rat & pollock


I've been fascinated with Jackson Pollock for a while now. As much with his personality as with his paintings. I have trouble deciding if I should love him or hate him. Did his paintings help destory art? Genius or bum?

I frequently pick up magazines. I spend more time looking through them—the way the images and words work together—than actually reading the articles. One magazine I have been picking up and reading lately is Seed.

This issue's feature article is called Blue Brain. It's definitely worth checking out—really fascinating stuff. What your seeing above (from the article) is a .5mm by 2mm slice of a rat's neocortical column next to Pollock's Cathedral. Maybe he was on to something. By painting from his unconscious mind in an effort to evoke something of the stuff dreams and ideas are made of, he may have painted the most basic element of the brain. The Seed article doesn't mention Pollock, but he was the first thing I thought of upon seeing the image. There is so much we don't know. Nothing is isolated. Something as seemingly disparate as art and science are more closely related than first thought.

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