Overrated & Underrated Artists pt 2

OVERRATED - JACKSON POLLOCK

To paraphrase Sam Kriss, if you like Jackson Pollock, you’re wrong.

People who say ‘my kid could do that’ are also wrong. But that’s not the point. I’ve spent my entire adult life around painters more talented than me. They’re my friends, the people I got drunk with, and when I need an intelligent opinion they’re who I go to. About painting, that is—not anything else. Painters are notoriously dumb, sensual people, ill-equipped to manage their own lives. But the good ones can be relied on for their taste in painting, and I’ve never heard one praise Jackson Pollock. No friend counts him among their favourite artists. He just doesn’t come up, in much the same way Sam Harris wouldn’t come up in a conversation between Schopenhauer and Socrates.

Pollock did one important thing only—he liberated the canvas from the paintbrush. But the paintings he made as a result are unremarkable in every way, and mostly unpleasant to look at. It’s normal to dislike Pollock because you’ve been inundated by design inspired by his paintings. Ugly sweatpants bearing Pollocky drips, laptop cases, cheap plastic cups, sunglass frames. But that’s not his fault and it can’t be held against him. It’s not surprising though. I’ve never seen a Swatch patterned like a Barnett Newman, or a Rothko. That’s likely because their paintings transcended design, where Pollock’s did not. He’s a designer who developed a technique—admittedly a radical one—but the only people who seem to have adopted it are senior high school students, who use it unsparingly in art class.

Pollock was corny with the drinking and drunk driving and the way he died. He lived like Caravaggio when he was more of a depressive Thomas Kinkade. None of that matters. The paintings are just forgettable, and that’s the one thing good art can’t be. His wife, Lee Krasner, was the better artist—a not unusual situation, but that’s a whole other thing.

UNDERRATED - PAUL FEELEY

When I say Paul Feeley is underrated, I don’t mean he should be top-rated like Francis Bacon, Munch, and Louise Bourgeois, but he still deserves more eyeballs than he’s currently getting.