painting over jackson pollack
Last thursday, in between jobs, i decided to go to MoMA. The context, for those i haven’t completely scandalized yet, is that (contemporary) art museums usually turn my heart into a fist. Not from lack of reverence, either. More, the whole experience always just feels so gauche. All the coughing and social compulsion and culture, and meanwhile poor Gaea, by Lee Krasner (1966) is up next to a room full of shaky Rothko imitations and it all just seems so backwards and embarrassing.
Add to that the million daily photographs, the accidental flash even though these signs have been up since 1970; mass reverence flattening out the peaks and troughs. Finger prints on the walls and hurrying through. I always leave feeling like I’ve been to an idiot wake, wishing I could give the good ones a viking funeral. And the funny thing is that I totally understand the archiving instinct – the impulse, the photographs, the sanctum sanctorum. Regardless, a great museum can ruin a day.*
Still: the Lee Krasner really broke me up, and the Jasper Johns, and even the Pollacks (which I didn’t expect). All that texture! Reproductions don’t do them any justice. So I went home last Thursday and bought a few cans of polyurethane and extreme fixative to create a more affordable moonscape texture than I could with my impasto budget — paint is super expensive, even acrylics. After a few coats of coffee filters and liquid plastic I ended up with the below (photos are detail photos of two separate canvasses).
Still trying to figure out what I want to do on top of them, but realized, as I was brushing my teeth just now, how much they look like I just painted over one of those Pollacks with high gloss acrylic. I sorta dig that. Process!
*Not counting non-art museums, empty museums (which present a whole ‘nother array of conflicting emotions), or antiquities exhibits, which is why the Met or the Museum of Nat’l history are always a good bet!
Posted on 25 September 2009 at 1:13 am
you’re right – and it’s true, i’ve been growing less generous the longer i live – perpetually – in a crowd. the moments you’re talking about sound familiar, and i still go to these things with those hopeful memories. and not just because your girl-bird-sunset sounds like my favorite excerpts from PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST. I’m sure the crowds in Chicago aren’t any different though, not really. The real challenge, I think, is to match up the museum to the mindset. E.G. The Brooklyn Museum is arranged thematically (as opposed to according to era/style/artist). So there’ll be a room full of waterfalls, cubist to realist etc. And empty chairs, and the sprawling brooklyn botanic for when even the paintings are too much company. I needed this reminder – MoMA really bummed me out.
Posted on 24 September 2009 at 7:05 pm
after spending two years at the art institute of chicago, using the museum as a cut through for classes on unappealing afternoons, free admission and runthroughs all bande à part, i found too a disliking uncomfort. there were of course afternoons where i went inside and hoped to lose myself. discovering the meditation room on the ground floor, hidden back among the ancient antiquities, regrettably was pointed out on a class fieldtrip and i wonder whether i would have ever known if it weren’t pointed out to me…i think that discovery is something that keeps the love/hate of my deep seated sanctorums sacred. to wander through the AIC and find walls smeared with impressionistic ‘masterworks’ dissuades one from frequenting, but given the chancing wander, you might discover something hung in the back rooms or amidst the same-old-same stylings. there were a few works like that in chicago that i found. once i knew them, i would rush through the museum on certain days, managing the crowds until i found myself affixed before them once more, alone in a gallery, surrounded by monets and haystacks or derivatives thereof, but watching there that special work which spoke to me. a girl, a bird, and the sunset setting. the warmth dissolving like late afternoon autumns lit afire ablaze and trembling — wholly on a spiritual plane, soaring above the rest, unable to hear their comings and goings, their own searches for works that do speak to them, but not knowing how to approach art. art is a treasure hunt with no maps. you make it all up as you go along.