2 ms·

I think the complaint is about attribution. If a friend takes you to the park to watch the cranes and ducks, it would be a stretch to call them a great artist f

I think the complaint is about attribution. If a friend takes you to the park to watch the cranes and ducks, it would be a stretch to call them a great artist for facilitating that potentially sublime experience, because anyone could have taken you. Similarly Pollock's paintings may be aesthetic, but if they are easily imitated, it's hard to argue the works themselves make their author a great artist. To be fair to Pollock, he had the creative insight to make his work in a less permissive period of art, so it's fair to argue he was a great innovator or artist on that merit, but it's a different type of achievement vs 'timeless' pieces of art like (imho) Bernini.

superhuzza 6y ago
>but if they are easily imitated, it's hard to argue the works themselves make their author a great artist. By this logic no writer is a great artist, as anyone could just copy out their books by hand - their work is "easily imitated".
- OJFord 6y ago
  Imitation isn't cloning - writing a novel novel in the style of requires more skill than writing (/painting) out the same thing. What's up for debate I suppose is to what extent a 'non-artist's splodges in immitation of, are stylistically the same but original, or just clones. (Some might also argue that the entropy in such paintings make actual clones rather harder they are of than something more real and 'of something'!)