Abstract Expressionism Quotes

Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades...It springs newborn out of a boredom with the finality and over-saturation of Abstract-Expressionism, which, by its own esthetic logic, is the END of art, the glorious pinnacle of the long pyramidal creative process. Stifled by this rarefied atmosphere, some young painters turn back to some less exalted things like Coca-Cola, ice-cream sodas, big hamburgers, super-markets and 'EAT' signs. They are eye-hungry; they pop.

I went to the Mary Lee Burbank School in Belmont. And it was a place where you, like, learned to go to the store? And I was saying, Oh God, I want to learn something else. I wanted to learn to read and write better and do mathematics better. They were very much into Abstract Expressionism and that artsy stuff. And where most kids did what I call meaningless blobs, I could render perfectly.

You have to act and this is something that happened in abstract expressionism too, it was a discovery particularly in De Kooning's paintings, great paintings. There's a lot of speed in his work and the speed produces things that only speed can produce.

Food became, for dinner parties in the sixties, what abstract expressionism had been in the fifties.

I would be constantly brought up on the carpet by these teachers who were brought up with Abstract Expressionism, saying, "You're too uptight, you're not expressing yourself, why don't you feel freer?" I said, "Well, I don't like that stuff. It means nothing to me."

We live in an age when the traditional great subjects - the human form, the landscape, even newer traditions such as abstract expressionism - are daily devalued by commercial art.

But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience.

When I am in a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. 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.

I wanted to be a painter, somewhere between Abstract Expressionism and Pop.

I don't use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident

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.

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.

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.

There was something about the self-confession and self-confusion of Abstract expressionism - as though the man and the work were the same - that personally always put me off because at that time my focus was in the opposite direction.

The abstract has no emotional content... the abstract is more powerful the more abstract it is.

The painting has a life of its own

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

Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks.

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

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.

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

Abstract expressionism was the first American art that was filled with anger as well as beauty.

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

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

The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on!

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

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.

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.

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning).