Raise the Hammer

Although I don't care what people paint, I am bothered much by what is cheered. Keith Haring was a cartoon doodler, and that's fine. But many began to call him "great." No. He was not. A good critic referred to his work as "fast food," and "fun on Saturday night." But great? No. Then there was Basquiat who painted the same picture over and over and over again. He was called "great," and he was called "the Black Picasso." Basquiat didn't even come close to Picasso, neither in talent nor in the number of works he created. And now Pollock. This man was presented to the public as a man of action, a man driven, of man of unique vision. He was none of the above. He was one of the people who was responsible for the present-day "everyone-is-an-artist" mindset, who helped create the false idea that "everything is art." No, it is not. But there was much money to be made, which is all the art industry cares about. So he was sold to the public as a "genius" and the prices of his work today show us that people bought that idea. Articles on his art continue to appear, continue to do their best to convince us that there was some sort of "underlying meaning" in his work. One day either in the late 1940s or early '50s, he was going through a book of Picasso reproductions and then suddenly threw it down, yelling, "*&%$#@!, that guys missed nothing!!" Yes, he was frustrated, he'd run out of ideas. And then, not long after that, he began dripping paint ... something that anyone can do. It's totally surrealistic to me that his works hang in museums today and that they sell for so many millions of dollars. This "proves" to many people that his work is "great." But, no, it only proves that he was well- promoted and that the galleries made and continue to make a great deal of money from his paintings. Be your own Pollock: Spread a large canvas in your backyard, grab some cans of automobile lacquer, some sticks, and then start walking around dribbling paint onto the canvas. Do this for several days, for several weeks. Let dry. Sign your name. Find a promoter. You see? It's not so difficult and not as mystical as some believe ...