“I have two thoughts [on the question of interviewer Joseph S. Trovato: 'Were the projects a good thing for American art?']. That practically all of the best painters of my generation developed on the projects such as Pollock, de Kooning, Brooks, Hague (sculptor), B. Greene, and Baziotes. I could go on and on. My second thought is that the reason it was good is that it had a broad base due to the economic situation we were in - the depression - and all kinds of art and styles, plus all degrees of talent were employed. Everybody was given an opportunity to prove himself. The many painters I mentioned above who have come such a long way is proof of this.”

—  Phillip Guston

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1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

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Phillip Guston 35
American artist 1913–1980

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“Four years ago almost all of the applauded and selling art was New York School painting. It was preponderant in most galleries, which were uninclined to show anything new. The publications which praised it praised it indiscriminately and were uninterested in new developments. Much of the painting was by the "second generation" many of them epigones. Pollock was dead. Kline and Brooks had painted their last good paintings in 1956 and 1957. Guston's paintings had become soft and gray — his best ones are those around 1954 and 1955. Motherwell's and De Kooning's paintings were somewhat vague. None of these artists were criticized. In 1959 Newman's work was all right, and Rothko's was even better than before. Presumably, though none were shown in New York, Clyfford Still's paintings were all right. This lackadaisical situation was thought perfect. The lesser lights and some of their admirers were incongruously dogmatic : this painting was not only doing well but was the only art for the time. They thought it was a style. By now, it is.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd, in: Arts Yearbook. (1964) p. 23
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“My recollection of meeting him [ Jackson Pollock ] outside of this one incident, was at a show that John Graham did at the MacMillin Gallery [1942]. He invited someone called Jackson Pollock and myself, and, I believe, de Kooning. There were three unknown Americans put into that show and it turned out we were the three and it was through that source, my trying to track down the other unknown American who was painting abstractly at that point, as though I knew them all in New York City.... and I promptly went up to Pollock's studio and that's when I say I met Pollock for the first time.... And then, you see, after I saw Pollock, met him, saw the work, I said, "I understand the third painter is de Kooning," and he said he didn't know de Kooning and I said, "Well, I do and I'll take you over and introduce you."”

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) American artist

So I brought Pollock up to de Kooning's studio. De Kooning was in a loft at that time because he was something, and that is how Pollock met De Kooning.
n.p.
Oral history interview with Lee Krasner, 1964 Nov. 2 - 1968 Apr. 11

“And I was painting and changing and developing and going through [c. 1950-52] that bridge from early Kandinsky and Gorky to my own [painting] thing. And just soaking up [Willem] de Kooning and [Jackson] Pollock... So I had the place to myself. And while Bill [= Willem] and Elaine [de Kooning] and Charlie [Egan] and such would maybe come to my studio, there was no thought,.... of my going in with those four or five young ones.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about her painting-years 1951-52
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Phillip Guston photo

“To answer your first question - most significantly the [ Federal Art Project ] project was my training ground in the real sense of the word. I feel very strongly about this. We were all poor, or most of us, and to have the time and opportunity to continue working - I was then in my twenties which is the important period - the crucial period for the young painter. This was most important and figures significantly in my own development. Although I feel that my personal image as a painter did not come about until I began my easel painting with personal imagery which was about 1941. The project kept me alive and working - it was my education.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

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1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

“So I would say, blanket, from the time I was 17 until I was 20 [1945-48] when I graduated from Bennington [Art College] as far as painting went I had a depth analysis of what made Cubism work and its revolution, and all it opened up. And in history it was just the right moment to get it.... I did in my senior show two little pictures that are every bit as good, though I think ex post facto, nothing can be every bit as good ever - the way the best 'drip' Pollock made four years later than the best drip Pollock is not good -. But I could do Braque-s and Picasso-s that were angelic and completely understood, I mean really. I mean Paul [ [Paul Feeley ] really honored me and by that time it was a friendship, it wasn't a --. I mean our lives were in each other.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about her Bennington-years 1945-48
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

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“Machines change their style so rapidly. If one tries to reproduce them in art as realistically as man and the horse in classical art, one immediately lapses into a kind of anecdotic or documentary art... Only the stylisation of a painter like Leger could integrate the machine as the subject matter of art. Here in Italy, the futurists, before 1914, attempted a similar integration of the machine.... César [French sculptor, in the generation of Marini] creates with elements borrowed from industry and the world of machines, sculptural fossils that appear to have survived the same kind of catastrophe as my own figures. But I would like to show you [ interviewer w:Eduard Roditi now in my studio my latest fossils..”

Marino Marini (1901–1980) Italian sculptor

Source: Interview with Edouard Roditi' (1958), p. 89

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“Yes, the aluminum paint... What happened, at least for me, is that when I first started painting I would see Pollock, de Kooning, and the one thing they all had that I didn't have was an art school background. They were brought up on drawing and they all ended up painting or drawing with the brush. They got away from the smaller brushes and, in an attempt to free themselves, they got involved in commercial paint and house-painting brushes, Still it was basically drawing with paint, which has the characterized almost all twentieth century painting. The way my own painting was going, drawing was less and less necessary. It was the one thing I wasn't going to do. I wasn't going to draw with the brush.”

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Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 120

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“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.. [answering Seldon Rodman's question]”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

In an interview (1956); published in Conversations with Artists, by Seldon Rodman, New York, Capricorn Books, 1961, pp. 84-85
1950's

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“[Freedom] is the greatest of political goods. I do not say freedom is the greatest of all goods: the best things come from within—they are such things as creative art, and love, and thought. Such things can be helped or hindered by political conditions, but not actually produced by them; and freedom is, both in itself and in its relation to these other goods the best thing that political and economic conditions can secure.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918), Ch. V: Government and Law, p. 75

“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.”

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Kenneth Noland, p. 14
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