredibly sad that critics and other gatekeepers (such as museum curators and gallery owners) have any influence at all. Fortunately, these days the need for such gatekeepers is diminishing, as artists can get their art (at least in digital form) directly in front of their audience, though at the same time new gatekeepers like search engines and platform owners are arising. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOGDDh1thaQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOGDDh1thaQ

lemmsjid 6y ago
I think there's a certain amount of risk each artist needs to take, in any medium, where on one side you see the intentionally accessible art of the television show, and on the other side you see art that challenges the audience in some way: be it obscure, or inherently referential, or historically situated. I love challenging art, but without an art history degree I often can't appreciate it fully without also immersing myself in some critical writing on it. Challenging art almost need to be paired with critics who can provide useful metaphors, historical contexts, or what-have-you to help appreciate the art. Part of my appreciation of challenging works of art comes from reading interesting critical appraisals of them. In those situations I think of the critics and the artists as being somewhat intertwined. I quite agree on the gatekeeper side of things, e.g. critiques who are mainly concerned with questions of taste and judgement, where art that challenges certain norms is judged poorly.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  There is a role for art education, and for providing context in which art can be understood. However, the hierarchical ranking of artists by critics in to "great" and "minor" is often just a matter of taste and opinion, and that's what I object to. I can't count the number of times I've gone in to famous museums and galleries and found them stocked to the gills with art that I considered absolute and utter garbage. Now, of course the curators, critics, and gallery owners who extol such art have a different opinion of this art than I do, or they wouldn't have put it in to their museums and galleries, but really who's to say their opinion is any better than anyone else's?
acomjean 6y ago
> As an artist, I find it incredibly sad that critics and other gatekeepers (such as museum curators and gallery owners) have any influence at all. You sound like Banksy in the forward to "War and Piece". I'm somewhat convinced that Art to a large extent is marketing. How some art gets noticed and into museums confuses me. (Piling things on the floor, no matter how clever the explanation, isn't great. Hanging wood boards on the wall is nice, I love wood grain but no..). Its frustrating to some extent because there is some fantastic art out there by relatively unknown artists. I help out with a local open studios event (visit artists in their studio spaces). Very few of the 300+ member artists can make a living solely from their art. Under lockdown its even harder.
the_af 6y ago
Jackson Pollock -- and in general, abstract expressionism -- was also used by the CIA as a covert Cold War weapon against the USSR. This was a major source of funding for this kind of art, in fact. Does this sound bonkers and like a conspiracy theory? It does -- but it's also pretty mainstream knowledge by now: the CIA thought abstract expressionism was the polar opposite of Soviet "socialist realism". Any form of art denounced by the Soviet Union was worth supporting by the US. From https://medium.com/@MichaelMcBride/how-jackson-pollock-and-the-cia-teamed-up-to-win-the-cold-war-6734c40f5b14 https://medium.com/@MichaelMcBride/how-jackson-pollock-and-t... Former CIA agent Donald Jameson: > “We recognized that this was the kind of art that did not have anything to do with socialist realism… Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of nonconformity… So one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticized that much and that heavyhandedly was worth support in one way or another.” and later > Fundamentally, the CIA made Jackson Pollock rich. They made De Kooning and Rothko household names. And in doing so, they won the cold war. Not with guns, but with abstract expressionism and rock and roll. This does sound bonkers to me but it's not a fringe theory mentioned by conspiracy websites. See other mainstream references: - https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-... - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-... It's important to know the supported artists weren't necessarily aware of how they were being used. In fact, almost surely they weren't. But this was a major source of funding, and it was political in aim.

lemmsjid 6y ago

I think there's a certain amount of risk each artist needs to take, in any medium, where on one side you see the intentionally accessible art of the television show, and on the other side you see art that challenges the audience in some way: be it obscure, or inherently referential, or historically situated. I love challenging art, but without an art history degree I often can't appreciate it fully without also immersing myself in some critical writing on it. Challenging art almost need to be paired with critics who can provide useful metaphors, historical contexts, or what-have-you to help appreciate the art. Part of my appreciation of challenging works of art comes from reading interesting critical appraisals of them. In those situations I think of the critics and the artists as being somewhat intertwined. I quite agree on the gatekeeper side of things, e.g. critiques who are mainly concerned with questions of taste and judgement, where art that challenges certain norms is judged poorly.

pmoriarty 6y ago
There is a role for art education, and for providing context in which art can be understood. However, the hierarchical ranking of artists by critics in to "great" and "minor" is often just a matter of taste and opinion, and that's what I object to. I can't count the number of times I've gone in to famous museums and galleries and found them stocked to the gills with art that I considered absolute and utter garbage. Now, of course the curators, critics, and gallery owners who extol such art have a different opinion of this art than I do, or they wouldn't have put it in to their museums and galleries, but really who's to say their opinion is any better than anyone else's?

acomjean 6y ago

> As an artist, I find it incredibly sad that critics and other gatekeepers (such as museum curators and gallery owners) have any influence at all. You sound like Banksy in the forward to "War and Piece". I'm somewhat convinced that Art to a large extent is marketing. How some art gets noticed and into museums confuses me. (Piling things on the floor, no matter how clever the explanation, isn't great. Hanging wood boards on the wall is nice, I love wood grain but no..). Its frustrating to some extent because there is some fantastic art out there by relatively unknown artists. I help out with a local open studios event (visit artists in their studio spaces). Very few of the 300+ member artists can make a living solely from their art. Under lockdown its even harder.

the_af 6y ago

Jackson Pollock -- and in general, abstract expressionism -- was also used by the CIA as a covert Cold War weapon against the USSR. This was a major source of funding for this kind of art, in fact. Does this sound bonkers and like a conspiracy theory? It does -- but it's also pretty mainstream knowledge by now: the CIA thought abstract expressionism was the polar opposite of Soviet "socialist realism". Any form of art denounced by the Soviet Union was worth supporting by the US. From https://medium.com/@MichaelMcBride/how-jackson-pollock-and-the-cia-teamed-up-to-win-the-cold-war-6734c40f5b14 https://medium.com/@MichaelMcBride/how-jackson-pollock-and-t... Former CIA agent Donald Jameson: > “We recognized that this was the kind of art that did not have anything to do with socialist realism… Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of nonconformity… So one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticized that much and that heavyhandedly was worth support in one way or another.” and later > Fundamentally, the CIA made Jackson Pollock rich. They made De Kooning and Rothko household names. And in doing so, they won the cold war. Not with guns, but with abstract expressionism and rock and roll. This does sound bonkers to me but it's not a fringe theory mentioned by conspiracy websites. See other mainstream references: - https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-... - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-... It's important to know the supported artists weren't necessarily aware of how they were being used. In fact, almost surely they weren't. But this was a major source of funding, and it was political in aim.