Thursday, September 22, 2005

Be Pollock

Of course, with my art historian hat on, this tells you absolutely nothing about what Pollock was really doing in his art, but it is enormous fun.

Go be Pollock.

3 comments:

Rob said...

They could improve it by introducing random colour variation (I can't think of any monochromatic Pollocks but I'm no expert).

Thinking Pollock reminds me of my one visit to the Pompidou centre in Paris. Not only was I (to myusurprise, actually) knocked out by the Pollocks there, but I was overjoyed to see several parties of French schoolchildren not only being shown all the modern stuff but quite clearly genuinely enjoying it. We're talking primary age here. It gladdened my heart, and made me wish that we were better at getting kids interested in art: any art, really, but especially the non-representational stuff. (To be fair, in the ten years or so since that visit, I think we maybe *have* improved a bit.)

Oh, and when I go round galleries I usualy like to pick out the one piece I'm going to go back and steal. In the Pompidou it was a no-brainer: Brancusi's "The Kiss". Though as it's basically a roughly 15" cube of sandstone (?I think) I'll need a forklift for that one. Easier to hide than John Martin's "The Day of His Wrath" from Tate Modern though... Or Michelangelo's "Risen Christ" from Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome ("We're going to need a bigger forklift...").

Lisa Rullsenberg said...

Martin's pics are in Tate Britain. I know, because I went to admire them this summer. they never fail to knock me out (as they would if they ever fell off) and I always loved showing slides of them to students projected to scale just to get them to think about such issues. (I would have loved to have taken them but logistical nightmare doesn't come close to describing what that would have been like).

Rob said...

Why on Earth did I say Tate Modern? Dunno. Of course they're in Tate Britain. Duh.

Other steals. "Venus and Cupid" by Lucas Cranach from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Any of the Hokusais from the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. One of the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries from the Musee de Cluny.