yea. this is the last one. fucking art events.

Boston College; Pollock Matters In the beginning of October, I visited the Boston College McMullen Museum of Art with my mother and aunt. The college’s museum had an exhibit called Pollock Matters. The exhibit was made up of pieces by many different artists, such as Jackson Pollock, Herbert Matters, Lee Krasner, Mercedes Matters and Alexander Calder. All of the art work in this exhibit was founded by Alexander Matters, the son of Herbert Matters. Alexander was named after his godfather, Alexander Calder. Alexander Matters came across a storage unit of his fathers a few years after Herbert died. He found many drip paintings and the issue with these was that Alexander didn’t know if they were made by Pollock or Herbert. The drip painting style is known to be Pollock’s, but these appeared to be a little different. These paintings are verso paintings, which meant they were two sided. Each side was completely different from that of its opposite side. It is thought that Herbert Matter’s tried his friend Pollock’s style of drip painting, but kept his hidden for he was afraid that Pollock’s widow, Lee Krasner, would be upset. There is a cool Pollock doodle drawing called Untitled in the exhibit. It is crayon and pastel on paper. It is thought to have been made between 1940 and 1944. It looks like many of Pollock’s earlier drawings and there is even a piece of the paper cut out. In a way, it looks like the art of an elementary school student. There is a landscape painting by Mercedes Matter’s from the 1930’s. Mercedes made this painting while she was at Hans Hofmann’s summer school in Province Town. It looks very much like Matisse’s landscape paintings. There are areas of pure hue and even space of blank canvas. Lee Krasner made oil on canvas in 1941 named Untitled. This painting looks very much like a Piet Mondrian, but with many more colors and randomness of shapes in the composition. Mercedes made another painting, but this time it looked more like Hofmann’s own work. It is oil on canvas and used Hofmann’s push and pull method. It looks very much like Hans’ Woman on a Bicycle. In the exhibit was a video about Alexander Calder’s Mobiles in Motion. Calder was one of Herbert Matter’s best friends, and they influenced one another often. The video showed Calder’s mobiles moving around with the ocean or leafs and trees blowing in the wind, in the background. What I got from the movie was that Calder’s mobiles were meant to look like the light glistening in the ocean or the movement of the blowing leaves. What I like most was that Calder said that he built his mobiles simply because he liked to. I was amazed that Boston College was able to get such amazing collection of art. I just wish that Hartwick College could have such an inspiring exhibit one day. It is interesting how all these artists, who were friends, all worked off each others styles.