Thursday, July 27th, 2023
I'm thinking about Convergance (Pollock, 1952)
So today around noon I went to the museum close to me and on display along with a lot of other modernist paintings was the aforementioned Convergence. I dunno why but out of all the Pollocks this one really intrigued me. In general I have mixed feelings about Pollock, the persona he modeled for the painters of the era was one of a cigar smoking, commie hating, rat bastard. Which I will admit is a mood besides the commie hating part. But the thing that irks me about his art is the philosophy of it. In an era dominated by the Greenburg strain of modernism Pollock and his contemporaries don't seek to use the elements unique to painting to create any sort of meaning, but instead in pursuit of the art object, of the painting for painting's sake. Its a philosophy that lends itself nicely to the image of a capitalist superstar artist and to a worldview that over everything else values making money off art
As I stood there kind of pissed at myself for wanting to stare at this as opposed to anything else in the museum, I realized what it was that caught my eye. There’s a small sheen in the black of Convergence (1952), and that's a detail that feels incredibly strange. The black which appears to have been laid first stands out in that it's one of only two colors that stains the unprimed canvas and that besides the black and blue, all the other colors are thick, opaque and imposing in a way that lets you almost feel them with your eyes. This sheen on the other hand is more mysterious. I don't know what the sheen is in the black of convergence or how it feels smells or tastes, but I do know that it lends a ghostly quality to the bones of this otherwise violently material painting. It's almost wet, mimicking what it once was. Like a photograph it carries the faded memory of the moment it was made.
I began to consider each color in Convergence its own character resting on the spectral scaffolding that apparently Pollock thought was quite shit. The blue occasionally dances with the white yellow and orange connecting them with wirey tendons to the painting's blackened bones, the white standing as some pristine structure battered by the winds in thick flat areas. It's ironic because I don't think Pollock had thought about any of this, or what it means to him. But I think it's interesting how a painting whose intent is meaninglessness can educate us on how to make meaning with paint