[New-Poetry] Never Mind The Pollocks

[TheOldMole]

 From a painter friend, on the question of who carried the Pollock 
legacy forward:

I would say the splash and drippers of the color field, late sixties 
movements, like Jules Olitski; Sam Francis from the fifties, and Larry 
Poons, who started off tight with lozenges, splashes paint around. Brice 
Marden's Cold Mountain paintings are a bit Pollockian to me. Basically 
all process painters, who go through a series of set moves and exhibit 
the results are Pollockian.

 

Bob Grumman wrote:
> Roger Day wrote:
>> The admiration for Pollock expressed in this forum is shared by me.
>> However, I have .. questions. Art practice is about control: control
>> of media, the reader/viewer, experience ... yet Pollock pushes those
>> boundaries. Oh, he has a modicum control in that each painting is a
>> selection of colours and he places them - approximately and this is
>> the rub - where he wants but if Art practice is continuum of control
>> to un-control, then his methods swing to the latter unlike, say,
>> Rothko whose methods veer towards absolute control. Who are Pollocks
>> heirs? Not many, I think. Damien Hirst for one, possibly. Any others?
>>   
> Not Hirst, as far as I can tell--but I'm not a fan of Hirst, so don't 
> know many of his paintings.  Sam Francis was Pollock's greatest 
> (close) heir, I would say.  I like his paintings, some of them, better 
> than Pollock's--but they aren't as important since derivative--or, 
> more derivative than Pollock's were.  Deciding who else was an heir is 
> difficult since, to me, everyone following him in non-representational 
> painting was an heir of his to an extent.  But there are lots of 
> painters effectively doing what he did my subscriptions to ARTnews and 
> Art in America tell me.  And, ahem, I'm very much an heir of his in my 
> mathemaku.
>
> Your questions about control/freedom for control (I would call it 
> rather than "lack of control) are good ones.  No time for them right 
> now--except to note that I've called John M. Bennett the Pollock of 
> American poetry in that in many of his solitextual (solely textual) 
> poems, he in effect sprays words, many of them highly visceral, 
> primitive, subliterate, on a page and succeeds, for me, in capturing 
> the sub-cerebral essence of the human psychology better than any other 
> poet I know--and, yes, I do think that a huge value to capture.
>
> Many visual poets are children of Pollock in their graphic effects, 
> besides me.  Jim Leftwich, for instance.  I find it interesting that 
> you seem not to consider the visual influence of Pollock on poets.
>
> --Bob G.
>> My tutor hated Pollock to the extent that Pollock disappeared off his
>> teaching map.
>>
>> How does this translate into poetry? If poetic practice is about
>> control, whose poetical methods resemble Pollocks? Whose poetry is the
>> parallel of Pollocks paintings?
>>
>> Roger
>>   
>
>
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-- 
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/

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