ART APPRECIATION THREAD Jackson Pollock works found (hidden in storage space)

BALTIMORE SUN ^ | May 11, 2005 | By Diane Haithman

[Liz]

An example of Pollock's work (not one of the missing)

32 artworks were discovered a little more than two years ago in a wrapped package in Long Island.

The son of two artists who were friends and contemporaries of Jackson Pollock has announced that 32 previously unrecorded works by Pollock were found among his late parents' belongings.

Alex Matter -- son of photographer, filmmaker and graphic designer Herbert Matter and abstract painter Mercedes Matter -- said through a spokeswoman that the 32 artworks were discovered a little more than two years ago in a wrapped package in Herbert Matter's storage space on Long Island.

.....Alex Matter did not announce the discovery until now because of intermittent ill health and because the pieces required cleaning and stabilization.

The works, ranging from 5-by-7 inches to 16-by-17 1/2 inches, date from 1946 to 1949.

They include 22 mixed-media "drip" paintings on boards as well as drawings.

None of the pieces is signed, although three bear the artist's initials.

Ellen Landau, a Case Western Reserve University humanities professor who has written a book on Pollock, said five or six of the pieces are unfinished.

Landau said she believes Pollock did not sign the works because he never planned to exhibit them but that they bear unmistakable characteristics of his style. "Their provenance is excellent," she said.

Landau, who co-curated a retrospective of the works of Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, in the late 1980s, said she has been asked by the Matter family to organize a touring exhibition including the recently discovered pieces...........

[niteowl77]

Tom Benton had some interesting insights on Pollock (as well as other things), but after Benton's - essentially correct - criticism of the art world and art schools got him booted from (IIRC) KCAI, he was dismissed from the circles of "legitimate art criticism."

And it still happens. I witnessed a chemically-toasted art professor make an impromptu and lugubriously hilarious "confession" that Pollock was a fraud, and the outrage among some of the audience was palpably seething. I thought it was a fine performance, even if he did backtrack when he came back down and the cognoscenti pestered him to recant.

[dennisw]

Did you see the biopic of Pollock starring Ed Harris as the artist?

What a great and wonderful movie. Jackson Pollack was not some faggy artiste like we're plagued with today. He was a manly man with inner demons. He drank, abused and created. A force of nature. America was squashed down and had nose to the grindstone all during WW2. When the war is over and the pressure released you get an artistic flowering and Jackson Pollock was part of it. I'm not a fan of his art but I appreciate the raw energy and conflict behind it.

[Mark in the Old South]

ROTFLOL. till my belly hurts
:-D

[dennisw]

Great movie. Nice to see that conservatives can appreciate the primal fury and talent behind Jackson Pollock.

[Mark in the Old South]

Re: "I've heard all the art professors say that Pollock is just "difficult to understand", and once you attain enlightment his excellence will suddenly burst upon you like a thunderbolt . . .
Nope. Not buying it."

Funny isn't it the Modernest tell us their art is superior to the masters because their crap...um excuse me; ART is meant to evoke an emotional response. Well if that is true any child should be able to go into a room of art, old masters with their layers of symbolism and the primal and emotive modern abstract art and get a small child to pick a favorite. When that fails they say a child can not possibly understand the complexity. Modern art requires the educated and enlightened mind to understand it. I think the emperor has no clothes.

[MinuteGal]

If the NYC glitterati and literati fall in a kind of fad-love with an artist, he's in like Flynn.

You see, the salon lizards, noveau riche and aging wealthy widows have a special eye for art that most of us don't have. Their superior mentality sees meaningful things in canvas drippings and droppings that the lumpens elsewhere in the country are unable to see.

They jealously bid each other up for paintings till the price equals that of a Rembrandt.

It also helps the value of drippy, droppy paintings if the artist lives in a run-down, filthy Bohemian studio, drinks too much, shaves little, wears a stained poncho, has a live-in who pays the rent and cleans, is an anarchist............and has a personality that titillates at salon parties where he's invited as the guest of honor in sort of a reverse slumming event.

Chimps who turn out the same art are never invited to these soirees as the liberal society dames will not allow real fur in their gentrified brownstones

Leni

[AnAmericanMother]

Primal fury, I'll grant you.

But the Romantic idea that artists are full of "primal fury" and "angst" and "agony" and all the rest of it only goes so far.

Sure, a certain number of Left-Bank loonies led wild, emotional and unbalanced lives, and were idolized by the art world for so doing.

BUT, they also had TALENT (most of 'em, anyway.)

The idea that Pollock's manliness, passion, and inner demons qualify him as an "artist", leaves out the whole issue of TALENT. Perhaps he was "living the life of the artist", but he lacked the central quality.

[Mark in the Old South]

Re: "...and Frank Lloyd Wright."

Yes THANK YOU. Finally someone who agrees with me. There is not a single example of a Wright building that was not seriously flawed as a structure. I admit to liking Falling Water as a photograph but the genius's masterpiece would have fallen into a pile of rubbish if the contractor had not disobeyed Wright's order and added lots more steel than the "great" mind called for. They almost came to blows. Even so they had to spend millions to repair the sagging cantilever terraces. If not for the "stupid" "unenlightened" contractor fans of modern architecture would be morning the loss. All of his houses had too low for comfort ceilings and a host of structural problems.

He has my vote for the most overrated architect of all time.

[WorkingClassFilth]

I'll go farther out out on the same limb and say that the postmodern junk in literature, art and sculpture are NOT historically important except as specimens evidencing decline and decay in the mother culture.

The owners of the new 'collection' will do well simply because there are so many well-heeled gullible fools willing to part with cash in order to be thought cultured and tasteful.

[dennisw]

See the movie if you haven't. He was a trailblazer right after World War Two. I like Jackson Pollock as a major all American cultural figure. His art is secondary to me.

[wizr]

"the 32 artworks were discovered a little more than two years ago in a wrapped package in Herbert Matter's storage space on Long Island."

Hmmm...I thought things moved slowly around my house. Of course, the paint and style had to be authenticated before "the Big Release".

[Libertina]

Glad to hear you're being entertained! LOL

[AnAmericanMother]

Wright had a good eye and his designs as art are impeccable, but you're absolutely right -- he desperately needed a structural engineer, and he was too much of a screaming egotist to admit he needed one.

For years all the arch. guys have been saying "If it's Wright, it can't be wrong."

Oh yes, it can. EVERY SINGLE ROOF constructed by Wright LEAKS, and his foundations are ALL under-engineered. I read in Fine Homebuilding magazine about the heroic efforts undertaken to save one of his houses in Mississippi -- the foundations had shifted and crumbled, and they basically had to jack the entire structure up high enough to pour a new foundation and slab underneath.

I would love to live in a house with Wright interior spaces, light, and details . . . but with foundation, walls, and roof designed by somebody who knew what the heck he was doing!

[razorback-bert]

bookmark

[Mark in the Old South]

Glad you are a good sport. I never fall for that kind of thing because I have always hated modern art. I have yet to hear of a chimp or an elephant or even a cat (they are my favorite animal artist) that can paint like a Raphael or even a Turner.

[pageonetoo]

As a traditionalist, I prefer more mundane things, than spashes on canvas. I have very little appreciation for most abstract art, without function, or proper identifiability.

This desk set is the closest thing to modern art that I like!

[Mark in the Old South]

I am not even conceding ground on his eye or his design as art. The Robbie house maybe and Falling Water is very beautiful I grant you but I wonder if the landscape is not most of the reason for this feeling. I know I know the landscape is part of his design but he can hardly take credit for it. Well I guess his monumental ego would but I ain't giving it to him. Besides I am nearly 6 feet tall. I doubt I would like living in any Wright box.

[jocon307]

First I was thinking was Liz was thinking, then I was thinking what Danol was thinking!

[Cicero]

I've had the opportunity to have dinner a couple of times with Hilton Kramer, who was the fine arts critic for the NY Times before he went off in disgust and founded the New Criterion. His position was that the abstract expressionists and other modern painters produced great art but that the postmodernists--about the time that Andy Warhol appeared on the scene--descended into weak, decadent kitsch.

I agree with him on postmodernist art. If anything can make modern art look good, it's postmodern art.

But on the whole I think modern art was fatally flawed too.

[IronJack]

If the first function of a building is to serve its masters, then Wright fails on almost every level. If architecture's main purpose is esthetic, then Wright's "genius" is debatable.

Wright couldn't design a usable garden shed. A pretty one, perhaps ...