"The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves"
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De Kooning’s jab lands because it punctures a flattering myth artists (and audiences) love: that the world is a messy heap and the genius arrives to clean it up. Calling that “very absurd” isn’t false modesty; it’s a hard-earned refusal of the heroic “master of chaos” storyline. Nature, in his view, doesn’t need saving. It already has patterns, pressures, repetitions, even if they don’t conform to our desire for clean narrative. The real disorder is internal: perception, impulse, ego, fear, appetite for control.
That pivot - from ordering nature to ordering the self - reads like a manifesto for Abstract Expressionism’s best days. De Kooning painted in a moment when American art was trying to dethrone European tradition and, after World War II, when the idea of “order” had been weaponized by ideologies promising purity and certainty. His work lives in that tension: frantic surfaces that are still decisively composed, the sense of wrestling with paint rather than imposing a tidy plan on it.
Subtextually, he’s also defending process over product. “Order into ourselves” suggests discipline, yes, but also honesty: the artist’s job is to calibrate attention, to bear their own contradictions without laundering them into a neat picture of the world. It’s an anti-romantic statement delivered with an artist’s pragmatism. The canvas isn’t where chaos gets fixed; it’s where a person learns what their mind is actually doing.
That pivot - from ordering nature to ordering the self - reads like a manifesto for Abstract Expressionism’s best days. De Kooning painted in a moment when American art was trying to dethrone European tradition and, after World War II, when the idea of “order” had been weaponized by ideologies promising purity and certainty. His work lives in that tension: frantic surfaces that are still decisively composed, the sense of wrestling with paint rather than imposing a tidy plan on it.
Subtextually, he’s also defending process over product. “Order into ourselves” suggests discipline, yes, but also honesty: the artist’s job is to calibrate attention, to bear their own contradictions without laundering them into a neat picture of the world. It’s an anti-romantic statement delivered with an artist’s pragmatism. The canvas isn’t where chaos gets fixed; it’s where a person learns what their mind is actually doing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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