Pollock and Danto

Pollock is an interesting guy. A drunken womanizer and splatter painter, he definitely made an impact on the art world. I personally like his work but think that it is way overpriced. When Allison and I began researching, we discovered that his painting Number 5 sold as the most expensive painting ever at $140,000,000 in 2006. Not only that, but most of the sources we found focused very little on him as a person. It was interesting mostly because most other artists are scrutinized as a person and an artist, which is to say that critics sometimes (most times) pull the artist's character or "artsy-ness" into the analysis. The absence of such a thing when it comes to the critiques of Pollock is telling because he seems to be above that. People clearly separate him from his work, even though he himself tells us that the line is blurred if there at all.
I like him. I'm not sure I would pay much more than cost of materials for his work just because it doesn't seem that skillful, even if there is energy-driven order to the chaos (like fractals). Even so, I could understand why someone would pay a lot for his work--the fame, the influence, the originality of someone at that scale--I just wouldn't pay that myself.

My favorite philosophical musing toward Pollock with regard to our class is Danto. In the presentation, I mentioned that Pollock's work if often accepted as art even if someone doesn't like it. I think that's particularly fascinating because there's also the debate over whether it's art if someone else could create it, or even create it by accident. (Don't we usually assign a level of intent to artistic creation?) Therefore, it leaves me to wonder what it is about Pollock's splatter paint that speaks as art even to those who think they could create something similar just as easily. Firstly, I think it's the fame. If he weren't so famous, so universally celebrated or well-known, the case would not be so. Secondly, it's the fact that he was groundbreaking in abstract expressionism and opened the doors to more controversial pieces, and because his was first and perhaps less challenging (and uses colors and traditional materials), his is automatically art by comparison.

Neitzsche and Tolstoy

Philosophy has never been my strong suit--I'm pretty easily confused by its density. I really cannot tell if it is that aspect of my thinking or something else, but I seriously do not see how Neitzsche and Tolstoy could possibly be talking about the same thing other than the umbrella topic "art theory".

Neitzsche discusses in his writing dichotomous nature, the Apollonian and Dionysian perspective on things. In the former's world, there is fantastic order, and in the latter's, the chaos of reality. Most importantly, as I am lead to understand it, the Apollonian world is self-illusion of rationality via religion, which is classified as an overall order or truth that we can get to (reminiscent of Plato?) that is conceptualized with the notion that there is a higher power. In contrast to this Apollonian world and the art in it, Neitzsche tells us that we can get certain things from Dionysian art based in this relatively real world that we could not from the purity of Apollonian.
So Neitzsche is talking about types of art and what we can do with it.

Tolstoy, on the other hand (or maybe I should say foot because they are relatively unrelated), writes of contagion--that art is the connection between two people forged by some medium of communication. Pure and simple, that is what he says. So Tolstoy is talking about what makes art "art" and what it can do.

I suppose from the perspective that both Philosophers discuss what art can do or what we can get from it, they debate the same topic, but honestly, that's the only true similarity I see with a superficial knowledge.

Faking It

Can a person actually fake their way into the art world, or do they just enter it as anyone else might and have an accelerated introduction? In other words, does the crash course in faking being an artist really faking it, or did he just actually learn to be an artist? It seems to me that all he's doing is creating art in his own way and shown how to B.S. his way through refining the ability to express his thoughts.

Another thing I thought was interesting was the fact that the guy very clearly had some talent before going into the challenge. His initial drawings show some skill in illustrating his self-portrait. That leads me to think that if the "experts" really thought they could turn a common person into an artist by letting them fake the things that go with the art world, one of two things must have happened:

1. They must have taken a person with no talent and trained them in how to create art without influencing the product, which is essentially impossible, or...
2. They would have had to present the art to critics the way they did in the video, without the "artist" present, with a statement by the artist himself as the way to fake art.

As it was, it's more about fooling the critics into thinking he's an artist by giving him glasses and a new wardrobe. As it is, the guy really was an artist. I reiterate the thing I've been standing by since the beginning of the class: It is art, so he is an artist, but it falls on the individual audience member to decide whether it's good or bad.

In the video, the statement is given: "To talk about art, you need to understand it." Understanding art, in my view, is a spectrum that doesn't include a lack of understanding. Everyone understands art in their own unique way.

Therefore, I think that the guy will succeed, because with art, it's really really hard to be wrong, if you believe that it's possible to be.