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I got sick and tired of all that Purity! Wanted to tell stories.. (1967, on his change from abstract-expressionism to figurative painting, fh)
--
Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 207

 

Phillip Guston

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In 1949, I ceased figurative painting and began works that were object oriented. The drawings from plant life seem to be a bridge to the way of seeing that brought about the paintings in 1949 that are the basis for all my later work. After arriving in Paris in 1948, I realized that figurative painting and also abstract painting (though my knowledge of the latter was very limited) as I had known in the 20th century no longer interested me as a solution to my own problems. I wanted to give up easel painting which I felt was too personal.

 

Ellsworth Kelly

 

I don’t care for 'abstract expressionism'... and it is certainly not ‘non-objective’, and not ‘non-representational’ either. I’m very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you’re painting out of your consciousness, figures are bound to emerge. We’re all of us influenced by Freud, I guess. I’ve been a Jungian for a long time... Painting is a state of being... Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

 

Jackson Pollock

 

The final test of painting, theirs, mine, any other, is; does the painter’s emotion comes across?.. ..Procedure is the keyword.. ..The difference is that we (the Abstract expressionists, fh) don’t begin with a definite sense of procedure. It’s free association from the start to the finished state. The old idea was to make use of your talent. This, we feel, is often to take the line of least resistance.. ..painters like Rothko, Pollock, Still, perhaps in reaction to the tendency to analyze which has dominated painting from Seurat to Albers, associate with very little analysis. A new form of expressionism inevitably followed. With De Kooning the procedure is continual change, and the immediacy of the change. With Jackson, it’s the confidence you feel from the concentration of his energy in a given picture..’ (1958)

 

Franz Kline

 

If you push it, it feels good; I don’t know what it is. It must have something to do with kinesthesia. I feel now that I am painting I’m not drawing anything, or even representing non-objective art. You know, you can represent abstract art, too, as well as heads figures, nudes. A lot of abstract artists are just representational painters, you know that. And a lot of figurative artists are very abstract. I don’t feel as if I’m doing that. I feel more as if I’m shaping something with my hands. I feel as if I’ve always wanted to get to that state. Like a blind man in a dark room had some clay, what would he make? I end up with 2 or 3 forms on a canvas, but it gets very physical for me. I always thought I am a very spiritual man, not interested in paint, and now I discover myself to be very physical and very involved with matter. I want to be involved with how heavy things are, a balloon, how light things are, things levitating, pushing forms, make me feel as if my hand is pushing in a head, bulges out here and pushes there.

 

Phillip Guston

 

"...when I made that first record my life was in the 'shitter' you know and everything sucked. I am sick and tired of being miserable all the time and I’m sick and tired or being sick and tired all the time... I can say that I have kind of consciously moved away from this whole 'woe is me' mentality because my head is not there anymore."

 

Klayton