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poliphilo Extracts from John Logan's play Red, starring Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko turned up in my YouTube feed this morning. Was Rothko really so loud, angry and incapable of shutting up? Had I been nice young Ken, the assistant whom Rothko browbeats and lectures from the moment he enters the studio, I think I might have turned on my heel and walked straight out. I guess he needed the work.
I've never been too sure of my response to what I guess we'll call the New York school. Were these guys- abstracters and popsters- really as world-bestridingly wonderful as the Art World thinks they are? When I learned the other day that the CIA had a big hand in getting them talked up and exhibited, as a way of establishing the USA as cultured and futuristic in opposition to those grim, dim, backward-looking Russians, I thought, "Ah....."
That's not to say the New Yorkers were talentless. But. Pollock's drip paintings took abstraction to it's logical conclusion and so into a brick wall. Rauschenburg is chaotic and messy and as for Lichtenstein, how many blown up comic images can you turn out before that clever idea starts to pall? None of this work detains me. The only New York artist I love unreservedly is Andy Warhol. I love Andy because he is the artist as trickster, always one hop, skip and a jump ahead of you. Dali played the same game- and I admire Dali- but Andy was so much lighter on his feet.
And Rothko? What Rothko thought he was painting was the human tragedy, but is the human tragedy really inherent in those big vibrant wodges of colour? Would we talk about them in such terms if we hadn't been schooled to do so? Molina's Rothko stands nice young Ken in front of one of his paintings and asks him what he sees. And nice young Ken says "Red".
I've never been too sure of my response to what I guess we'll call the New York school. Were these guys- abstracters and popsters- really as world-bestridingly wonderful as the Art World thinks they are? When I learned the other day that the CIA had a big hand in getting them talked up and exhibited, as a way of establishing the USA as cultured and futuristic in opposition to those grim, dim, backward-looking Russians, I thought, "Ah....."
That's not to say the New Yorkers were talentless. But. Pollock's drip paintings took abstraction to it's logical conclusion and so into a brick wall. Rauschenburg is chaotic and messy and as for Lichtenstein, how many blown up comic images can you turn out before that clever idea starts to pall? None of this work detains me. The only New York artist I love unreservedly is Andy Warhol. I love Andy because he is the artist as trickster, always one hop, skip and a jump ahead of you. Dali played the same game- and I admire Dali- but Andy was so much lighter on his feet.
And Rothko? What Rothko thought he was painting was the human tragedy, but is the human tragedy really inherent in those big vibrant wodges of colour? Would we talk about them in such terms if we hadn't been schooled to do so? Molina's Rothko stands nice young Ken in front of one of his paintings and asks him what he sees. And nice young Ken says "Red".
no subject
Date: 2025-10-10 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-10 05:34 pm (UTC)Picasso wasn't a New York painter.
As it happens I love his work....
no subject
Date: 2025-10-10 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-11 06:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-11 08:07 pm (UTC)rant at their students
the ministers are no better
its no surprise tRump
being a bully and athletics with only one winner
has been major theme of schools.
ironic after all that red
he ends with a chapel of black
but its not pure black.
I don't know if those
were his actual painting on stage
when I watched the movie about
pollock the ending made me cry
comparison with other artists
kills art
no subject
Date: 2025-10-12 06:28 am (UTC)And- I don't mean this to sound snide- but he wouldn't be that difficult to fake.