Jackson Pollock: Modernity

“The modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photograph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world – in other words – expressing the energy, the motion and the other inner forces.... the modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.”

Jackson Pollock

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, pp. 139-140

Age , World , Feeling , Nature

“I believe easel painting to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern feeling is toward the wall picture or mural..”

Jackson Pollock

In his application for a grant given by the Guggenheim Foundation 1944; as quoted in Abstract expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen Köln, 2006, p. 9
1940's

Feeling , Painting

“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

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, pp. 142-143

World , Way , Nature , Thinking

“Each age finds its own technique... I mean, the strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.”

Jackson Pollock

As quoted in Francis V. O'Connor (1967) Jackson Pollock, p. 79
in posthumous publications

Age , Art , Thinking

“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

As quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York, 1990, p. 138
1940's, Art and Architecture (1944)

Art , Idea , Understanding , Problem

“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

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, p. 140

Age , Art

“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

Quote of Pollock in a radio interview (1951); as quoted in Lives of the Great Twentieth Century Artists', (1986) Edward Lucie-Smith, p. 263
1950's

Way

“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

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, p. 17

Age , Past