Accordingly, Pollock's painting "Alchemy" is entirely abstract, and makes no pretense about representing one thing perceivable inside "real" world. At the same time, it right away strikes the viewer like a "serious" piece of art that's attempting to portray some message on the meaning of life, a meaning perhaps suggested in part by the title from the work. In this sense, it does help the modernist view that there's a teleology of art--that art can aid human beings discover meaning in life, and that there's these kinds of deeper, objective meaning, nonetheless abstractly expressed. As Pollock himself says with respect towards uniqueness of his art and its relation to purpose and meaning, "The strangeness will wear off and I believe we will find the deeper meanings in current art" (Stiles and Selz 22). This paper will argue that the anti-modernists, or post-modernists, or at least many of them, would scoff at these kinds of claims at "deeper meanings" in art or even, perhaps, in life, at least insofar as people meanings are discernible by humankind. Definitely the particular work by Rainer does not eat seriously the thought that this sort of "deeper meanings" are available via art.
Greenberg did not see the abstraction of modernist art being a sign of alienation in the classical belief that there have been indeed objective meanings in art and life. However, the means and philosophy of art which the modernists used were new ap
The advent of postmodernist contingency placed modernist objectivity in doubt. Identity and human subjectivity have been no longer understood as unified but rather have been viewed as polymorphous, fragmented, and without having center. . . . The modernist belief in truth was replaced by choices ranging from radical relativism to negotiated concepts of fact (3).
proaches to and interpretations of a world which was radically altered due to the fact classical or representational art reigned supreme. Nevertheless, Greenberg makes clear how the modernists, for instance the abstract expressionists, aimed to "move from abstraction to universal essence" (2). This view is encapsulated inside following statement from Greenberg: "It has been established . . . how the irreducibility of pictorial art consists in but two . . . norms: flatness and the delimitation of flatness" (2). Again, this reduces painting on the focus on a true painting over a flat surface on the canvas. The modernist question in painting, from Greenberg's perspective, would be, How can paint over a canvas, with no representational elements, tell us anything within the meaning of art and life. However, Greenberg argued that modernism needs to be "bereft of social and political engagement" (2). Certainly Pollock's abstract painting is disengaged from these kinds of concerns. This doesn't mean that modernist art was pessimistic, for it decidedly was not:
Non-modernist, anti-modernist, or post-modernist art holds the opposite, that there is no objective meaning to be discovered, and the individual artist can't even discover his individual identity in art
To charges that his work is really a mere mass of accidental drippings, Pollock responded: "I do not use the accident--'cause I deny the accident." An additional Pollock statement argues to your Greenberg emphasis on a basics of painting as well as the belief that art can indeed express deeper meanings and statements about life:
"Painting, I think, today--the much more immediate, the additional direct--the higher
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.
No comments:
Post a Comment