Milestones of Contemporary Art, a BlogEducation Curator Scott Boberg writes on contemporary art in a historical contextMay 21, 2007
POLLOCKFollow with your eyes a sinuous line that drifts down in a shallow turn that picks up speed in a narrowing ascent that suddenly drops back, like a harness settling on an ox's neck, before continuing its loopy passage out of the lower left corner of your visual field. A map of the Ohio River as it curves past Cincinnati? Could those overlapping twists of black, copper, green, and white be the interstates that also wind through the topography?Step back, and step back some more until you see before you a painting, a BIG painting, nine feet tall and seventeen feet wide. Just to the right, tiny in comparison, is the wall label: JACKSON POLLOCK (American, 1912-1956) Like a friend that sits silently in the corner chair at a party, who when approached says just enough to get a conversation started, the wall label reminds us that 56 years later Jackson Pollock still has the capacity to make a few people mad. Contemporary Art? By most standards no (after all, some folks born after 1950 will soon enough qualify for early retirement). Painted at the pivot of the twentieth century, this painting does share with the art of today a difficulty of apprehension by a general audience. Seeing the landscape in Pollock is not so far-fetched when you consider the influence of his teacher Thomas Hart Benton, the Regionalist painter famed for his bursting, curvy scenes of American life and legend. If you slowly close and open your eyes between images of Pollock's early work presented chronologically, you can almost witness the figures dissolve and the landscape distills down to the fluid lines that are essentially Pollock, who was documented in now-famous images creating One, leaning forward, arm extended way out over the canvas laid on the studio floor, looking like a kid on a bridge dropping flowers onto riverboats passing below. Now, really take a look... Posted by Scott Boberg at 9:22 pm
May 15, 2007
Time: How long do people look at art?
Count slowly to ten. One…Two…Three…Four…Five…Six…Seven…Eight…Nine…Ten That happens to be longer (by several seconds) than the average time a typical art museum visitor spends in front of a single work of art. Anecdotal evidence from colleagues suggests that ten to 20 seconds happens frequently but five to seven seconds is about how long a painting is likely to receive your full or partial attention. "Keep Moving" is the operative strategy for most of us, which accelerates, amazingly enough, when we are in a new city as cultural tourists, floorplans in hand, and serious square footage to cover. In the time it takes to read this post, a dedicated museum-goer can experience 20 or more works of art! Daunting enough in a traditional art museum, something, well, magical happens when you watch unprepared visitors suddenly come upon the institution's contemporary wing and often seem to take flight across the gallery with shaken heads and mutters. Long a staple gag for 20th century cartoonists, the encounter with the contemporary has potential beyond the comical. Try this. Find a work that no one seems to be looking at, and spend a minute with it. Yes, sixty seconds. Once you pass the first ten, a work of art often opens up with an unbelievable amount of things to consider. This is true even for what appears to be the simplest contemporary work, whether a blue canvas or a fluorescent light fixture angled on the wall. Ask yourself, "why is it here, on view?...Why is no one else here looking at this?...What are they missing?...What would I have missed if I simply walked by or stood in front of it for only the usual five seconds?... Why am I reacting this way? What does this experience tell me about myself? What am I SEEING? Let me know how it goes, or in other words, take two paintings and call me in the morning. Posted by Scott Boberg at 3:49 pm |
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