IT'S ART IF I SAY IT'S ART

Not sure what to say about this. Just a couple days ago I streamed via Netflix Ed Harris's 2000 biopic about Jackson Pollock, who I really like, but sometimes get confused with Jasper Johns. If you just throw paint around, it can be fun, but I think you have to be conscious of what you're doing. And what is the difference between a paintbrush in the hands of an ape and a toddler? And Rembrandt or Jackson Pollock?

In the movie, the pivotal moment, quite delicious, is when Pollock notices a blob of splattered paint, off his canvas, and sees the artistic potential in the beautiful random distribution of pigment and goo. It is the sloppy birth of his unique signature style. I like those paintings. The mother of one of my adolescent friends once tried to approximate this style in painting the floor of a basement "rumpus room." She got us to help splatter the paint around. We had some fun, but I'm not sure it worked. Modern art sometimes bleeds over to interior decor in strange ways.

The contrast of this and classic Chinese painting is like yin and yang. My Chinese painting teacher once urged me to see a film about modern art, was it Picasso or some graphic artist? She sneers a little at Qi Baishi, the "Picasso of China." "He makes a lot of mistakes," she says.

So did Jackson Pollock. His whole life looks like one big mistake. But I could live with one of his big murals on my wall. I think, well, I could do that...but it would look like I just got crazy one day, throwing paint around in a fit. (The way I try to paint a peony, it takes a lot of practice.)

Maybe that's art.