Egads, this is great, John. Thanks for sharing. I've been circling around Pollock's legacy as well, thinking about how he was one of the modernists to reach the west and influence artists out here. Neil Jussila once told me when he not yet 18, he was sitting with the older artists in a bar in Butte, and one of his idols described abstract expressionism and Pollock's work as the Chinooks that come to break the city from its winter grasp. I've loved that image since Neil shared it with me, and it certainly explains Neil's influences as well.
Thanks Anna! This is high praise from an arts writer of your stature. I'm intrigued by the difference between "image" (how an artist, such as Jussila, would describe the comment in Butte) and "story" (which is how I would describe what he told you and you are so delightfully retelling us). Did Pollock paint images or stories? My difficulty in answering that question is, I think, what makes him so powerful.
Egads, this is great, John. Thanks for sharing. I've been circling around Pollock's legacy as well, thinking about how he was one of the modernists to reach the west and influence artists out here. Neil Jussila once told me when he not yet 18, he was sitting with the older artists in a bar in Butte, and one of his idols described abstract expressionism and Pollock's work as the Chinooks that come to break the city from its winter grasp. I've loved that image since Neil shared it with me, and it certainly explains Neil's influences as well.
Thanks Anna! This is high praise from an arts writer of your stature. I'm intrigued by the difference between "image" (how an artist, such as Jussila, would describe the comment in Butte) and "story" (which is how I would describe what he told you and you are so delightfully retelling us). Did Pollock paint images or stories? My difficulty in answering that question is, I think, what makes him so powerful.
Hard to throw a rock in the American West without hitting a pile of mythology.