AS if I've not had enough art of late, with our recent visit to the Tate Liverpool about which I intend to write soon, I've just been listening to "What's So Great about ... Jackson Pollack?" on BBC Radio 4.
First I have to admit I've only seen one original Jackson Pollack. That was in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh when we visited that city with an old (in the sense of long standing & much loved) friend. I was interested in seeing it but it was difficult to really appreciate the work because of where it was hung, in a narrow corridor. It is a big picture & needed more space. Nonetheless, I did feel it had something but I couldn't analyse what.
In the programme I was surprised by the analogy with jazz. I can see the use of syncopation & improvisation in both art forms. It was interesting to hear a jazz pianist play what he saw when he looked at a Jackson Pollack painting.
I was also surprised to hear that some of the pattern of apparently random splotches that epitomise Jackson Pollack's work is a fairly scientifically accurate portrayal of the background "noise" of all nature done at a time when this "noise" had not been discovered or described. This, the scientists reckon, is why so many people find Jackson Pollack's artwork so restful. It is putting you in tune with nature in the same way relaxing outside does.
Interesting stuff. Though, personally, I was partly back in Edinburgh with the original I saw.
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