Pollock Jackson Quotes & Sayings

Like what Jackson Pollock used to say. He thought the creation of the painting was the art, and the painting was just what was left. He didn't know why people wanted to buy his paintings. — Andy Reynolds

My paintings do not have a center, but depend on the same amount of interest throughout. — Jackson Pollock

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen. — Jackson Pollock

I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge. — Jackson Pollock

Before they did all those shows on Jackson Pollock, I loved the way he formulated his paintings. I loved Basquiat - I was into the whole Beat generation, Kerouac, etc., and all those artists talked about that and Kerouac, so I just got in the middle of being spontaneous. — Matt Schulze

Dali's Reclining Woman Wearing a Chemise looks like a dead slaughtered doll, and I can see preying eagles, broken arrows, and jazz musicians in Jackson Pollock, and because I believe that Man Ray and Duchamp were lovers. — Dionne Brand

The people of Cody like you to think that Buffalo Bill was a native son. In fact, I'm awfully proud to tell you, he was an Iowa native, born in the little town of Le Claire in 1846. The people of Cody, in one of the more desperate commercial acts of this century, bought Buffalo Bill's birthplace and re-erected it in their town, but they are lying through their teeth when they hint that he was a local. And the thing is, they have a talented native son of their own. Jackson Pollock, the artist, was born in Cody. But they don't make anything of that because, I suppose, Pollock was a complete wanker when it came to shooting buffalo. — Bill Bryson

People have always frightened and bored me consequently I have been within my own shell. — Jackson Pollock

I don't use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident — Jackson Pollock

I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. — Jackson Pollock

A man's life is his work; his work is his life. — Jackson Pollock

I'm a postmodern commentator, and so, in a cheeky parallel to James Joyce or James Kelman, I get to places, verbally, that are a little unusual - when I talk about Jocky Wilson and end up sounding like a Jackson Pollock of the commentary box. — Sid Waddell

Technic is the result of a need new needs demand new technics total control denial of the accident States of order organic intensity energy and motion made visible memories arrested in space, human needs and motives acceptance — Jackson Pollock

I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time. — Henry Flynt

Decades ago, Gerhard Richter found a painterly philosopher's stone. Like Jackson Pollock before him, he discovered something that had been in painting all along, always overlooked or discounted. — Jerry Saltz

Movies I remember in impressions. No matter how many times I see a film, my memory of it is like a Monet painting...or a Cezanne, depending on the genre. Sometimes all I can muster is a Jackson Pollock. My memory of experience is usually the same: I carry with me only the sensations it gave me, the general outline of its content, the essential colors that strained my sensibility in the moments I took it in. I don't remember dialogue or specific action. Only shapes and impressions. — Kim Cope Tait

But people like the doll guy who sells women and the dog guy who buys women, and other guys who, say, rape women, or maybe don't go as far as violent rape but treat women like objects instead of people - sure, there's a difference in the level of crime, but it's all the same thing, where women become a canvas for throwing emotional baggage, Jackson Pollock style. — Taylor Stevens

I think there's a real problem if you're making a film - some people have done whether it be about Jackson Pollock or about Picasso - it's difficult for actors, because they have to impersonate a person whose image is very strong in our memories or in our consciousness. It's something that's very tricky, I think. — Peter Webber

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well. — Jackson Pollock

The history of American art, in a way, begins with Jackson Pollock and his big paintings. This theme of bigness - all painters and sculptors have dealt with it ever since. — Michael Heizer

I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting. — Jackson Pollock

every good artist paints what he is — Jackson Pollock

You can't learn techniques and then try to become a painter. Techniques are a result. — Jackson Pollock

I'd rather sit next to Brian for two hours in a dark theater than have a wall painting party with Jackson Pollock — Jandy Nelson

In response to the question, 'How do you know when you're finished?' Pollock replied, 'How do you know when you're finished making love? — Jackson Pollock

Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement. — Jackson Pollock

Allan: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?
Museum Girl: Yes, it is.
Allan: What does it say to you?
Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
Allan: What are you doing Saturday night?
Museum Girl: Committing suicide.
Allan: What about Friday night? — Woody Allen

The modern artist ... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces. — Jackson Pollock

Many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock, Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Lucille Ball, and Charles Darwin were all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields. — Carol S. Dweck

A real friend is someone you say a sentence to and they know ten thousand words behind that sentence. — Jackson Pollock

I've had a period of drawing on canvas in black - with some of my early images coming thru -, think the non-objectivists will find them disturbing - and the kids who think it simple to splash a 'Pollock' out. — Jackson Pollock

When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. — Jackson Pollock

Well, painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very exiting. Five or six of my contemporaries around New York are doing very vital work, and the direction that painting seems to be taken here - is - away from the easel - into some sort, some kind of wall, wall painting ... — Jackson Pollock

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. — Jackson Pollock

Kyle, you are a mellow dude ... You can't be with an agitator. And that's what she is. An agitator. She's a Jackson Pollock and you're a Thomas Kinkade. — Genevieve Dewey

If people would just look at the paintings, I don't think they would have any trouble enjoying them. It's like looking at a bed of flowers, you don't tear your hair out over what it means. — Jackson Pollock

A canvas is an arena in which to act. — Jackson Pollock

The painter locks himself out of his own studio. And then has to break in like a thief. — Jackson Pollock

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements ... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. — Jackson Pollock

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. — Jackson Pollock

My painting does not come from the easel. — Jackson Pollock

I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident. — Jackson Pollock

My concern is with the rhythms of nature I work inside out, like nature. — Jackson Pollock

Somebody can paint with a fine brush like Monet and do millions of little dots or somebody can splatter it up there like Kandinsky or Jackson Pollock and go "Yep, that's art." That's okay. — Patrick Wilson

It's impossible in our postmodern era for anyone to be original
for anybody to do what Jackson Pollock did ... — Irving Sandler

I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. — Jackson Pollock

On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. — Jackson Pollock

As to what I would like to be, it is difficult to say. An artist of some kind. If nothing else I shall always study the Arts. — Jackson Pollock

With experience it seems to be possible to control the flow of paint, to a great extent, and I don't use - I don't use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident ... it's quite different from working, say, from a still life where you set up objects and work directly from them. I do have a general notion of what I'm about and what the results will be. I approach painting in the same sense as one approaches drawing, that is, it's direct. — Jackson Pollock

I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting. — Jackson Pollock

Well, method is, it seems to me, a natural growth out of a need, and from a need the modern artist has found new ways of expressing the world about him. I happen to find ways that are different from the usual techniques, which seems a little strange at the moment, but I don't think there's anything very different about it. I paint on the floor and this isn't unusual - the Orientals did that. — Jackson Pollock

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art. — Jackson Pollock

I'm interested in Jackson Pollock's kind of art, where art is beautiful, but it's nothing, and yet it's incredible. — Taylor Swift

I've been thinking of death a lot, and I am amazed by its inevitability, frightened, as we all are, of the totally unknown, and yet feel a long sleep is somehow earned by those of us who live on the edge. — Jackson Pollock

Like punk rock, like Jackson Pollock, like Jack Kerouac, it was truly human, a mix of perfect beauty and cathartic error. — Yann Martel

I love Francis Bacon. I just saw a great Jackson Pollock exhibit at the Dallas Museum when I was home for Thanksgiving. — Owen Wilson

Who among us has not gazed thoughtfully and patiently at a painting of Jackson Pollock and thought "What a piece of crap?" — Rob Long

I am doubtful of any talent, so whatever I choose to be, will be accomplished only by long study and work — Jackson Pollock

Painting is no problem. The problem is what to do when you're not painting. — Jackson Pollock

Not all paintings are abstract; they're not all Jackson Pollock. There's value in a photograph of a man alone on a boat at sea, and there is value in painting of a man alone on a boat at sea. In the painting, the painting has more freedom to express an idea, more latitude in being able to elicit certain emotion. — Aaron Sorkin

I think we're in an age where artists really have an incredible range of materials at their command now. They can use almost anything from household items - Jackson Pollock used house paint - to, you know, advanced computer systems, to good old oil paint and acrylic paint. — Bill Viola

He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting. — Jackson Pollock

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. — Jackson Pollock

Love is friendship set to music. — Jackson Pollock

Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within. — Jackson Pollock

On the floor I am more at ease, — Jackson Pollock

Art is coming face to face with yourself. — Jackson Pollock

I don't paint nature. I am nature. — Jackson Pollock

Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn't have as far to fall. — Jackson Pollock

I want to express my feelings, not illustrate them. — Jackson Pollock

... she wore a masterpiece smile with smudges of paint and graphite across her cheek, and her eyes were a Jackson Pollock painting. — Ellie Lieberman

The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state and attempt to point out the direction of the future - without arriving there completely — Jackson Pollock

Painting is a state of being. — Jackson Pollock

Every good painter paints what he is. — Jackson Pollock

anticipated this trend in the 1950s, when it used Jackson Pollock's action paintings as the backdrop for a fashion shoot for its spring collection. For Indiana the experience was a salutary one. The wordage he utilised in his paintings had always been carefully chosen and carried great emotional resonance, much of it directly autobiographical. He was not a neutralist. He was not attempting to transform the word 'love' into a slogan or logo, but that's what happened anyway, and the effect it had on his reputation as an artist was considerable. Because of the commercial proliferation of the LOVE — Rob Chapman

It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed after a while you may like it or you may not. — Jackson Pollock

Unfortunately, there was no Jackson Pollock of the camera. — Edward Ruscha

The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating. — Jackson Pollock

I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. — Jackson Pollock

It doesn't matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said. — Jackson Pollock

It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel. — Malcolm Cowley

When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own. — Jackson Pollock

The idea of an isolated American painting , so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd ... And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country. — Jackson Pollock

I can't help thinking of Jackson Pollock, who poured, splattered and lashed the canvass with strings of paint. His process was about snaring not only a vision, but the moment the vision occurred to him. The paint becomes a net cast around something too fast to be caught. The bare spaces between the net's strands are as significant as the strands themselves because they hint at what can't be painted, can't be described. — Jocelyn Lieu

Joan of Arc came back as a little girl in Japan, and her father told her to stop listening to her imaginary friends.
Elvis was born again in a small village in Sudan, he died hungry, age 9, never knowing what a guitar was.
Michelangelo was drafted into the military at age 18 in Korea, he painted his face black with shoe polish and learned to kill.
Jackson Pollock got told to stop making a mess, somewhere in Russia.
Hemingway, to this day, writes DVD instruction manuals somewhere in China. He's an old man on a factory line. You wouldn't recognise him.
Gandhi was born to a wealthy stockbroker in New York. He never forgave the world after his father threw himself from his office window, on the 21st floor.
And everyone, somewhere, is someone, if we only give them a chance. — Iain Thomas

The process is only a means to an end-creating the painting I want. It doesn't mean anything itself. It's only a way of creating a result. — Jackson Pollock

There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end. — Jackson Pollock

The painting has a life of its own — Jackson Pollock

I don't work from drawings and colour sketches into a final painting. Painting, I think, today - the more immediate, the more direct - the greater the possibilities of making a direct - of making a statement. — Jackson Pollock

Chaos can be structured as non-chaos. That we know from Jackson Pollock. — Eva Hesse

Jackson Pollock said once, "I don't really feel that many people in this world are alive." He said, "That's why I like you, Tom. You're alive." — Tom Robbins

A monochrome Jackson Pollock," Jane says, and then tells Tiny, "We gotta bolt. This band is like a root canal sans painkiller". — John Green

The secret of success is ... to be fully awake to everything about you. — Jackson Pollock