Even those not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with Jack­son Pol­lock­’s work know to file him under a cat­e­go­ry called “abstract expres­sion­ism,” but some­how his mas­sive paint­ings — and the lay­er upon lay­er of drips that con­sti­tute their visu­al and tex­tur­al sur­face — still seem to slip cat­e­go­riza­tion. Some of the painter’s fans would sure­ly claim that, more than six­ty years after his death, he does indeed still stand apart. But how far apart, real­ly? Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, takes on that ques­tion in the video essay above, “How Art Arrived at Jack­son Pol­lock.”

Puschak con­sid­ers a par­tic­u­lar Pol­lock paint­ing from 1950, “the only abstract work of art that has ever floored me in per­son as soon as my eyes caught it,” and asks why appre­ci­a­tion comes so much more eas­i­ly for him with it than with oth­er non-fig­u­ra­tive works of art. “I don’t think the pow­er of this Pol­lock depends on its place in the his­to­ry of art.” he says. “Its style, its use of col­or, its hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty are intrin­sic qual­i­ties, but I do think the his­to­ry of art has a lot to say.” In many ways, “they’re the cul­mi­na­tion of some­thing that has a fog­gy begin­ning about a cen­tu­ry or two before, with the grad­ual end of church and noble patron­age of the arts and the dawn of painters paint­ing what was impor­tant to them.”

This line of think­ing sets Puschak in search of the begin­ning of mod­ern art itself, which some find in the ear­ly 1860s in the high­ly fig­u­ra­tive work of Edouard Manet, with its “flat­tened” imagery and “scan­dalous sub­ject mat­ter.” Mon­et and his col­leagues brought about the move­ment known as Impres­sion­ism, “con­cern­ing them­selves not with the objects they see in the world but how the light plays off them.” From then on the degree of abstrac­tion inten­si­fies with each sub­se­quent move­ment in paint­ing, and by the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry “art has unrav­eled. Its cen­turies-long aim of repro­duc­ing the phys­i­cal world in per­spec­tive, col­or and form is rapid­ly being aban­doned.”

The high­ly com­pressed six-minute jour­ney that Puschak takes through art his­to­ry to get him to Pol­lock­’s “drip paint­ings,” which the artist began cre­at­ing in the 1940s, also includes stops at post impres­sion­ism; the work of Vin­cent Van Gogh (notably his “ugli­est mas­ter­piece” Night Cafe, sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous Nerd­writer analy­sis); Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky and Pablo Picas­so; Dada and the Sur­re­al­ist Man­i­festo, all in the span of less than a hun­dred years. “A fast-chang­ing world con­tributed huge­ly, of course, but beyond that I do believe there’s a dri­ve in us to take things as far as they can go, and the cen­tu­ry of mod­ern art is an exhil­a­rat­ing exam­ple of that” — and the oeu­vre of Pol­lock him­self remains an exam­ple of “how irre­press­ible human cre­ativ­i­ty can be.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Was Jack­son Pol­lock Over­rat­ed? Behind Every Artist There’s an Art Crit­ic, and Behind Pol­lock There Was Clement Green­berg

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Watch Por­trait of an Artist: Jack­son Pol­lock, the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by Melvyn Bragg

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

Dripped: An Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to Jack­son Pollock’s Sig­na­ture Paint­ing Tech­nique

60-Sec­ond Intro­duc­tions to 12 Ground­break­ing Artists: Matisse, Dalí, Duchamp, Hop­per, Pol­lock, Rothko & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Folks with a pass­ing knowl­edge of ukiyo‑e, the Japan­ese wood­block print art form pop­u­lar in the 17th through 19th cen­turies, will be famil­iar with its land­scapes, as well as its por­traits of cour­te­sans and kabu­ki actors. But often these prints were edu­ca­tion­al, demon­strat­ed by these very odd anatom­i­cal prints that pro­mote good health as it relates to our inter­nal work­ings.

Long before ani­mat­ed mon­sters warned us about our mucus-filled chests, Japan­ese artists like Uta­gawa Kunisa­da (1786–1865) filled the guts of these men and women with lit­tle work­ers, mak­ing sure the human body worked like a func­tion­ing vil­lage or town.

In the first print, Inshoku Yojo Kaga­mi (“Mir­ror of the Phys­i­ol­o­gy of Drink­ing and Eat­ing”), a man dines on fish and drinks sake. Inside, lit­tle men scur­ry about a pool wrapped in intestines, stoke a fire under the heart, all the while a schol­ar keeps ref­er­ence mate­ri­als near­by. Down below lone­ly fig­ures guard the “urine gate” and the “feces gate,” sure­ly one of the worst jobs in all the body econ­o­my.

One of Kunisada’s stu­dents cre­at­ed a print for the women, focus­ing on the repro­duc­tive organs, called Boji Yojo Kaga­mi (“Rules of Sex­u­al Life”). Keen eyed view­ers will note that the minia­ture work­ers here are all women, so at least there’s some equal­i­ty at play.

The two prints were meant as instruc­tion­al, point­ing out best health prac­tices, and warn­ing against overindul­gence and excess.

Oth­er prints are just as inven­tive: a back and abdomen cov­ered in chil­dren play­ing famil­iar games; anoth­er fea­tur­ing pop­u­lar kabu­ki actors stand­ing in for var­i­ous organs. (Now, that is just cry­ing out for a mod­ern remake). The last print shows a preg­nant woman whose bel­ly con­tains Tainai jukkai no zu (Ten realms with­in the body), a Bud­dhist idea that you can read more about here. As for their func­tion inside the womb, that is for oth­ers of a high­er con­scious­ness to dis­cern.

via Spoon & Tam­a­go

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map­ping Emo­tions in the Body: A Finnish Neu­ro­science Study Reveals Where We Feel Emo­tions in Our Bod­ies

A Sub­way Map of Human Anato­my: All the Sys­tems of Our Body Visu­al­ized in the Style of the Lon­don Under­ground

“Man as Indus­tri­al Palace,” the 1926 Lith­o­graph Depict­ing the Human Body as a Mod­ern Fac­to­ry, Comes to Life in a New Ani­ma­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.