Jackson Pollock: 'I Would Never Want To Finish Making Love'

An interviewer once asked Jackson Pollock how he knew when he was finished with a painting. Pollock’s infamous reply was, “How do you know when you’re finished making love?”

- Stefanie Hauger

I have always loved that answer. There is so much deliciousness to chew on here, especially when one explores other people’s musings on when a work of art might have reached its climax.

Taking Pollock’s reply, literally, I suppose he means that ‘you just know’. But there is more to it, isn’t there…

Our tempestuous and splashy painter’s cheeky and fully-loaded response also implies that a painting is basically never finished. Love-making is pleasurable (a bit of an understatement, but best to stay above board here) and wouldn’t we all want to continue with, or repeat, or indeed tweak and perfect, something lovely like that. So, like sex, painting isn’t finite and apparently it’s enjoyable, or so he appears to be intimating.

However, Pollock likening painting to love-making is something I find difficult to get my head around. Us ‘real’ painters (she chuckles) know that wielding a brush across a canvas is closer to slow torture than pleasure. Mostly it feels like being dropped into a cauldron of boiling oil with the lid slowly coming down on top of us. Or is that just me?

Translating an idea or emotion, whether it be an abstract one or not, onto a blank canvas takes Leviathan courage and a certain feral abandonment of one’s senses. And a small slice of madness.

Then again so does sex, I suppose.