Benjamin Franklin on Colbert Report

Jackson Pollock - Still Capturing the Vibes of our Modern Days

This Pollock's piece "One" is called "a landmark of Abstract Expressionism".  His paintings in this series (shown below) epitomize my feeling expressed earlier about modern art resonating the vibes of our modern-day societies... nervous, chaotic turbulence tied together with ever thining web of old-world orders (honor, courage, integrity, family value, etc.)... The description found in museum's publication is so eloquent that I would like to quote here.

"One is a masterpiece of the "drip," or pouring, technique, the radical method that Pollock contributed to Abstract Expressionism. Moving around an expanse of canvas laid on the floor, Pollock would fling and pour ropes of paint across the surface. One is among the largest of his works that bear evidence of these dynamic gestures. The canvas pulses with energy: strings and skeins of enamel, some matte, some glossy, weave and run, an intricate web of tans, blues, and grays lashed through with black and white. The way the paint lies on the canvas can suggest speed and force, and the image as a whole is dense and lush—yet its details have a lacelike filigree, a delicacy, a lyricism.

The Surrealists' embrace of accident as a way to bypass the conscious mind sparked Pollock's experiments with the chance effects of gravity and momentum on falling paint. Yet although works like One have neither a single point of focus nor any obvious repetition or pattern, they sustain a sense of underlying order. This and the physicality of Pollock's method have led to comparisons of his process with choreography, as if the works were the traces of a dance. Some see in paintings like One the nervous intensity of the modern city, others the primal rhythms of nature."

Top: Jackson Pollock. (American, 1912-1956). One: Number 31, 1950. 1950. Oil and enamel on unprimed canvas, 8' 10" x 17' 5 5/8" (269.5 x 530.8 cm).

Left: Jackson Pollock. (American, 1912-1956). Full Fathom Five. 1947. Oil on canvas with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes, matches, etc., 50 7/8 x 30 1/8" (129.2 x 76.5 cm).

The other observation I made is that science principles and discoveries have played certain underlying role in the Artists' mind when coming up with their art.  Like mentioned here "Gravity" (Einstein, Quantum Physics, Theory of Relativity, etc. come up often in others' work, especially in the exhibition I saw later at the Guggenheim Museum).

Learn More about Jackson Pollock.

Jasper Johns - Flag 1954-55

This painting has been used by many as an icon of American patriotism.  What is interesting to me is the underlying layer of the painting that comprise bits and pieces of newspaper columns ...and in a way encapsulating the moment in time when the Artist created this piece. You can see these pieces when you zoom in on the picture.

Andy Warhol in Primary Colors

Here's the description from the MOMA website....


"I don't think art should be only for the select few," Warhol believed, "I think it should be for the mass of the American people." Like other Pop artists, Warhol used images of already proven appeal to huge audiences: comic strips, ads, photographs of rock-music and movie stars, tabloid news shots. In Campbell's Soup Cans he reproduced an object of mass consumption in the most literal sense. When he first exhibited these canvases (in 1962) —there are thirty-two of them, the number of soup varieties Campbell's then sold—each one simultaneously hung from the wall, like a painting, and stood on a shelf, like groceries in a store.

Repeating the same image at the same scale, the canvases stress the uniformity and ubiquity of the Campbell's can. At the same time, they subvert the idea of painting as a medium of invention and originality. Visual repetition of this kind had long been used by advertisers to drum product names into the public consciousness; here, though, it implies not energetic competition but a complacent abundance. Outside an art gallery, the Campbell's label, which had not changed in over fifty years, was not an attention-grabber but a banality. As Warhol said of Campbell's soup, "I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch everyday, for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.". More about Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe.

And that was my 15 minutes of FAME....Remember my name. FAME, I'm gonna live forever.....

Dancing with Matisse

This is the famous Dance...that "in March 1909, Matisse received a commission from the Russian merchant Sergei Shchukin for two large decorative panels, Dance and Music (now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg). This painting was made quickly as a compositional study for Dance, which was intended to hang on a staircase landing at Shchukin's Trubetskoy Palace, in Moscow. The figure at left appears to move purposefully, while the other dancers seem to float weightlessly. The momentum of their movement breaks the circle as the arm of the foreground dancer reaches out. Dance, Matisse once said, evoked "life and rhythm."  According to some, when this long-awaited painting arrived, it was not too well received.  However, it became one of Matisse's most famous work and deemed by many an icon for feminism movement.

Normally, I don't particularly like Matisse's style but some pieces are captivating...like this series of bronze sculptures of Jeannette.(Henri Matisse. (French, 1869-1954). Jeannette (I). Issy-les-Moulineaux, early 1910).  I love the minimalist display on a blank wall.  It's no secret that presentation of art (and everything for that matter) is equally important as the object of display itself.... Can we quote Marshall McLuhan..."Medium is the Message"?

Picasso - The Musicians

This is one of my Picasso's favorites as it's less violent and yet still passionate (if I may use the terms) compared to his earlier pieces... I can feel a sense of calmer disposition in the Artist... the same way I feel at this stage in life.  Not that one becomes dispassionate advancing in years, but the passion is based on a more stable foundation, I think.

"The three musicians and dog conjure a bygone period of bohemian life, enjoyed here by Picasso in the guise of a Harlequin flanked by two figures who may represent poet–friends of the artist's: Guillaume Apollinaire, who was recently deceased, and Max Jacob. The patterned flatness of the work is derived from cut–and–pasted paper, and stands in stark contrast to the sculptural monumentality of Picasso's Three Women at the Spring, also painted in the summer of 1921."

Pablo Picasso. (Spanish, 1881-1973). Three Musicians. Fontainebleau, summer 1921. Oil on canvas, 6' 7" x 7' 3 3/4" (200.7 x 222.9 cm). Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2008 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

 

New York Meseum of Modern Art (MOMA)

Never thought I would appreciate modern art, but I found myself loving them more and more... It's like looking through a revolving mirror that shows gradual change of societies' mood and tone.  The posts after this are some of my favorites.

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Note: Van Gough's The Olive Trees