I want to focus on this idea that no one really has a clue what they're talking about. What does this mean, exactly, in an artistic context? Either you like something or you don't, and there are plenty of good artists who are terrible explicators of their own work (David Lynch being perhaps the most obvious example). Yet rather than requiring the spectator to make a judgement, the film settles for easy potshots at people who are obviously phonies. Maybe it's captivating to watch a child make an abstract painting, but by literally infantilizing her, and thereby suggesting she is incapable of having a mature artistic intent, the film lets the viewer off the hook: We don't have to be able to discern whether the final result is a good example of abstract painting or a bad one; rather, the whole idea of abstract painting is made to seem absurd, confirming every yokel's first and last insight about Jackson Pollock ("My kid could paint that"). Perhaps the most revealing thing about this scene is that it upends the historical association of Abstract Expressionism with the Virile Male Genius pouring his soul into a canvas, as if the film were so invested in the notion of the Great Male Artist that Sorrentino had to make the painter a girl before he could ridicule the work.Quoting Spinal (view post)