Tavi Gevinson Wonders When It’s Done

A Piece of Work

MoMA, WNYC Studios

Education, Visual Arts, Self-improvement, Arts, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2017

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When you look at abstract art, what are you supposed to see among all those splatters and blobs? Abbi sorts out her feelings about Jackson Pollock’s monumental action paintings with a little help from the dancer and choreographer Mark Morris, and she puzzles over the scratchy surfaces of Cy Twombly’s paintings with Rookie editor, Broadway actor, and fashion prodigy Tavi Gevinson. Also featuring: Corey D’Augustine, Stella Jacobson, and Anne Umland View the artwork from this episode at wnyc.org/abstract --- About the podcast: From WNYC Studios and MoMA, A Piece of Work is everything you want to know about modern and contemporary art but were afraid to ask. Hosted by "Broad City"’s Abbi Jacobson, this 10-episode series explores everything from Pop art to performance in lively conversations with curators, artists, and Abbi’s friends, including Hannibal Buress, Tavi Gevinson, RuPaul, and Questlove. Produced by WNYC Studios. www.wnycstudios.org

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Tell me if this has ever happened to you. You walk into a museum, it's a little bit crowded.
0:07.0	There are people taking selfies next to famous art.
0:10.0	And finally you find yourself, like people in front of a painting like a Jackson Pollack
0:17.7	It feels to me like it's ordered chaos
0:20.7	Normally I'm usually pretty good at like just saying okay like this is an idea and then extrapolating on it but I'm not getting anything out of this
0:27.6	These paintings are all over the place in here
0:30.7	squiggles, drips, splotches, splashes. Maybe some cigarette butts stuck into it.
0:37.0	Is this something that you have to be, for lack of a better word, enlightened to understand?
0:42.0	What is this all about?
0:45.0	Is it about anything?
0:48.0	And how do you figure out what you're supposed to think or feel about something that seems so random.
0:54.0	I'm Abby Jacobson and this is a piece of work.
1:00.0	We're talking about abstract art in this episode.
1:03.0	And abstract just means any piece of art
1:06.0	that doesn't represent some recognizable thing in the world.
1:09.0	There's all kinds of abstract art in every medium, but I'm going to be talking about paintings today. Abstract expressionism developed after World War II and at the time a lot of people
1:30.0	didn't get it. They thought it looked messy and chaotic. But it's not messy and
1:35.7	chaotic. Or maybe it is those things, but that's because life is that way
1:40.7	sometimes and shouldn't art reflect that?
1:45.6	You can't really mention abstract painting without Jackson Pollock's name coming up.
1:51.0	You probably have a picture in your head of what a Jackson Pollack painting looks like,
1:54.4	drips and splatters all over it. There's a lot going on.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from MoMA, WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of MoMA, WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.