The Existance of God
Certainly no one who makes his living by throwing paint from the end of a stick can claim he's totally in control of the process. I've never been to an AA meeting, but my long-departed mother was the doyenne of the Northern Virginia AA community, so I picked up some stuff. One of the things they like to say in AA is "Don't give up before the miracle happens."
I wonder if Eli Manning goes to AA, 'cause he's certainly on the same page.
Mozart, a man who lived prior to the popularization of simple 4-track, garage-band recording technology, believed his music went up through the roof and straight to God.
But back to the stick business: The thing that annoys me most when people talk about how Jackson Pollock painted is the suggestion that he knew exactly where each drop of paint was headed. Now I'm here to tell you, that just ain't true. I've thrown as much paint off the end of sticks, brushes, lips of cans, holes in cans, hands, fingers--you name it--as the next guy and I'm here to tell you, you don't have the damnedest idea where the stuff is going, give or take at least an inch or two.
That's why you have to paint big. Certainly if you are attempting to create representational images, you have to establish a physical scale large enough to render each imprecise gesture cogent.
Jackson painted big because he had unresolved issues with women (just one man's opinion). He may also have had other, more overtly artistic reasons to do so, but he always struck me as a guy in the middle of a mid-life crisis before they had invented shiny red Corvettes. Thank God they had Pabst Blue Ribbon or I don't know what the guy would have done!
Deion Sanders jumps to mind as well. I'll spare you my complete thoughts on how Deion Sanders, a man with the sartorial sensitivity of a clown but a larger budget and the need to appear on television, helps prove the existance of God until another time, but you do have to wonder why the Washington Redskins have consistently stunk up the joint since they traded for him some ten years ago. I believe the two things are connected.
The answer of course is God. In the case of the Washington Redskins, an angry, wrathful God.
I wonder if Eli Manning goes to AA, 'cause he's certainly on the same page.
Mozart, a man who lived prior to the popularization of simple 4-track, garage-band recording technology, believed his music went up through the roof and straight to God.
But back to the stick business: The thing that annoys me most when people talk about how Jackson Pollock painted is the suggestion that he knew exactly where each drop of paint was headed. Now I'm here to tell you, that just ain't true. I've thrown as much paint off the end of sticks, brushes, lips of cans, holes in cans, hands, fingers--you name it--as the next guy and I'm here to tell you, you don't have the damnedest idea where the stuff is going, give or take at least an inch or two.
That's why you have to paint big. Certainly if you are attempting to create representational images, you have to establish a physical scale large enough to render each imprecise gesture cogent.
Jackson painted big because he had unresolved issues with women (just one man's opinion). He may also have had other, more overtly artistic reasons to do so, but he always struck me as a guy in the middle of a mid-life crisis before they had invented shiny red Corvettes. Thank God they had Pabst Blue Ribbon or I don't know what the guy would have done!
Deion Sanders jumps to mind as well. I'll spare you my complete thoughts on how Deion Sanders, a man with the sartorial sensitivity of a clown but a larger budget and the need to appear on television, helps prove the existance of God until another time, but you do have to wonder why the Washington Redskins have consistently stunk up the joint since they traded for him some ten years ago. I believe the two things are connected.
The answer of course is God. In the case of the Washington Redskins, an angry, wrathful God.
posted by Geoffrey at 2:48 PM
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