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Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.
Jackson Pollock
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Abstract art challenges viewers by lacking traditional structures and inviting personal interpretation.

In this quote, Jackson Pollock reflects on the nature of abstract painting, arguing that its very essence lies in its abstraction which provokes thought and emotional response. He emphasizes that the absence of conventional beginnings and endings in his work can be seen as a virtue, allowing viewers the freedom to find their own meanings and interpretations within the art, even if that was not the reviewer’s original intent.

Themes

AbstractArtInterpretationEmotionPollock

In practice

Example use cases

In an art class discussion about abstract works, this quote can be used to illustrate how interpretations vary.

More from Jackson Pollock

I don't paint nature. I am nature.
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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.
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He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting.
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My painting does not come from the easel.
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I've been thinking of death a lot, and I am amazed by its inevitability, frightened, as we all are, of the totally unknown, and yet feel a long sleep is somehow earned by those of us who live on the edge.
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I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.
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Quote by Jackson Pollock | QuoteProject