Postulados del éxito en la aplicación de las espátulas

PERSPECTIVES

How well Pollock understood perspective could be glanced in Systems and Dialectics of Art which Pollock read. Graham categorised perspectives into oriental and western perspective, answering to the 62nd question.

62. What is perspective?

Perspective is a conventionalized way to represent distance in painting. There are two conventional perspectives: a) oriental, or a two-dimensional perspective, whereby things farther away are presented higher on the canvas, preserving the same plane; b) Western or three-dimensional perspective which is based on the optical delusion that parallels converge to a point in the distance.²⁶⁷

On the basis of Graham, two-dimensional perspective in Pollock can be defined as oriental perspective. As Graham noticed, I would like to suggest that Pollock would have grasped the two different perspectives between orient and west. Graham argued that:

Perfect two-dimensional form speaks of objects’ three-dimensionality better, more fully and more poignantly than shadow painting possibly can. The goal of painting is to find final significant shapes. Shadow, modeling and object, deflect artist’s interest from the original goal and conceal shape rather than elucidate it. ²⁶⁸

This would have vanished three-dimensional perspective in Pollock's work while leaving calligraphic characteristics and two-dimensional planes like in Picasso’s work. Graham answered to the 21st question: Is painting a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional proposition?

The history of pure painting can be expressed as follows: Prehistoric, Greco-Egyptian, Pompeian, Byzantine, Gothic, Ucello, Ingres, Cezanne, Picasso and Mondrian.²⁶⁹

Therefore, avant-garde artists chose to use two-dimensional perspective, which could probably be linked to their understanding and interest in orient. In particular, Picasso not

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Graham, 1937: 142.

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Graham, 1937: 105.

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Graham, 1937: 105.

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only drew the style of Japanese and Chinese art but also painted Korean war and dancer.

Pollock drew on Picasso’s style in the 1940s, therefore, it can be said that the original style for Pollock was from Picasso in part. After 1900s Picasso had been interested in Asian ethological art while Picasso’s Cubism had only been established by using African primitive sculptures. If so, the Asian element should be included in Picasso’s primitivism and reinterpreted when one discuss artists like Pollock who was influenced by him. The primitivism shown in Picasso's Cubism should not only be confined to Africa, because it was also found in Asia.

When looking into Pollock’s contacts and expressions on Korean issue, his art should be revisited in the interrelation between Picasso and Korean art. A strong similarity can be seen between Picasso’s painting and Korean folk paintings, particularly in perspectives. They display the same multiple perspective and reverse perspective. If Picasso’s accepting of Korean reverse-perspective and multiple-perspective, as the primitive elements, had influenced Pollock, it could be said that the style of Pollock has a close relationship with Korean features. Moreover, it can be said that Pollock already knew the law of perspective of Asia through the writings of Graham. Therefore, comparing the perspectives of Picasso, Pollock and Korea, Korean features would be extracted as a common primitive expression among them. In this part, how Pollock came into contact with Korean one through Picasso’s multiple-perspective will be suggested. I would like to discuss which feature in Picasso and Pollock’s work is closest to Korean aesthetics and how it differs from Chinese and Japanese art in terms of perspective.

Picasso’s sketches are compared to Japanese Ukiyoe in the linear expression and the theme in the book, Secret Images: Picasso and the Japanese Erotic Print. However, simple and primitive use of line can be seen more like Korean art because Ukiyoe or traditional ink painting does not show multiple-perspective as a primitive element. Ukiyoe usually follows the Western perspective because of Westernisation in Japan. China traded with the Western world through the Silk Road from the earliest times. Japan also began to trade with

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European countries, in particular Portugal, from 1543 and the Netherlands from 1600.

Therefore, Chinese and Japanese art had already been shown the European way of painting in the seventeenth century. Japanese painting was largely influenced by Korean painting but they adapted European culture to painting before they created their own style with Korean primitivism. Two contrasting features, plainer structure and Western perspective, coexisted together on paper which became known as the famous Ukiyoe. However the multiple perspectives commonly found in Korean paintings cannot be seen in Chinese and Japanese paintings as one can see in Jiehua, Ukiyoe and their Buddhist painting. Chinese painting also used the shifting perspective but the linear perspective is not common method in the Chinese traditional landscape ink painting. Moreover, Asian reverse-perspective began to disappear after the 17th century in China and Japan. China began to apply western perspective in the Ming (1368~1644) and Qing (1616~1912) period. Chinese and Japanese paintings started to show realistic scene on two-dimension influenced by Western perspective and the Greco-Roman style merged with their Buddhist art as Ernest Fenollosa observed in his book, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: An Outline History of East Asiatic Design.

We have now to look at what is properly a fourth wave of influence upon Chinese art, the so-called Greco-Buddhist-a wave that was long in gathering in Western Asia, swift and brief in its passage across China, and somewhat more deliberate in its breaking and dissipating upon the shores of Japan.²⁷⁰

However, Korean primitivism has been longer maintained in art than in any other Far East Asian country. Regarding the depiction of human form in China, direction of the body usually agrees with the direction of eye-gaze. However, in Korean painting and sculpture, we can easily see that the eyes face the audience regardless of the direction of the body as one can see in fig 39. What is most particular is that the doll’s front face is portrayed on both flat surfaces of the profile.

Picasso tried to depict a multitude of viewpoints of the subject represented in two-dimension. Korean folk arts already have a multiple-perspective to transform objects freely

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Fenollosa, 1912:97.

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which is basically the same method used with Picasso’s Cubism. Comparing Reservoir at Horta - Horta d Ebro (1909) and Korean folk painting interestingly shows a similar diverse partition with thin lines. Picasso’s canvas is also be partitioned by lines. In his painting, the linear pattern appears to be cubes which are also the main figures in the Korean folk painting (fig.41). The stationeries in the painting ignore the perspective of Western as if it was appended a paper cut as same like the synthetic cubism. His use of brown, green and gray colour can also be a reminiscence of Korean folk art. It is noticeable that Korean arts had the characteristics until the early 20th century, even in Korean ceremonial paintings recorded in Uigwe, royal court manuscript of Korea Joseon dynasty (1392–1910). It is partly because Korea operated a closed-door policy until late nineteenth century. The monuments to ‘the rejection of negotiation’ were erected by government in 1871, so the Korean aesthetic and the primitivism were able to be retained until early twenty century at least where cultural tradition was concerned. This is one of the most distinctive features from Chinese and Japanese art. The primitive feature was preserved and developed into various forms of art over the ages as referred shortly in the chapter I. This is why I argue that he would have been more influenced by Korean painting rather than by African or Japanese art in terms of the perspective. This seems to be able to answer Fenollosa, who pointed out: “If Greek art reached Japan by way of China, why did it come so late?”²⁷¹ While Korea has always played a cultural bridge between China and Japan, the Korean primitivism gave a strong influence on Japanese art as much as Greek aesthetics which China conveyed to Japan.

Pollock intended to give the same effect as the visual characteristics from Picasso such as irrationality, primitivity and the grotesque. Pollock seems to have only tried to imitate the external features unlike Picasso did without taking the principle of Cubism based on African primitivism. This is because Asian calligraphic style of Pollock is hard to find a special relationship with African sculpture. Moreover, the reverse perspective not related to

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Fenollosa, 1912: 98.

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the African primitive sculpture which is three-dimension and irregularity because the reverse perspective is a fixed way to represent a realistic scene into two-dimension contrasting to the way Renaissance artists used. This does not seem to be connected to African sculpture because the reverse perspective is a formatted rule in the two-dimension. However, Korean folk paintings have the style of Cubism and calligraphy, at the same time, in two-dimensional paper and not three-two-dimensional sculpture such as African sculpture. Because of this characteristic, Korean paintings display a strong feature of primitive art but not Japanese and Chinese. Therefore, if we look for the closest method to Picasso and Pollock who engaged to use the primitive and Asian elements at the same time, Korean multiple perspective and reverse perspective could be the case.

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