dunno
by Australian writer John Martin
So near and yet so far from Blue Poles
American abstract impressionist painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) once said: "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing."
Um, call me a philistine but I quite frequently look at paintings and wonder if the painter knew what he or she was doing.
I can only admit to being amused when my wife Katherine brought home an abstract expressionalist painting from a garage sale only last weekend.
"How much did you pay for THAT?" I guffawed.
"Only a dollar," Katherine said.
"What is it supposed to be?" I asked.
It is quite a large painting, with great expanses of light and dark green background and some kind of abstract figure in the foreground.
"I don't know," said Katherine. "But it's SO awful, I like it."
Like it? How could anyone like it?
The painting is still sitting on our lounge room floor while we work out where the heck we care going to hang it.
Someone has suggested that the picture depicts an abstract impressionalist representation of female genitalia.
Not me.
I wouldn't dare suggest such a thing, even if it occurred to me, which it didn't.
Now the image is in my head though, I cannot possibly agree to hang it lest my mother pops in unexpectedly and demands to know why we have a picture of a vagina on the guest room wall.
"It's SO awful, I DON'T like it," I told Katherine.
Katherine stopped short of calling me a philistine, but I know she was thinking it.
Some months ago, I had some time to kill in the middle of Canberra so I went to the National Gallery for a couple of hours.
The prize exhibit there is a painting called Blue Poles, which was painted by Jackson "Jack the Dripper" Pollock in oil, enamel and aluminium paint and glass on canvas in 1952.
The Australian Government bought it for $Aus1.3 million in 1972, creating a huge outcry from people who thought that no painting could possibly be worth that much.
They were very wrong.
Blue Poles today is worth something between $Aus50 million and $Aus150 million (it's impossible to tell unless it is actually sold).
Blue Poles is a very large painting, taking up nearly a whole wall.
Pollock painted it in his signature style, placing the very large canvas on his studio floor and dribbling and throwing globs of paint over it, layer by layer.
I have read that it consists of red loops and dancing swirls of paint, meeting, crossing over, bumping into the thicker white skeins are almost like two things the motion of couples on a dance floor, and also far-off galaxies.
But I have to be honest.
If painters made that much mess on my floors, I would never let them paint a wall of my house again.
As I say, I had time to kill. I looked around the rest of the gallery, then settled down on a seat near Blue Poles for a rest.
During this time, school group after school group came to admire the painting.
And, each time, their teachers went into raptures explaining to the children about the technical brilliance of the work.
"But what on earth IS IT? And what was he trying to do?" I felt like piping in.
Then I remembered that Jackson Pollock quote:
"When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of "get acquainted" period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well."
Alas, Jackson Pollock did not paint our latest acquisition.
I know this because it is clearly signed by someone other than J. Pollock.
Far from soaring to a $50 million-plus price tag, I rather feel we are going to have to sell it for a loss BECAUSE THERE'S NO WAY I AM GOING TO ALLOW ABSTRACT IMPRESSIONALIST PORNOGRAPHY IN OUR HOUSE, OR EVEN IN OUR GARAGE.
Unless, of course, Katherine can change the image now in my head and convince me the painting actually represents a cat.
©July 11, 2001 John Martin. All Rights Reserved
If you liked this short column perhaps you'll like my new comic fiction novel, which has nearly 250 pages of laughs. Check out the first chapter here free