LOL: Avant garde

i appreciate most stuff as an intellectual exercise/statement, but i think the enjoyment of avant garde stuff ends once you 'get the point'.
For instance, I dig the point Cage is making about all sound being music etc. and his attempts to break the traditional boundaries on composition and performance, but I don't put on a Cage record when I'm bumping in my car.
I get the point Pollack was making, but his paintings aren't asthetically pleasing and don't make much of a point besides "see, everything/everyone can be art/artists"

like "once you've heard this joke..."

My brother's band were briefly called 'The Avante Gardeners'. Yes, I am ashamed.

I don't think that's the "point" of Pollock at all, but maybe that's just me: I also find his work very aesthetically pleasing.

Hahahaha nabisco! The joke's on you.

(NB: There is no joke.)

I don't think that is the point ANY artist would make. I do not find his work aesthetically pleasing.

i like that he used his bicycle

Some of Pollocks works fall into the "Mmmm, like to touch that one" thing for me.

"i want to get inside it" is the highest accolade ever

perhaps i am combining DuChamp and Pollack, then.
I think there is more of a point to what Pollack did (expressing emotions through strokes/splashes) but didn't we 'get it' after the first painting?

Obviously, it's ridiculous to argue whether his paintings are aesthetically pleasing

Oh but it IS all a joke. Dada 4-ever! umm, yeah. *cough*

Pollock's pics look TASTY

"obviously"? I mislikes the use of this word re: opinions about aesthetic value.

I like some Pollacks more than others, and so I don't think he had "made his point" after the first one.

"Everyone/everything can be art/artists" sounds more like the point Cage was making rather than Pollack.

And while I generally wouldn't put Cage on in the car, there are plenty of other times when I would (and do) put on a Cage album. (Otherwise I'm sure I wouldn't own so damn many of them.) Mostly, you know, when I'm in the mood to listen to some Cage.

But mark s is OTM.

Yeah, Oops, surely we won't all agree -- but I've always thought they were at least meant to be aesthetically appealing, whether or not we concurred. I think I enjoy Pollock mostly on an aesthetic level; I don't think I know enough about art history to have any deep sense of how its avant-garde-ness operated.

Rainy finds them unpretty: maybe there is an inverse correlation between "knowing about art" and "liking the look of Pollocks."

You're 'the man on the Clapham Omnibus'. You're travelling past Clapham Junction when you see a train, a very sleek high speed maglev job.

'Whoosh!' goes the maglev, flicking past your omnibus at almost incomprehensible speed. You glimpse its rakish track-hugging nose for a second, see a greyhound-faced guard glint by, his steely ludic face pinched lemon serious at you. But it's a double bluff! It's irony and play and trixterdom! It's a smart little cockpit up at the front. They're playing chess there and rolling dice. But it all goes by in a second.

The middle carriages aren't so modern, they're full of middle class commuters reading yesterday's Sunday papers someone left on the seat. That chugs by. Then there's the positively manky back end of the train, with moth eaten cloth and a lot of red-faced apoplectics waving the Mail and shouting cliches about things going to the dogs.

And right at the back, chugging slowly (the train must be elastic), is the rearguard, bristling with guards fighting rearguard actions against a raggle-taggle band of philistine arses, proley holes and ragged-trousered plebs brandishing sticks and throwing stones.

The vision brings back dreams of childhood adventure. You morph into your 5 year old self. 'When I grow up,' you whisper, 'I want to drive one of those! I want to sit right there in the front! I want to make difficult things that change the whole meaning and history of art. I want to join the avant garde!'

and where do you end up Nick?

But Momus, that sounds like a train that "runs" "forward" purely on the power of the cockpit's air of self-satisfaction! (Cf Ed Begley Jr.'s eco-friendly car on the Simpsons.)

also yesterday was wednesday

Carriage 6, Seat 14C (window).

also avant garde = vanguard = guard's van (so pollock cd bring his bicycle with him)*

*sadly sleek modern trains no longer allow bicycles

Bicycles? What a load of old Hancock!

what's a clapham omnibus?

I guess the US equivalent is 'Joe Sixpack'.

His avant garde cousin would be 'Joe Seven and a Half Pack (and a fish)'.

Pollok did more than the splatter paintings.
i know i never felt the ebb of genius til i was standing in front of the she wolf. and the same for j cage. i wouldnt feel*it 'less i was seated in front of him.

On the floor I am more at ease-- Jackson Pollock, 1947.

To misquote Kevin Keegan "i love it, i fucking love it". Glass bicycles of peng make me react to it more than anything else. Gernans.

I want to be the nickel on the tracks.

Momus, how seriously are you taking yourself on this thread? Your post sounds like what I remember of your position on the other avant garde thread, but taken to extremes that couldn't possibly be serious.

I am aiming to become Hanle y 2 -- to join, in other words, the Situationist International wing of ilXor.

This is the last comprehensible post from me you will ever --

LOBSTER!

I see little virtue in avant garde, but I adore Pollock. His work is exciting and original and important, intellectually, but it's also beautiful and dynamic and expressive and exciting emotionally too. There are few better representations of how great the avant garde can be.

(I knew I'd regret picking specefic examples)