What is abstract expressionism? - Sarah Rosenthal 

Forget religion or politics, if you want polarized heated arguments, bring up modern contemporary art.

Nice video, but the art is still laughably terrible.

In RU-vid world, Pollock was that guy who said "First!"

There isn't a powerful enough psychoactive drug that would make me see this crap as "art".

That didn't really explain anything beyond they're scribbles of the mind and they're famous simply because they did it first.

Modern/Abstract art is cool, but don't try and give it a bullshit meaning and get mad when people dont want to go along with it. Also, I'm tired of people wanting to sell their shitty "modern" artwork for hundreds and thousands of dollars. it's so ridiculous :/

Overanalyzed bs. I can take LSD tomorrow and make a Jackshit Bollocks painting and don't give me that "but you didn't" bullshit, I didn't draw the Sistine Chapel and I still fucking admire it.

"The web of his lines can create the illusion of an infinite layered depth" Jesus, art people talk a lot of silly horseshit sometimes.

These sorts of scribbles paved the way for talentless snobs to throw whatever shit they want together and claim it as modern art. I can't exactly replicate my five year old's scribbles either, but that doesn't mean they belong on some high street gallery to be sold for millions.

Still sounds like rationalized bullshit. Still uninteresting to look at.

fair play to the 'artists' who have figured out that these idiots will spend all their hard earned money on this horrific paintings lol

This comment section is saltier then the dead sea.

so if i start throwing shit around it will be art?

I'm still not sold. You know that Pollack is a terrible painting when the most logical explanation for his fame is a conspiracy theory.

I hate most modern art. It's a complete insult to the hours I spend on my drawings, and all the other artists spending their lives on genuinely beautiful pieces. When I see the scribbles, I sigh and roll my eyes, and look for something more deserving of everybody's time and recognition.

now my understanding of this so called "art" went from "bullshit" to "complicated "bullshit.

It's like the Emperor's New Clothes. It's all about preying on the egos of stupid people and convincing them that something cheap and meaningless has some kind of prestige and deeper value.

. . . . . . . . . . Maybe this new modern groundbreaking in the art world but here in the regular world, the general populous would never buy or hang this type of art in their house. Only rich people with money who want to show off their money will buy this sort of thing. This type of art feels more like the rich is trying to find a new way to differentiate themselves from the normal average day people. I mean seriously, if I want to look at a scrabbled mess of lines, I can go to a nursery and give a child a bunch of colored markers and let him or her "express" their mot inner thoughts.

I never understood abstract paintings, until I tried it. It's more like putting your emotions on the canvas in a way that makes sense to you personally.

Sorry, but I'm still not convinced.

its actually harder to make an abstract empressionism peice look finished and put together. if you've never tried then you won't understand.

I hate that argument, anyone could have done it but they were tho ones who actually did, maybe no ones done it cause it's stupid or pretentious.

Painters are the world's best salespeople

If you think, you can do art like this, then go ahead and do it. Nobody is holding you back and perhaps you really can. The only difference will be, that they created their stuff back in the days when it was a real change to what people were used to. So they did something no one had done before. Nowadays we are used to this kind of paintings and the "Oh Wow this is New!" - effect has worn off.

It might be art, but it is crap. No excuses for a his low quality, or the snobbish worthness people give it. Not worth the money spend on the materials used.

TL;DW He made a bunch of random lanes and became world famous, but you can't do it because you aren't him.

So Pollock is a genius because he was the first artist to convince people that a random disorganized mess is in fact hidden brilliance? Was the paint he used snake-oil based? Seriously this hack is why art is considered a joke by so many people today. He destroyed the credibility of artists because what people valued most shifted from technique and creativity to how good your sales pitch was for your talentless scribbles. R.I.P. art, savagely murdered by Pollack.

To all of you that keep citing the exorbitant price as a reason why it is so ridiculous, remember to differentiate between the artist and the art market. They are not the same thing. This is why I can go to the Tate Modern and enjoy the Pollocks while thinking about the destruction of boundaries and their playful expression of the subconscious, and at the same time loath the huge bubble that rich people have created over the art market in order to differentiate themselves from the poor. I think spending millions on any of these works of art is stupid, but that doesn´t keep me from enjoying some of them. To all the haters, I recommend paying a small visit to the Tate Modern, the MOMA, or any kind of equivalent you can find in a city near you. Have a relaxed walk around, open your mind, let yourself free of all preconceived notions, and stop and have a look if there is any painting that draws your attention. You might be impressed with the results

If someone likes it fine, but you shouldn't have to pay millions for it.

Pollock couldn't make a painting made by my cat, because he's not a cat. The cat wins!

"If I had a blacklight, this would look like a Jackson Pollock painting".

The video itself is more interesting than any of Pollock's paintings.

I studied history of art, aesthetics and ontology of art, I have read many books on the subject and I still think that Pollock was a lazy artist at best and a scammer at worse. I would kinda get it if he did only a few of those seemingly random splattery paintings and then moved on to do something else (you know, like Picasso did: he never stuck to just one formula, he experimented and renewed his style), but instead that's pretty much everything he ever did. It's like if Monet did nothing but water lilies or if Leonardo did nothing but portraits of ladies staring at the observer with an enigmatic smile or if Van Gogh did nothing but self portraits. I still wouldn't like Pollock, abstract expressionism is mostly not my thing, but I would understand him more, at least.

Total bullshit, it doesn't matter that "anyone could do it but THEY actually did it". Anyone can take a shit on the sidewalk, and yet most people wouldn't think of committing such a nefarious act. These modern art pieces are often just garbage, produced with no effort, no skill and they're rarely even pleasing to the eye.

The thing is, not ALL abstract art is bad, some people work hard on their paintings and they look good, even if not realistic, HOWEVER some people will just throw random scraps of metal together and say "This represents the mind of..." blah blah blah, when really it's just scrap metal. Other will just throw paint onto a canvas and call it modern art, saying the same things. See, the people who do modern art, or at least the kind I don't like, tend to think that they are being 'original', but the thing is, since it's slowly becoming more common, it looses originality and just becomes random shapes called 'art'. In other words, the style ITSELF isn't always bad, it's the people who simply want attention for being "Original" that are the problem.

Conclusion : The cat could make a Jackson Pollock painting.

Wow, there is a lot of hate on this video. I think you all need to bring it down a couple abstract notches, please.

I used to think what the majority of people here in the comments think--"this isn't art, it's just a mess, anyone could make that, this is stupid, yeah yeah yeah blah blah..." But over the years I have found a deep appreciation for abstract expressionism. Most people here seem to think that if something is not visually pleasing, it's not art--that is to say, most people seem to think that the visual form is the only important thing in a work of art. And most people probably prefer to look at things that are recognizable and tangible. I think Pollock is important in that he was attempting to make the intangible a tangible experience. The visual form is a result of so many other things: his use of materials--exploiting properties of paint that no one else thought was significant, and using that as a vehicle for pure expression through physical movement. A lot of his paintings are so richly layered, and I can't help but be hypnotized by the interweaving, intersecting, entangled mess of movements and color. This art does not come about by diligently sitting at a clean desk, wearing an apron, keeping your chin up as you delicately paint something from observation or imagination. This is a different form of painting. This is painting that cares more about reacting in the moment, being able to see something and instinctively make a mark that responds to it. The visual product is a result of this reactionary process and is not a carefully planned construct. I think his paintings are fun to look at--following a line into a cluster of colors, picking out each drip and sudden energetic movement, squinting my eyes and seeing patches of color, following marks that react to each other, and finding beauty within all that.. recognizing something about it that I like and find interesting, and abstracting those ideas into a relevant perception of the world that I can find meaning in.. that beautiful things don't always look beautiful at first, that it's not about instant gratification, that visual elements aren't always the most important, that anything can be art and it's a wonderful thing. I've learned that with artists like Pollock, it's possible to derive meaning from something that seems so chaotic and unrecognizable, and I think that's a beautiful part of the human mind. We have this ability to take in any experience, and ignore or extract or implant any sort of meaning on it we choose. We can choose to think "this Pollock guy is bullshit. his art is bullshit. idontgeddit this is stupid. i could make that," and so be it, that's that. Others might think, "wtf is this? who made this? i don't know why but i really like it." Or "wow, this is truly mesmerizing. the layering and expressiveness of this is striking. i think the colors harmonize well together," and so on. I think the fact that a work of art can produce such polar perspectives strengthens the work even more. There are those who will say "fuck that" and move on. And there are those who will dig deeper and find something that affects them--and no one is to say those experiences are invalid. Art is entirely subjective, and everyone will experience something different. But when you make something that can perhaps produce similar significant feelings in a lot of different people, there is definitely something to be explored there. I'm not saying "omg. jackson paulsblock is a goddamn genius. so expressive. much wow." But his work has given me food for though in reevaluating my perceptions of art. His work has made me realize that there is beauty in the noise. Also, I'd encourage anyone who says they could make a painting like his to please try it. But also, care about it. Put your heart into it. It's like fucking therapy. Pour your guts out on this thing. Get drunk. Get stoned. Get sober. Make some fucking crazy marks on a canvas, and make a lot. Don't give a shit about the end result, be in the Now and react to everything you are doing in the moment. When you don't focus on the end result, you can have more fun, you can play more. Go, explore, be creative. Pollock was a severe alcoholic and a pretty depressed guy, it kind of makes sense that his paintings are what they are. But like I said before, he's using paint as a vehicle for emotions--like he's ridding of his demons through these expressive movements, and I would encourage anyone to try abstract expressionist art for similar reasons.

im going to shit on an canvas and spread it there, say and prove that no one can shit that shit on a canvas. is the canvas full of shit or is it art?

Modern art is there to challenge people about what to think of art and how to define it. Artist are not making their work with the intention of creating something beautiful, they want to create something that let's us think about art and its boundaries. Most modern artist don't earn mad money for their works, because the prices only rise when the art created history, and then the art is sold between two owners, and not the original painter. Modern art is also a response to photography; because images could be made in an instant, there was no large need any more for realistic paintings. Thus, painters tried to paint what couldn't be recorded with a camera: ideas, conceptions, expressions, thoughts, etc. You, thinking that modern art isn't art, is the exact reason why modern art exists in the first place.

While in Venice, my family and I went to an abstract art museum. I remember us all literally crying of laughter at a piece of art titled "uncarved wood" which was exactly that; just two pieces of wood on the ground. My favourite had to be the one called "rose" though, it was a canvas with grid lines on it. Grid lines. I could have got some squared paper from home and called it art xD Some abstract art I admire for their skill and meaning and others I think are just ridiculous.

Sorry Pollok, but classical art is the true wonder of the human history so far

scribbles + nonsense excuse of subconscious splattering of paint = 1 rich jerk who calls himself an artist

Jackson Pollock was directly influenced by another artist, Janet Sobel. She's the one that started drip painting, and there's a clear progression in her work from figurative to abstract. Pollock saw it and made it big. It was much later in life that he begrudgingly admitted that she directly influenced his style. She could have been as big as Pollock - I personally find her colors and style more aesthetically pleasing. But Pollock had a better PR rep in his wife. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Sobel

If one of art's purposes is to inflict emotion inside the viewer, then contemporary and modern art has successfully done that by confusing and angering the hell out of you haha

Why should we not respect a painting made by a cat? how do they know it is incapable of abstract expressionism? Just about every premise in this video is wrong. So if a cat and Jackson Pollock happened to make the same painting only one of them would be art? Why would you pick on cats on the internet?

Of course the laziest art movement would originate from murica

Pollock was not the first to paint scribbles on a canvas. Just the first to con everyone into thinking scribbles on a canvas are actually worth something.

so... if i take my shoes off and start walking on my keyboard, will i write the first abstract book? and will it make me a famous person? and could i call people who don't get it "ignorant"?

Could anyone make these paintings? Yes. But did they? No. And that's the difference.

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Absolutely! Splatter paintings are garbage. You have to pretend to see anything other than random paint drippings. A cat couldn't make this. No, a random cat has the potential for so much more than this crap.

Get out of here with that bullshit. This is worse than lit majors attributing crazy abstract stuff to random authors who were writing quite literally..

"only he could make it"..well that can be said to almost everything...your personal signature, your handwriting, your cooking etc...and all these are reflections of the subconscious in one way or the other. so following that definition of art, everyone is an artist : your cat included.

His art was garbage. Get over it.

So basically these people were going against the stablishment with the exact purpose of doing something even cats could do in order to take down the pretentious bullshit that surrounds the artistic medium, just to have said pretentious bullshit elevate they're nonsense before validating they're critics, and after that they just got on the roller-coaster of fame and fortune and stopped bothering trying to fix the system, while making it even worse for everyone else in the future. So yeah, not only does Pollock's paintings suck, he sucks.

I've always liked Jackson Pollock's art, but some abstract art really is just bland and talentless. Take for example the famous painting that is literally just a black square on canvas.

Some abstract is alright, but the ones that are literally a single green line on a blue and red background? Really?

As an art student myself, I respect abstract expressionists but I do not like the idea of 'easy' art. I do not appreciate art that can be 'easily' replicated but that's just my opinion

People who like this kind of art need to hear the story about the emperor's new robes.

Personally, I agree with most people that modern art is crap. I suggest the video "Why is modern art so bad?" by Prager U. That said, a piece of art's value is derived solely from what someone is willing to pay for it. That is a fact, so subsequently, Pollock's art IS very valuable even if it is crap.

His work is garbage. Analyze it how you like but it's just scribbles. You can read anything you want into it but he wasn't a good artist he was just an art elite fad which made him a "genius" I know many very very talented artists who get no recognition because they are unknown, and yet I go to my local art museum and I see shit like, a piece of string and a coffee stain on a canvas that's been called art. A metronome with the Illuminati eye thing taped to it "art" You can't call this stuff art. It's not. it takes no skill and no matter what you analyze out of it or read into it it's all a product of the viewer bullshitting themselves into thinking it's real art.

Yes, only _those_ artists made _those_ paintings, but they are still garbage. If someone were to splash paint on a canvas, and it looked like a beach, or a mountain, or the sky, or an island, I would accept it. My aunt took me to a modern art exhibition, and I seriously thought it was a scam. I will not accept modern art if it continues to be this way. Not all modern art is abstract, but I am still not impressed. Yes, the artist's motivations behind a piece of art are important to understanding how and why they do certain things, but I do not want to pay $40 to see a bunch of pictures with lines and boxes on a white background. That is nonsense.

The morale: Modern Art sucks.

The significance of breaking convention is lost on the person who is still mired in convention. If "amount of detail" and "realism" are your only standards for visual interest then of course you'll hate a Pollock. Not to mention if you aren't aware of method or historical context, info impossible to get from just the piece itself. The end of the video even states that Pollock's work unfortunately imposes an academic elitism because to "get" it you have to know why it's good, i.e. years of schooling and looking at art. What art do you look at all the time? Challenging, unconventional pieces that make you wonder why they're appreciated? The same Renaissance and western school art that everyone tells you is the best? One genre over and over again? I'm not going to deny that some people will try to scam you by saying a piece is more minimalist than lazy or more sensibility-testing than exploitative, but try and make any piece of art that gets art critics talking, scholars studying, and dealers buying. If anyone could do it, the art market would be exploding with geniuses and we'd buy art all the time. The majority of career artists do grunt work, behind-the-scenes work and commissions instead of serial masterworks out of their own interest. We do indeed buy art all the time, but it's usually product packaging or special effects in films or neutral, inoffensive Pottery Barn stuff. The same stuff you've seen before, the same stuff that pleases a majority with limited art education. Call artists snobs if you like, but at least have a better argument prepared for why a piece is or isn't interesting than, "it looks like a scribble."

The question should be: Why some people think that those scribbles are significant art? But it still a subjective question. IMO, it is just a game where people try to convince others that some are important or not.

Honestly i put much more effort into my work, but this guy just threw some color on some canvas. Then i get called "stupid and immature and uncreative" because i actually care about seeing nice art.

Calling him a genius is a bit of an overstatement.

His art is bad and he should feel bad.

I like how this video states the stuff, but srsly, my 4 year old self could do that. Just because it's on a canvas doesn't make it special. There is nothing special or differentiating about putting a bunch of scribble scrabbles in different places. Modern art is complete crap.

You make the statement: "Anyone could make these, but they didn't". That is one of the shittiest fucking excuses I have ever heard, Jackson Pollock is not an artistic genius just because he did these things first. I could be the first to make an abstract painting of my own, but you won't see that at an art gallery. Art is in my opinion first and foremost about skill, and expression comes second. I would even argue that there is no expression these paintings, when you look at a splatter of paint, does it really send some deep, thought provoking message? The fact that anyone even ever considered putting these in a gallery or buying one for millions makes me sick to my stomach.

so you are saying the cat is soulless and cannot innovate?

Still hating modern art

Two reasons why a lot of Modern Art is utter shite: Arrogant artists who are too full of themselves and believe that they are special in some way. And naive people who fail to call the artist out on his bullshit because they are afraid of being considered "unsophisticated".

I did one of his paintings in an art show and won third place

My subconscious mind automatically disliked this gibberish with such profound power of the psyche after it finished dancing with the god of bullshit detector.

Let me get this straight: entire genres of art are dedicated to questioning what can be considered art, and pushing these boundaries to the breaking point. Millions of people totally miss this point and angrily rant that it's not art. When this is simply explained to them, they cover their ears and shout "muh shit scribbles, muh cat" even louder, refusing to believe that art means anything other than "pictures they like." Is that about right?

Modern "art" is just pretentious crap.

Q: why is Pallok's mind imprint so special if even i can do that? A: .....because he did it....... no seriously, that was the answer to that questions X________X

The replies from you guys are more interesting and meaningful than these artworks!

Anyone convinced by this? Yeah, me neither. Thankfully, artist's have been moving back to representational art for a while now.

when I was about 5 or 6 years old I would paint randomly just beacause I thought it was kinda relaxing, never thought on selling that shit thou

I love Modern Art and I think this video is a good introduction to all the complexity inside the art of this era, beyond "I could do that" and all kind of disrespectful comentaries of ignorant people that can't connect with abstract forms, color, etc, farther than the representation of a woman following the standarts of beauty (for example). Develope your imagination ;)

Don't defend these art. Their value is due the artist's name was attached to it. The artist's name has value due to unnecessary crowd hype and underhanded marketing techniques by their affiliates. The "spirit" that the artist claims are what they experience when they paint. Which has already passed. Long ago. To put it into an understandable context, it's like someone told you about some amazing food that they ate and tells you to look at the shit that they made after eating it to know how amazing the food must be. The "experience" has passed. We weren't there. Even if we were there at the time, we aren't in your head, experiencing your experience. So all that's left is the shit of the artist's experience.

In summery, anyone can paint such paintings that describe their unconscious mind. The only different thing is that no gives a fuck about your unconscious mind unless you are somehow already famous :)

I never thought I'd dislike a Ted-Ed video, but this is 100% pure drivel.

I wonder if I wrote a book with random words that came to my mind it would also be seen as a revolution in literature... Yeah, probably not.

I'm do like a lot of abstract art, but Pollock is just boring. The only reason he is of any interest is that he got away with it. The art itself is terrible.

God, the more I learn about this movement - the more I despise it, and the argument of "anyone could do it - but they actually did it" is silly to me, because there is no merit in it. Usually when people aren't doing something it's because it takes hard work,effort and interest in the notion, but this - this was and still is stupid and there is a very good reason why people have no respect what so ever to this kind of art, because it's nothing, it's not even chaos,it doesn't represent anything, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day some are historian would find his diary and find out that it was just his way of making fun at the art movement.

so they paint from their subconscious mind? Thats some Isaac Mendes shit right there.

More a piece of history than a piece of art

A third of downvotes. That shows that Ted is doing something right with this video, just like Pollock did something right with the artworld.

Abstract isn't supposed to be nonsense. It's not about the quality of the work. It's about the meaning of the colours. How the colours make you feel in side.

I do a bit of realism painting and tried abstract art. I just kept my thoughts empty and let my hand guide my brush. But the more I painted, the more frustrated I got coz my painting made no freaking sense. I guess I can't do art. But I always wonder how these artists feel when they see their finished products.

TED-Ed dropped the ball on this one, but the TED-Ed viewers didn't! Seeing the majority of commenters calling a spade a spade (or calling bullshit bullshit, in this case) has restored my faith in humanity.

I actually like a lot of abstract art. Even as messy or minimalist as it can be, there is still some form and technique to it. However, Jackson Pollock's work doesn't even fit that. His stuff was just a garbled mess of paint splatter. As an artist myself, who has spent the majority of my life perfecting my craft, Pollock's success kinda pisses me off. He was a no-talent hack and the main reason I don't trust art critics to know what the heck they are talking about.

Wow...should we mention that Pollock was drunk most of the time. Drink a bottle of Jack then splash paint around. OOHHH He's a Genius! Maybe, compared to you.

The infinite power of the placebo effect...

Everyone has a different preferences, so I can basically say that anything is pretty right?

I don't like eating food at a restaurant that I could easily make at home with my limited ability and I sure as shit don't like looking at art that I (or my 2 year old son) could create

still sounds silly.. and what about that blue canvas painted with a white single line that got sold for $43.8 million?wtf was that?