The first video I chose was Greenberg on Art Criticism : An Interview by T.J. Clark. I had no idea who either Greenberg or T.J. Clark were prior to the video, but I figured it might give some sense as to what art critics are thinking about when they critique a work, and how there own personal tastes or prejudices may interfere with an objective judgement or critique. I think one of the main issues discussed by Greenberg is his belief that art is more difficult to write about than literature or music in the sense that art cannot be pinned down by the "score". I think this belief is based on the increasing intellectual and philosophical development of art, and in particular from artists like Picasso, Miro, or Jackson Pollock who push the envelope into new realms of visual presentation. I found it interesting when Greenberg compared himself to other art critics of the past, and concluded that these were "better minds" that just happended to be limited from the resources available to them at the time. I liked how Greenberg described good art as created from the "whole being", and the taste of the viewer as being directly related to world experience and the ability to assimilate everything around us. I think this is part of the problem presented to art critics - the world and access to information is constantly changing, and as Greenberg states in his interview about the work of Jackson Pollock, even the critics can be wrong from time to time.
I chose Greenberg on Pollock because I never understood the work of Jackson Pollock, and was hoping to maybe discover something that I was missing, either intellectually or visually. I think even Greenberg has a hard time describing the work of Pollock, as he at one point rather assuredly referred to Pollock as Daenycean, while later admitting that he may have in fact been Appolinean ( and I'm not sure what either means, really. I'll have to look it up later ). Greenberg seems to appreciate Pollock's style, a procedure of paint application which didn't "cut", or break the plane. He also credits Pollock as a visionary in his attempt to show us the future of painting in murals, while still embodying the eisel style. However, I personally have an issue with labeling Pollock's work as visionary or even "relevant" as Greenberg himself would say. While the procedure of Pollock's style may have been unique, I think there is almost an inevitable outcome to be reached from a limited pallette of colors being repeatedly splashed or dripped across a canvas. The seemingly orderly finish, a feature which Greenberg states is essential to a good piece of art, I think can be easily manipulated through various layers of paint. Honestly, I tend to think that Pollock's "orderly" outcomes from a unique style can be achieved by anyone, even those among us with little or no artistic talent, who is willing to get a big messy. I am almost tempted to clean out my garage, lay down some plastic and a large canvas, and prove my point. I am sure I will try this at some point, just as I am sure that I will one day have a clean garage...
I chose the video of Michael Fried and T.J. Clark conversing about Pollock's Lavender Mist because I still wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing something. This video focused mainly on the agreements and differences between the two critics concerning the work of Pollock, yet the conversation was to be based on the mutual understanding of Jackson Pollock as a major modern master of art. Fried and Clarke reach the ultimate conclusion that Jackson Pollock represented a new breakthrough for the intensification of the painting surface; that he was a pioneer in pushing the realm of abstraction to the unknown point beyond even the non-representational. While I admire this quality, and think that my own art can benefit from constantly pushing myself beyond the limits of my imagination, I tend to think that the energy created in Pollock's work is overrated, and tend to agree with Greenberg when he ends one of his interviews by saying that Pollock "was full of shit just like everybody else."
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