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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the inevitability of death and the fear it brings, while also suggesting that those who live life to the fullest deserve peace in the end.
Jackson Pollock's quote grapples with the universal themes of mortality and existential contemplation. He acknowledges the fear that accompanies the thought of death and the unknown, yet implies a certain appreciation for life lived on the edge. This duality suggests that those who embrace intensity and passion in their lives may earn a tranquil release when life comes to an end, bringing a nuanced understanding to the concept of mortality.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on philosophy in a classroom, one might invoke this quote to explore human perceptions of mortality.
More from Jackson Pollock
All quotes βI don't paint nature. I am nature.
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.
He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting.
My painting does not come from the easel.
I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.
Similar quotes
When this awareness grows, dreaming stops, by and by. When this awareness grows, the wheel moves slower and slower, because there is no point. You never move, so what is the point of travelling the whole earth? You remain the same; then desires slow down. One day it happens: the wheel is as silent, as unmoving as the hub. That is the point when enlightenment happens.
Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.
On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use.
Mark you, if you give up spirituality, leaving it aside to go after the materializing civilization of the West, the result will be that in three generations you will be an extinct race; because the backbone of the nation will be broken, the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built will be undermined, and the result will be annihilation all round.
To find a cause that's larger than yourself and then to give your life to it.
There is no use being alive if one must work. The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own lifeβs meaning - that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself - is not earned by work.