» Sunday, 25 January A.D. 2009
building on culture
Given my recent read of a biography of Jackson Pollock, I thought this bit, from Culture Making by Andy Crouch, was spot-on:
[Pierre] Boulez and [John] Cage each explored the possibility of culture without culture, culture that tried to escape the culture that preceded it. Yet culture has a way of sneaking in even when it is not wanted. The modern painter Jackson Pollock, who tried to completely eradicate the difference between culture and nature, artist and gravity, produced paintings that have an insistent figural quality to them. As abstract expressionist Makoto Fujimura writes of Pollock, when art students try to imitate Pollock's seemingly grade-schoolish splatters and drips, their work does not begin to compare: Pollock's work is imbued with a tradition of painting, no matter how insistently the artist tries to overthrow that tradition. It would not be great painting without the tradition in which Pollock was trained and shaped.
Culture Making is one of the best books I've read all year, both this literal calendar year and the logical last year. I suspect it will wind up high on the list at the end of the calendar year, as well.
posted by Nate @ 2:32PM