Politics & Power Quote by Morton Feldman

A composer praising a nation because it overpaid for a Pollock is the kind of compliment that arrives with a raised eyebrow. Feldman’s line flatters Australia while quietly indicting the whole prestige economy that makes “a few million dollars” sound like cultural proof. The joke isn’t just that abstract painting can look like expensive chaos; it’s that governments, of all institutions, are willing to underwrite that chaos to buy themselves an aura of sophistication.

Feldman came out of the New York School milieu where Pollock wasn’t merely a painter but a flag: American modernism announcing itself as world-historical. In that context, Australia’s purchase reads like an outpost paying tribute to the center, a young country importing cultural legitimacy in a crate. Feldman’s “I figure” is doing work here: it pretends to be innocent logic while exposing a transaction everyone recognizes. We don’t evaluate nations only by policy or quality of life; we read their checkbooks for signs of taste.

There’s also a composer’s slyness in choosing Pollock. Feldman’s own music traffics in delicacy, duration, and a kind of anti-spectacle. Pollock, by contrast, is the poster child for big, gestural mythmaking. Feldman salutes the myth with a grin: if you’ll spend public money on the most conspicuous symbol of avant-garde value, you must be “marvellous.” Meaning: you’ve learned the rules of the art world, and you’re willing to play them loudly enough for everyone to hear.