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Weekend Assignment #176: Tell us of one piece of culture -- book, movie, album, painting, play, architectural "masterpiece," whatever -- that you think is wildly overrated.
As it happens, I had this very conversation with my librarian just before school was out for the year. She has a degree in art history, and teaches Art Appreciation at the university near here. One afternoon, I happened to mention that I thought Jackson Pollack's painting, One: Number 32, 1950 was overrated. I first saw it when I was a child - it was included in my game Masterpiece, and I always seemed to end up being forced to buy it. It looked to me like nothing but crumpled tin foil.
My librarian argued that it wasn't the beauty (or lack thereof) that was important, but the fact that Pollack had done something no one else had ever thought to do before. Which is all well and good, but I harbor certain suspicions that his groundbreaking act of flinging paint around the room was less of an impact on art than it was on the high fashion folks. You know the ones, who desperately desire to remain so unfathomable to the rest of humanity that they'll adopt any trend, as long as they can find it first. Besides, anyone who thinks flinging ropes of paint was new...they've never hung around a toddler, apparently. Since the first time a child was handed a giant paintbrush and a cup of tempera paint (at least as early as the late 19th century, with Maria Montessori), that style has existed. Pollack got the credit because of the intense way he lived his life, and because he was a grown man who should have known better.
Real art should evoke an emotional response in the viewer. If I look at it, and see only wasted kitchen supplies, the only emotional response I feel is the need to clean my kitchen. And I have far more interesting things I'd rather be thinking about.
Having said all that, I ought to mention that I love Delacroix's Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha. It has movement, and life, and I could stare at it for hours. THAT is what I want from art.
As it happens, I had this very conversation with my librarian just before school was out for the year. She has a degree in art history, and teaches Art Appreciation at the university near here. One afternoon, I happened to mention that I thought Jackson Pollack's painting, One: Number 32, 1950 was overrated. I first saw it when I was a child - it was included in my game Masterpiece, and I always seemed to end up being forced to buy it. It looked to me like nothing but crumpled tin foil.
My librarian argued that it wasn't the beauty (or lack thereof) that was important, but the fact that Pollack had done something no one else had ever thought to do before. Which is all well and good, but I harbor certain suspicions that his groundbreaking act of flinging paint around the room was less of an impact on art than it was on the high fashion folks. You know the ones, who desperately desire to remain so unfathomable to the rest of humanity that they'll adopt any trend, as long as they can find it first. Besides, anyone who thinks flinging ropes of paint was new...they've never hung around a toddler, apparently. Since the first time a child was handed a giant paintbrush and a cup of tempera paint (at least as early as the late 19th century, with Maria Montessori), that style has existed. Pollack got the credit because of the intense way he lived his life, and because he was a grown man who should have known better.
Real art should evoke an emotional response in the viewer. If I look at it, and see only wasted kitchen supplies, the only emotional response I feel is the need to clean my kitchen. And I have far more interesting things I'd rather be thinking about.
Having said all that, I ought to mention that I love Delacroix's Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha. It has movement, and life, and I could stare at it for hours. THAT is what I want from art.
