Blog 2

After viewing Pollock in its entirety, the viewer experiences somewhat of an Aristotelian catharsis, so great are transitions from bad to good to worse in Pollock’s life. Various sequences in the film avail these turning points in Pollock’s life to the viewer. When we stopped the film last week, we had seen the first years following Jackson and Lee’s move to Long Island in 1945. These years were shown in sequences filled with idyllic shots of Pollock lying on his back in the pasture staring at the clouds, sharing tender moments with his dog as he reconnects with those around him. There is even a shot of Pollock’s hands in the soil as he plants seeds in the garden with Lee, seemingly ushering in a new stage of his life.
This stage in Pollock’s life of blissful stability is short-lived, as the film would have it. It is interesting to note that during this calmer period involving fewer scenes of intoxication, while Pollock still paints, there are no sequences in which he is shown in a true state of inspiration, as he is in the sequence where he paints the Guggenheim mural. Pollock without the booze is generally an uninspired, retreating Pollock. This calmer stage’s end is marked by a conversation between Lee and Pollock about Lee’s unwillingness to have children which results in Pollock throwing a beer bottle at the radio, stopping the music, literally and figuratively. Shortly thereafter, Pollock discovers the drip-can technique, marked by another sequence of “divine inspiration”: Pollock’s accidental paint drip leads to fast-paced music and close ups with the camera angled upward at Pollock’s fast-working hands on the canvas. His inspiration has returned after a lull. In Lee’s words he has “cracked it wide open” and he skyrockets to fame.
The final significant turning point in Pollock’s life featured in the film occurs following a few sequences of Pollock’s increasing popularity and fame. After interviews on the radio and with major magazines such as Life, and an established period of sobriety, Pollock’s life takes a turn again when a movie is being made of his drip-can technique and the director continually tells him when he should start and stop painting in accordance with his filming. This intrusion on Pollock’s creative process disturbs the artist and after the final day of shooting on Thanksgiving, Pollock reaches his breaking point. He calls the director “a phony” and picks up a drink once again, this marking the end of Pollock’s heightened period of fame and the beginning of his spiral downward, ultimately resulting in his death five years later.
This association with alcohol and Pollock’s artistic impulse is a pattern we see throughout the film. Several sequences in the film are instances that involve Pollock’s creativity being seemingly spawned by, or alternately the cause of Pollock’s drinking. This manor in which Pollock’s artistic impulse is shown in close connection with his alcohol use can be related directly to Nietzsche’s ideas of artistic creativity and his writings about Apollo versus Dionysus. Referencing ancient Greek tragedy, Nietzsche writes of two natural artistic drives—Apollonian and Dionysian. Nietzsche classifies Apollonian as visual (related to sculpture), as the principium individuationis, a clear sense of self and of one’s innermost dreams and boundaries. In sum, Apollonian is the rational creative state. Conversely, Dionysian is non-visual (music)“a complete forgetfulness of self,” and boundaries—man is united as he gives up his individuality and succumbs to his irrational state of ecstasy a state which can be shared with the rest of the human race. According to Nietzsche, there is a marriage, a healthy balance of Dionysian and Apollonian states in Greek tragedy (which can also be found in the artist). The rational compliments the irrational state to create a truly dynamic piece of art. Pollock is the embodiment of Nietzsche’s definition of Greek tragedy. As Pollock says in the film during radio interview when asked what modern art is: “all cultures express themselves through different means—modern artists work from within.” The film portrays perfect examples of the Apollonian Pollock in sequences when he is sober, pensive, retreating into his work, and uninspired such as the sequences which comprise his first years living with Lee in Long Island. It is the sequences in which Pollock has picked up the bottle (so to speak) and his irrational Dionysian state is unveiled and united with his Apollonian state, that Pollock is shown in a frenzy-like state of inspiration, having been enabled to “crack [his creativity] wide open.” Nietzsche’s writings may make Pollock’s irrational tendencies more understandable, but reckless behavior is never excusable.
The first sequences of Basquiat are significantly different than the first sequences of Pollock in film’s introduction of the artist and the use of foreshadowing about the future. One of the first shots is of the artist as a young boy standing with his mother, viewing Picasso’s Guernica. There is a close up of the mother’s face with tears rolling down her cheeks and a shot of Basquiat with a lit up crown up his head and a look of sheer delight on his face. This shot of Basquiat as a boy wearing a cartoon-like, lit up crown, is a significant shot as it could be seen as foreshadowing Basquiat being, as Adam Brooks writes the “anointed heir to Picasso,” next in the line of great artists. Additionally the crown could be seen as representative of the bestowal of divine inspiration. Another sequence which is telling of the future of the artist is the one in which he is shown as a twenty-something looking through the letters of the Boone Gallery into the glamorous side of life as an artist, foreshadowing his obsession with fame and his creative drive centered around fame. Finally, the frequent shots of Basquiat as a young man constantly altering the world around him (i.e. graffiti on various storefronts, and portraits in maple syrup) are indicative of Basquiat’s incredible ability to see art in everything.
In terms of connections with the schematic structure of the artist’s biography, the film thus far has indirectly featured elements of Basquiat’s birth. His family lineage is alluded to first when he visits his mother in the psychiatric ward and again when he plays a recording from a suicide hotline (as he plans to use it as a track for his band) a recording in which he informs the dispatcher that he is of Haitian and Italian descent. Elements of Basquiat’s youth, his signs of early promise in drawing and modeling are also featured in the beginning of the film, first with the shot of the him in the crown, and then in the various sequences in which he takes everyday things and makes them into art. Basquiat lives and breathes art.