Summertime, Jackson Pollock, China, 2009
16mm (painted by Chen Shun Zheng, Xiamen,
music by Morton Feldman)
In China, there are villages specialized in oil paintings.
Where
you can order a Van Gogh or Rembrandt of your
choice out
of a catalogue and they will make a replicate
for you. I gave
the assignment to one of these painters
to paint me a Pollock,
'Summertime' (1948) to be exact.
This painting was featured
on the cover of Life
Magazine in 1949, when Pollock was at
the peak of
his career.
This short film is a reference to the documentary 'Jackson
Pollock 51' (Namuth & Falkenberg, 1951). During the
filming of this documentary, Hans Namuth told Pollock
when
to start and stop painting and it is said that after the
shoot an
argument took place between them in which they
accused
each other of being 'phony'. From then on, Pollock
reverted
to
a more figure-oriented style of painting, leading
some
to
say that Namuth’s sessions robbed Pollock of
his
rawness
and made Pollock come to feel disingenuous
about doing
things for the camera that he had originally done
spontaneously. |
Open Folders below
MOTI Couture & Graphique
2011
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