“…the huge Jackson Pollock canvas that is the U. S. A.: vast, murky, splotched and slapped together by a drunk.”

—  Sarah Vowell , book Take the Cannoli

Take the Cannoli (2000)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "…the huge Jackson Pollock canvas that is the U. S. A.: vast, murky, splotched and slapped together by a drunk." by Sarah Vowell?
Sarah Vowell photo
Sarah Vowell 35
American author, journalist, essayist and social commentator 1969

Related quotes

“It [the Mauve-district in the U. S. ] relates to a theme which appears on-and-off, of pictures that often have one central vast shape, district, or territory; in this case, the shape itself [a square] is a play on the very shape of the canvas”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote in 1969
Quote from 'The collection', MOMA, online http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80712
1960s

Will Rogers photo

“Our constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U. S. Senators. There ought to be one day (just one) when there is open season on senators.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Daily Telegram number 2678, Mr. Rogers Takes Notice Of The Senatorial Storm (6 March 1935)
Daily telegrams

Nam June Paik photo

“I want to shape the TV screen canvas
as precisely as Leonardo,
as freely as Picasso,
as colorfully as Renoir,
as profoundly as Mondrian,
as violently as Pollock
and as lyrically as Jasper Johns.”

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) American video art pioneer

Paik (1969) Versatile Color TV Synthesizer, Manifesto, cited in: Edith Decker-Phillips. Paik Video, Barrytown, Limited, 1998. p. 154
1960s

Jackson Pollock photo

“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 (1912–1956) American artist

Quote from Pollock's letter to Alfonso A. Ossorio and Edward Dragon (1951); as quoted in Abstract Expressionism (1990) by David Anfam, p. 175
1950's

Robert E. Lee photo

“Ulysses S. Grant, you invite me to lunch then show up an hour late drunk?”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

As quoted in General Robert E. Lee And the Origins of the American Civil War (1999), by Phoney Mc Ring-Ring, p. 117

“Abstract Expressionism – especially Pollock, not the more academic painters like De Kooning – made the threshold between illusion and the stuff of painting lower, the distance between them closer. Pollock made all things about the picture, all the stuff, actual. Taking the canvas off the stretcher, putting it on the floor, made it more real. Mixing up different kinds of paint, getting it to stain in, was getting at a kind of materiality.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 14
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Yves Klein photo

“Through all these researches into an art that would lead to immaterialisation, Werner Ruhnau [German architect] and I came together in the architecture of the air. He was hindered by the last obstacle that even a w:Mies van der Rohe [also a German architect, famous for his reflecting glass skyscrapers in the U. S. ] hadn’t been able to overcome: the roof, the screen that separates us from the sky, from the blue sky. And I was hindered by the screen that the tangible blue on the canvas constitutes, which deprives man of a constant vision of the horizon.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1958; p. 45
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

“Kevin slapped a box of hot dogs down on the rock. “What the hell was that?”
“A kiss. It’s something guys like me do with girls we like. But don’t worry, someday you’ll find one drunk enough to let you try it.”

Shannon Stacey (1972) american writer

Source: Exclusively Yours

“drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it; s impossible to say if its bad or not”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762]
Tweets by year, 2014

Ellsworth Kelly photo

“When I left Paris in 1954, I saw no art that was being 'made' like mine and returning to the U. S. I found no one 'making' art that way either. In my own work, I have never been interested in painterliness (or what I find is) a very personal handwriting, putting marks on a canvas. My work is a different way of seeing and making something and which has a different use.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, p. unknown : 'Notes from 1969'

Related topics