Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is making the point that new styles of art are necessarily and logically meant to be an alternative to the styles of the past, in technique, formal characteristics, content, and message, since they express a new reality - in the specific case of Pollock's new style, that of the modern life in which it arose, with the shadow of World War II still lingering in the back. In other words, as a reflection of the age it comes from, art is, and it should be, unique and specific to its time, and to its creators.
Pollock introduced his famous "drip paintings," which came to represent one of the most original, radical, and innovative works of art of the 20th century. These were also known as action paintings, since the large canvasses were mostly set on the floor, and Pollock, very frantically but also very carefully, and using alternative tools such as knives and sticks, literally walked around the surface and allowed the paint to drip from the can, creating complex and multilayered compositions that very personally reflected his mood, his emotions, and his feelings, and that questioned the very notion of art that had been held for centuries.
