On Sunday, March 9, 2003, at 01:09 PM, Stephen Barner wrote:
> As an example, I'll really take the dark glasses off and say that
> Jackson
> Pollack was no artist. He was a distrubed human who hit the right
> idea at
> the right time, and successfully parried it into an avocation.. He was
> certainly no genius.
Let's start from scratch here and pretend we're in the most very basic of art appreciation classes. Why do you say the man wasn't an artist? Does mental disturbance or hitting on the right idea automatically make something mot art? If that's true you need to cross out just about every Artist" out there. So tell us what makes an artist?
Just because Richard Sachs builds only lugged road style frames has he just "hit the right idea at the right time, and successfully parried it into an avocation"? Look at your favorite framebuilder and ask yourself the same question again. Personally I don't like Jackson's work near as much his wife Lee's, but he was the first person to really take non-objective art to a new level. My wife (who is finishing her Ph.D. in Art History an teaches this stuff everyday) would like to add that he arguably spearheaded the first and only uniquely American painting movement.
Just because you don't like something, for whatever reason, doesn't mean it isn't art. Thomas Kinkade maybe a charlatan, a scoundrel, and a hack, but he's still an artist. Just because you don't like TIG beads, and think CF and Ti are sill materials doesn't mean the Merlin Cielo isn't a true work of the bicycle framebuilding art. Just because Curt Goodrich usually builds under someone else's marque doesn't mean he isn't an artist. enjoy, Brandon"monkey"Ives Spends way too much time thinking about art in Santa Barbara, Calif.