Jackson Pollock - Painters Quotes

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The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject-matter outside themselves. Modern painters work in a different way. They work from within.

Jackson Pollock
I have a definite feeling for the West, the vast horizontality of the land, for instance... I have always been very impressed with the plastic qualities of American Indian art. The Indians have the true painter's approach in their capacity to get hold of appropriate images, and in their understanding of what constitutes painterly subject-matter. Their colour is essentially Western, their vision has the basic universality of all real art. Some people find references to American Indian art and calligraphy in parts of my pictures. That wasn't intentional; probably [it] was the result of early memories and enthusiasm.

Jackson Pollock
Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we're living in... All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims – the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that 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
It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express his age, the airplane the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of Renaissance or of any past culture. Each age finds its own technique...

Jackson Pollock
I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end...Thus the fact that good European moderns [European artists who lived in the U.S. because of the Nazi-regime] are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. These idea interests me more than these specific artists do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Joan Miró, are still abroad.

Jackson Pollock
My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West.

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

Jackson Pollock
The important thing is that Clyff Still – you know his work? – and Rothko, and I – we've changed the nature of painting... I don't mean there aren't any other good painters. Bill [Willem the Kooning] is a good painter, but he's a 'French' painter [Pollock meant: a French-abstract style]. I told him so, the last time I saw him after his last show,... all those pictures in his last show start with an image. You can see it even though he's covered it up, or tried to.... Style – that's the French part of it. He has to cover it up with style..

Jackson Pollock