Critics Page
Chance encounters are my alibi
I was looking for something else when I came across this quote amongst my chaotic hills of clippings. This is Donald Judd on John Chamberlain:
Freedom and indeterminacy are antecedent to and larger than order… the order is not one of control or distillation, but of continual choices between accidents. An activity proliferates its own distinctions; an order forms within these.The disparity between reality and its order is the most radical and important aspect of Chamberlain’s sculpture.
Jackson Pollock said something like: “I don’t use chance, I deny chance.” But then he as an irresponsible man wanted to show he was not a painter of chaos but of order. I am not. Me as a person hope to never plead, so help me—not accountable for, but as a painter I know it was chance that made me do it.
Marlene Dumas September 2019
Ps. I love, enjoy, and invite chance for and in my work. I feel that the moralistic insistance of viewers (as if in a court) for only the good and pre-set intentions of artists is unrealistic and unhealthy. Chance is immoral, and throwing the dice is a decision still seen as sinful by many.