Vortex

Jackson Pollock’s paintings have endured intense critical scrutiny since their first exhibition, and over the years, through repetition, elaboration, and consolidation of selected propositions, an orthodox assessment of their evolution and significance has become established. There are, to be sure, tensions and instabilities within this prevailing account of Pollock’s oeuvre, and there is considerable disagreement among scholars over some of its details and emphases; but its principal aspects, …

We are forty years away from Abstract Expressionism, and the question of how we should understand our relationship to the movement starts to be interesting again. Awe at its triumphs is long gone; but so is laughter at its cheap philosophy, or distaste for its heavy breathing, or boredom with its sublimity, or even resentment at the part it played in the Cold War. Not that any of those feelings has dissipated, or ever should, but that it begins to be clear that none of them – not even the sum …