making up your own rules........

 

Jackson Pollock         Convergence (detail)   1952

 

    Pollock, Naifeh told me, "was literally one of the least talented draftsmen at the Art Students League."  Naifeh argues that, as with Van Gogh, Pollock's lack of traditional drawing skill was what lead him to invent his own rules for making art.  As schools offering standardized paths in art have proliferated, "one of the problems is that artists tend to be products of those schools," said Naifeh, an artist himself.

-David Epstein, Range:  Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World