Works of Jackson Pollock Essay

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Jackson Pollock observed, "The modern painter cannot express his age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique." Choose three works of mid-twentieth century art that illustrate this idea and discuss them in detail. How does the technique of these particular works help convey the reality of the modern world?

Jackson Pollock was indeed correct when he expressed such a notion. The experiences, thoughts and ideas of the modern painter simply cannot be captured via the old forms of the Renaissance or some other antiquated culture or generation. Each generation does in fact find its own technique because its absolutely necessary to do so. There is no other way possible. One can examine three arbitrary works from nearly any decade and find this to be remarkably true, particularly perhaps in the mid-twentieth century art.

For example, the painting, "Sailors and Floosies" by Paul Cadmus presented in 1938, helps to represent the unique experience of what it went to be a young man, working for the Navy in pre-World War II America. In this painting, the artist Paul Cadmus creates a truly unique relationship with the graffiti depicted within the memorial represented on the canvas, allowing it to stretch out and bear its mark on the exterior frame. Thus the painting is both a depiction of a memorial with graffiti on it, and a memorial in and of itself that has been vandalized: it is both vandalism and the object of vandalism. In creating this unique relationship with the idea of vandalism, the painting is also an expressing what it means to be "trashed and disrespected" through the contents and subject matter of the painting. In this subject, the elements of the painting, the soldiers are "trashed" in a way: together with the floozies of the painting they are indeed the trash and the object of trashing, sort of like living litter, as the men are passed out along the canvas, drunk and useless. This demonstrates Cadmus' unique perception and experience of the military and of government military officers: not depicting these men in glory or honor, the artist portrays the unique experience of seeing these men dishonored to a certain extent.

Furthermore, there's a certain amount of failed heterosexuality portrayed in this painting: the amorous situations await them, the women are dubbed as floozies, yet no sex is had by anyone. The soldiers are unable to perform, or perhaps unwilling, which demonstrates a certain unified denial of sex by the three of them. This unification of a refusal to participate in sex means that a certain degree of latent homosexuality is alluded to. While this upset critics at the time, along with the elements that they dubbed as tawdry, unpatriotic and shocking, these elements represented the unique experience of citizens and sailors at the time. On the eve of World War Two, little was glamorous: Navy life called for the soldiers to become inebriated with strange women.

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There was a sense of let-down and bitterness demonstrated in the painting: the stark reality demonstrated might be shocking, but it's still reality, in all its ugliness. This was a unique time in American history and in the American experience, and the bold design and brushstrokes that Cadmus uses to portray this scene is completely distinct to its time.

The portrayal of modern art making a distinct commentary on the experience of the human condition in modern life is particularly apparent when it comes to abstract art. For example, in Kandinsky's work Composition 8, the viewer sees how circles, triangles and linear elements create a surface of interacting geometric forms, thus placing the importance of circles in this painting. While some argue that Kandinsky was creating a universal aesthetic language with dynamic compositional elements, many of which resembled elements from nature, like mountains, sun and atmosphere, this painting is a marked representation of what it means to be alive in the modernity of the 1920s in the mode of a form of lyrical abstraction. To look at composition eight is to see Kandinsky's interpretation of the human condition during the 1920s as a sense of lyrical fluidity. There's an explosive yet harmonious quality to the piece that draws the viewer in to its dynamism. While color is important in this piece, there's a greater emphasis on form than in earlier pieces. The painting offers the graceful chaos of certain explosive qualities along with a strong sense of balance, with push and pull. With abstract art, there's seldom an intensive or concrete statement regarding "what the painting is about" though with this painting, the fact that Kandinsky is so strongly making a case about color, flow, and form in this case, demonstrates how the work is indeed a product of its time, and that Kandinsky's unique experience was portrayed the only way possible. Composition 8 demonstrated what the modern world was to Kandinsky in a moving and relevant manner that was at once decisive and indecisive.

One of the most written about and popularized paintings in the realm of modern art was Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, painted in 1942. Hopper famously explained that he was writing about an area of Greenwich village, where two streets meet; though later he did admit that unconsciously, he was probably portraying a sense of urban loneliness in within a big city. The distinction of this painting makes it a unique and concrete portrayal of modern life. One of the smallest details in the painting in and of itself makes a strong statement about the era in which the painting was created. Flourescent lighting was still a new invention and the glow that this type of lighting emits from the diner is ghostly and glorious, offering up a bright beacon that is both a safe….....

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