It's not the color. One time when I was passing through a modern art gallery, where, as usual, some of the paintings struck me as imaginative or meaningful and some did not. But it was not until I saw a giant block of undifferentiated bright red on the wall that I thought, this is ridiculous, this artist is putting us on. It was by Rothko.
If an artist wants me to look at his paintings long enough to see changes that take that long to perceive, he should provide reasons to sit that long in the first place. I often say of minimalist music: after one minute it's arresting; after ten minutes it's excruciatingly boring; after thirty minutes you never want it to end. To get through the second stage to the third stage, you have to be able to start with the first stage. Rothko leaves out that part; other minimalist painters don't. I don't rate Pollock highly or find much meaning in his work, but unlike Rothko it is interesting at the one-minute level.
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Date: 2011-02-27 08:30 am (UTC)If an artist wants me to look at his paintings long enough to see changes that take that long to perceive, he should provide reasons to sit that long in the first place. I often say of minimalist music: after one minute it's arresting; after ten minutes it's excruciatingly boring; after thirty minutes you never want it to end. To get through the second stage to the third stage, you have to be able to start with the first stage. Rothko leaves out that part; other minimalist painters don't. I don't rate Pollock highly or find much meaning in his work, but unlike Rothko it is interesting at the one-minute level.