Pollock is full of bollocks

Pollock, Jackson "Lavender Mist" (1950) ; Oil on canvas, Oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas; 221 x 300 cm (7 ft 3 in x 9 ft 10 in); National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Jackson Pollock, while a figure for the abstract expressionist movement, is a figure that I cannot deem of great importance to the art community. While I give him credit for being the first to be predominantly known for his abstract works its more so of the critics and analytic of his works that I find pretentious and find no relation within. Critics like Greenberg had merit in saying his works were “action paintings” because you can feel the energy embedded within each splatter, but at the same time, critics of his “Lavender Mist” proclaimed they saw a message of “terrorism” or of “communism” within. To this I thought they were ridiculous, just critics who wanted to seem like they knew what they were talking about by somehow telling us about “hidden meanings” from the artwork based purely on the social and historical context of the time the work was made. His works, like Damien Hirsts, make me wonder, “why would they do this?” and “why would you pay millions of dollars for this?” I digress. I can see Pollock have some aspects of the Gestalt in his works, a unity in the colors used, as best illustrated by the above work, "Lavender Mist", the muted purples, and just the repetitive splatter of the paint, these do create a sense of unity I believe Pollock was the first to utilize. It’s the very process by which he creates that bothers me and wonders if he truly did put effort into his work, or was it all about just splattering paint everywhere. As a 2D artist, Pollock is able to give us a sense of "interaction" with his works, in which the splatters make our eye follow them from one to another, wandering and moving about the entire work, seemingly endless, infinite movement. In the end I find Pollocks' works rather difficult to digest at first, but looking deeper I can appreciate the action and energy that lies trapped within his works- and thus it is the energy, not abstraction of Pollock that I feel makes him a worthy artist.