"I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own"
About this Quote
Pollock’s swagger here isn’t macho posturing; it’s a philosophy of authorship that neatly undercuts the old romance of the artist as careful controller. “No fear” is the operative phrase. He’s naming a practical problem in painting: the moment you start protecting an “image,” you stop seeing what’s actually happening on the surface. For Pollock, the danger isn’t ruining a picture; it’s freezing it too early, embalming it into something legible and polite.
The line “destroying the image” is a quiet takedown of representational expectations. It signals that the “image” is secondary, maybe even a distraction, compared to the event of painting itself: the drip, the rhythm, the accident, the physical record of a body moving through space. This is Abstract Expressionism’s wager in miniature: process isn’t a means to an end, it is the content. Pollock’s intent is permission-giving, but also defensive; in the 1940s and ’50s, critics and audiences were still demanding recognizable subjects and stable meanings. He’s preemptively refusing that contract.
“Life of its own” is the subtextual masterstroke. It reframes the canvas as something like a living system with its own momentum and internal logic. That doesn’t mean anything-goes chaos; it suggests trust in feedback: marks accumulate, patterns assert themselves, the work starts “telling” you what it needs. Pollock isn’t abdicating responsibility so much as admitting collaboration with chance, gravity, and time - the very forces that made his paintings feel radically modern, and scandalously irreversible.
The line “destroying the image” is a quiet takedown of representational expectations. It signals that the “image” is secondary, maybe even a distraction, compared to the event of painting itself: the drip, the rhythm, the accident, the physical record of a body moving through space. This is Abstract Expressionism’s wager in miniature: process isn’t a means to an end, it is the content. Pollock’s intent is permission-giving, but also defensive; in the 1940s and ’50s, critics and audiences were still demanding recognizable subjects and stable meanings. He’s preemptively refusing that contract.
“Life of its own” is the subtextual masterstroke. It reframes the canvas as something like a living system with its own momentum and internal logic. That doesn’t mean anything-goes chaos; it suggests trust in feedback: marks accumulate, patterns assert themselves, the work starts “telling” you what it needs. Pollock isn’t abdicating responsibility so much as admitting collaboration with chance, gravity, and time - the very forces that made his paintings feel radically modern, and scandalously irreversible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by Jackson
Add to List
