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.