"But what Pollock did is he painted, he dripped for 48 months and became this most famous artist.  And then he thought, 'I'm repeating myself.'  And so he willingly went back to the hell of not knowing what he was doing.  Artists, I want you to think about inventing a machine in your work that creates things that you cannot predict that it will spin off.  That's why I like Matthew Barney's work.  That's the only reason.  I just think that he might be as surprised as you are - hating it or liking it - about what's coming out."

A loose quote from this lecture by Jerry Saltz.