Abstract Expressionism Quotes:

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.

- Henry Flynt

topic: Avant Garde, Students, Painting, Expressionism, Pollock

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

- Don DeLillo

source: Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.79, Univ. Press of Mississippi

topic: Thinking, Jazz, Influence, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you....

- Jackson Pollock

source: Interview, New Yorker, 5 Aug. 1950

topic: Painting, Abstract, Expressionism, Abstract Painting, Painting Art

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).

- Jerry Saltz

topic: Art, War, School, Expressionism, War Of The Worlds

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!

- LeRoy Neiman

topic: Guy, Students, Paint, Expressionism, Pollock

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

- Jackson Pollock

topic: Artist, Discovery, Self, Expressionism, Discovering Self

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

- Jackson Pollock

source: Jackson Pollock, Gagosian Gallery (1990). “Jackson Pollock: black enamel paintings, April-May 1990”

topic: Artist, Serenity, Energy, Expressionism, Inner World

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

- Robert Motherwell

topic: Art, Firsts, Abstract, Abstract Expressionism

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

- Jackson Pollock

source: Elizabeth Frank, Jackson Pollock (1983). “Jackson Pollock”, Abbeville Pr

topic: Art, Space, Feelings, Modern Art, Abstract Expressionism

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.

- Jackson Pollock

topic: Painting, No Fear, Making Changes, Expressionism, Modern Art

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

- Jackson Pollock

topic: Artist, Etc, No Fear, Expressionism, Landscape Painting

Abstract Expressionism was invented by New York drunks.

- Joni Mitchell

topic: New York, Artistic, Abstract, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism

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

- Jackson Pollock

source: Jackson Pollock (2003). “Jackson Pollock. Englische Ausgabe.”, Kehrer Verlag

topic: Painting, Expressionism, Modern Art, Painting And Art, Painting Art

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

- Cecil Balmond

topic: Powerful, Emotional, Abstract, Abstract Expressionism

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.

- Robert Rauschenberg

topic: Men, Opposites, Self, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism

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.

- Jackson Pollock

topic: Drawing, Different, Use, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism

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.

- Jackson Pollock

topic: Giving, Painting, Harmony, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism

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.

- Jackson Pollock

topic: Artist, Littles, Painting, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism

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

- Jackson Pollock

topic: Use, Causes, Deny, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism

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

- Aaron Huey

topic: Abstract, Pops, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism

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.

- Jackson Pollock

source: Jackson Pollock, Gagosian Gallery (1990). “Jackson Pollock: black enamel paintings, April-May 1990”

topic: Giving, Trying, Etc, Abstract Expressionism, Give And Take

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.

- Romare Bearden

topic: Thinking, Movement, Jazz, Abstract Expressionism

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.

- Andy Warhol

topic: Commercial Art, Abstract Expressionism, Human Form

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."

- Paul Laffoley

topic: Teacher, Mean, Would Be, Abstract Expressionism

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

- Nora Ephron

source: Nora Ephron (2011). “Wallflower at the Orgy”, p.7, Bantam

topic: Party, Dinner, Abstract, Abstract Expressionism, Dinner Party

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.

- Michael Snow

topic: Discovery, Painting, Speed, Abstract Expressionism

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.

- Paul Laffoley

topic: Kids, Writing, School, Abstract Expressionism

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...

- Robert Indiana

topic: Art, Spring, Eye, Pinnacle, Cream Soda