Carolina Quotes
I make a little mystique for myself. Since I have no preference or so-called sense of color, I could take almost everything that could be some accident of a previous painting. Or I set out to make a series. I take, for instance, some pictures where I take a color, some arbitrary color I took from some place. Well, this is gray maybe, and I mix the color for that, and then I find out that when I am through with getting the color the way I want it, I have six other colors in it, to get that color; and then I take those six colors and I use them also with this color. It is probably like a composer does a variation on a certain theme. But it isn't technical, it isn't just fun.

Willem de Kooning Connected to the Carolinas

Source

interview conducted by David Sylvester for the BBC, 1962; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 50.

form
interview
year
1962
locator
p. 50

Cite this record

“I make a little mystique for myself. Since I have no prefere…” Willem de Kooning. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-65DCF6DD9D. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/65dcf6dd9d

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Jackson has broken the ice for us.
Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 130. — De Kooning's comment on Pollock's drip paintings, first shown at Betty Parsons gallery, 1948

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