There’s a funny story about Jackson Pollock and a critic who called his paintings “accidental”. Pollock picked up a paintbrush, flicked a blob of paint across the room where it hit the doorknob, and said, “There’s the door. Don’t let it accidentally hit you in the ass on your way out.”
It’s probably not true, or at least embellished, but I like it because it speaks to how Pollock’s paintings really aren’t as accidental as they seem. For the 2000 film Pollock starring Ed Harris art students were able to faithfully recreate several of Pollock’s paintings, and Pollock himself was very careful about detail. He didn’t just throw paint at a canvas. Well, he did, but with a pretty good idea of where it would land. There’s also a funny line from an episode of Frasier where Niles explains that he was at an art opening and accidentally flicked a canape onto a painting and now has to pay to have it restored, adding, “How he could notice a fleck of foie gras on a Jackson Pollock is beyond me,” but that’s another story.
One of the things that fascinates me about what look like scribbled tags, stuff that somebody just dashed off without any thought, is how, when I look closely, I see a lot of detail that appears to be anything but accidental, and when I see the same tag multiple times–usually in different places–I’m sometimes surprised by how a seemingly random scribble can be repeated.
There are a few subtle differences but it’s pretty cool how similar these two are.
Good points. Tags look like scribble, but intentional scribble!
Yes! Do it once and it’s an accident. Do it twice and its intentional.
The excellence of your blog is no accident, Chris.
And I appreciate the attention to detail of your comments.