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

What this quote means

The modern artist conveys their inner feelings and energies through their work.

Jackson Pollock emphasizes that modern art is not just about external beauty or representation, but rather about expressing the artist's internal experiences, emotions, and dynamic forces. This perspective suggests that art is a reflection of the artist’s inner world, capturing their energy and the complexities of their thoughts and feelings in a visceral way.

Themes

Modern ArtInner WorldExpressionEnergyMotion

In practice

Example use cases

During a lecture on contemporary art, I would quote Pollock to illustrate how artists convey emotions through their work.

More from Jackson Pollock

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.
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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.
Jackson PollockRead

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