The Liberal Order

Pollock

I recently watched Pollock for the first time (it was released in 2000) and couldn't help but think of this passage by photographer Robert Adams in an essay titled, "The Achievement of Edward Weston: The Biography I'd Like to Read."

As a subject for biography, an artist requires a particular method of approach, I think, because, as Aristotle observed, the artist is distinguishable from the mentally ill (among whom Freud numbered us all) only by the fact that he manages occasionally, through his art, to escape the sick person's distorting, isolating perspective. It is therefore the artist's work, set against the life, that tells us how, in a measure, he escaped failure; thus it is the work that we must study if we are to learn something useful.

Although technically well done, Ed Harris (who starred in and directed the movie), as Adams would aptly argue, offers little more than gossip about Pollock the man and reveals little about his art and its meaning in the life of an obviously emotionally disturbed human being. Instead, Harris focuses on Pollock's drunken rantings; the movie ends depicting Pollock as a drunken homicidal maniac.

Perhaps he was a drunken homicidal maniac, but wasn't there more to Pollock's life and his art as means of escaping his "distorting, isolating perspective?" Harris reveals the physical and technical transformation of Pollock's craft--depicted as a fortuitous mistake--while ignoring the emotional transformations of the artist though his art. 

What seemed like a good ideat at the time . . .

. . . doesn't always turn out that way.

It seemed like a great idea in college to get that tattoo of a giant tiger on the forearm or that silver barbell through the lip. But now that they're entering the "real world," potential employers aren't quite as enthusiastic about body modification.

In a world of uncertainty, it doesn't always pay to stand apart from the rest.

Gordon Parks (1912 - 2006)

Photographer Gordon Parks died. Not only was he a photographer, he later took up directing movies, including Shaft

Parks' most famous image is "American Gothic." (Pictured below.)

But he's also known for his picture essays, including this one of Flavio de Silva, a young Brazilian boy from an impoverished family. Parks notes in this Washington Post article from today,

The story of young Flavio prompted Life readers to send in $30,000, enabling his family to build a home, and Flavio received treatment for his asthma in an American clinic. By the 1970s, he had a family and a job as a security guard.

Flavio stayed in touch with Parks off and on, and in 1997 Parks said, "If I saw him tomorrow in the same conditions, I would do the whole thing over again."

Here are two of my favorites of Parks': This one of Muhammad Ali is one of the best ever taken of Ali.

And here is one from the photo essay, "Harlem Gang Story."

Aging in Pictures

Nicholas Nixon has been photographing his wife and her sisters every year since the mid-70s.
Here's the one taken in 1978.

1995

2002

and 2004

An Argentine family has done the same with fascinating results depicting the aging process.

Link via Fark.

Update: More of the Brown sisters here.

The Outraged Artist

Remember James Traficant, the oddly-coiffed former Congressman from Ohio now serving time in federal prison for racketeering? Word has it that he's able to practice his passion in prison and sell it on eBay. (See here, here, here and here.)

Here's one of his masterpieces.

I wonder what the connection is between megalomania and art?

For that collector of avant-garde art

An original painting by Adolf Hitler is being auctioned on eBay Austria. Current price is 5,350 euros, which is approximately $6,300.

Story here.

The World of Diane Arbus, 34 Years After Her Death

The Washington Post has an interesting article about photographer Diane Arbus and her work, which is on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York through May 30. Arbus photographed the more oddball, or what she termed "freak" side of humanity. But she did so as an insider--she actually entered their world--not as an outsider. Here is how she described her work.

"What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's.... That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own." And of her subjects who were physically unusual, she said, "Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. [These people] were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."

The Post article reveals some of the subjects of Arbus' work 34 years after her death. Her estate refuses to name her subjects; they have come to identify themselves over the years.

Here are three of Arbus' better known works. All are discussed in the article.

Twins, Roselle, NJ (1968)

Update: Here's a picture of the twins today.

Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park (1962)

This is Anderson Cooper of CNN fame (1968). I did not know that his mother was Gloria Vanderbilt.

Richard Avedon 1923 - 2004

Another dean of the photography world dies.

Richard Avedon made his money primarily as a fashion photographer, but his portrait work is stunning.

To me, this is Avedon's best work (the book is out of print).

And this quote from Avedon sums up his primary objective farily well.

"I've photographed just about everyone in the world," Mr. Avedon said. "But what I hope to do is photograph people of accomplishment, not celebrity, and help define the difference once again."

Overexposed Art

Tyler Cowen has an interesting post on overexposed images in art. Tyler has a very good collection of paintings, specializing mostly in Mexican art (and see here) and Haitian art. Given his research and personal interest in the subject, he knows far more about this than most.

I know a bit about photography and can concur that the same problem exists in this genre as well, actually probably more so. Ansel Adams' photographs are so overused that they have simply become wallpaper rather than the awe-evoking images they once were. They are still highly collectible, however.

I think that photography suffers from this problem more so than painting or sculpture given the ease at which such images are replicated, and poorly replicated at that. Many amateurs make their treks into Yosemite Valley in search of Ansel Adams' tripod holes.

In fact, photographer Sherrie Levine's controversial images raise this exact issue. Beginning in the early 80s, Ms. Levine has photographed and displayed images of famous photographs by some of the most famous photographers and artists. To hell with going out and finding the original spot where a particular photographer stood to take a photograph, she decided to simply make her own photograph of the image. Yes, that means taking an image, say, Ansel Adams' "Moonrise Over Hernandez, New Mexico," photographing it and then naming it "After Ansel Adams." People thought her work unoriginal and uninspiring, but missed her message that there was really nothing original in photography--that everything has already been done and that she was giving the viewer a chance to see something different within an overused image.