Since I’m going to replicate here my old discussions of Experiment with an Air Pump, only about half of which are preserved, and half of which I’ll have to reconstruct, I thought I’d copy what remains of the old posts, long ago deleted from the web, on paintings, that served as the context for those discussions.
March 14, 2009 by lecolonelchabert | Edit
It would be stretching polite oblivion to Feydeau extremes to pretend not to notice how this sacred relic of virility expresses – abstractly? not exactly – and insists. It’s pushy. It’s not subtle. The object evokes the presence of the muscular, athletic individual, and as he looms up, his intent prowling and splashing traced in the air, itself falls back, weak at the knees, the damsel wall ornament reverting to virgin soil. The marvelous apparition tells its own origin fable, in reverse, regressing to a blank, a barren waste, unclaimed territory, waiting for the heroic spewer of paint to plant flags, mark it and give it meaning, or a hollow, convertible form of meaning (properties, property). The most famous Pollacks are monuments to all this, to the narratemes of imperial patriarchal fables of conquest and civilising mission, branding and taming, insemination and development. For the seasoned consumer, there is the added spice of the irony of their banality exposed ostentatiously – the refrigerator door expresses above all mommy’s unconditional adoration, which the adolescent can decorate with trophies of masturbation, of self love.
These paintings, which economise, which strip the product down to frank, masculist displays of the infantile egoism* and (delusions of) demiurgic potency of the great artist, (conveniently very eye pleasing, inoffensive, attractive and as suitable for East Hampton mansion decor as for museums,) require the constant attendance of critical Pinkertons. The status they earn – on the level playing field of populist “consumer” democracy, (”nice guys”, harmless, pleasant ordinary guys, maybe kinda schmucks but…) – is far beneath the status to which they aspire. That is all or nothing, Absolute Mastery (domination, supremacy, the “universal”, the “eternal”) or humiliated abjection. As Foucault finally and famously made explicit, the resentful complaint of this modernism (could we call it “my way novelty modernism”?) bewails the broken bargain of humanism, the plight of the sovereign individual denied his promised omnipotence and immortality, still mired in material and time, subjected to circumstance and rivalries, to uppitiness, the rumblings of slave revolt, the riff raff withholding their submission and respect, viciously persecuting the genius with insolence, inattention and indifference, cruelly having better things to do than perpetually attend the flame of celebrity greatness in obedient, selfless solemnity. And the buyer, arrogant superior overlord. Pollack’s infantile (and consequently innocent) language of paint wails its displeasure and more-than-libertarian demand for monopoly of subjectivity: to be adored, in awe, in silence.
You don’t have to like it, but you can’t dismiss…
It may not be your cup of tea but you have to acknowledge and respect its power.
You cannot belittle or humiliate it. You cannot ignore it. You have to answer its phone calls, you are obliged to include it, your own inclusion depends on and streams from its significance, its creative power, its legitimacy, its indestructible value.
(It is often noted the Pollack action paintings are coeval with bebop; but the more telling connection is Ayn Rand.)
* “She-Wolf” came into existence because I had to paint it. Any attempt on my part to say something about it, to attempt explanation of the inexplicable, could only destroy it. Can the author of these paintings and those remarks really be said to “resist commodification”? Can the work, the paintings, themselves be credited with such efforts? Perhaps there is some reluctance, I don’t know, the stupid obstinacy of stuff, but one cannot call the struggle put up very impressive.
Posted in Ideology, Painting | 3 Comments »
Thank you for this. A very thought provoking read.