I don’t know much about paintings or paint techniques but this one looks like it’d be pretty impossible to recreate… Jackson Pollock, I like your painting. When I look at it, I think of a troubled soul, scribbling and splashing his or her emotions on to a canvas, just trying to make sense of them. It also reminds me of my mind right after a Government test, fuzzy and confused.
But seriously, considering that this painting is 6 feet tall and 9 feet wide, this painting must have taken a long time. Plus, why splatter on such a large canvas? I think perhaps he had started out with something completely different, but wasn’t pleased, so he made something greater out of it.
Nancy Sullivan’s poem, “Number 1 by Jackson Pollock”
No name but a number.
Trickles and valleys of paint
Devise this maze
Into a game of Monopoly
Without any bank. Into
A linoleum on the floor
In a dream. Into
Murals inside of the mind.
No similes here. Nothing
But paint. Such purity
Taxes the poem that speaks
Still of something in a place
Or at a time.
How to realize his question
Let alone his answer?
I think Sullivan is implying that it is impossible for us to ever know precisely what Jackson Pollock was thinking as he crafted such a complex piece of art. I think she is also calling people out for attempting to analyze the artwork so intensely. It is abstract art. There are no similes, it is nothing but paint. Abstract art isn’t meant to be interpreted on a symbolic level, but more on a physical level. It is more about how the artwork makes you feel when viewing it. Sullivan is dissuading viewers from interpreting the painting so analytically, which I kind of attempted to do at the beginning of this post… you’re right, Sullivan. I’ll stop now.
Abyssopelagic 
I like how you describe this painting as the feeling after a test… because that is very accurate:) I find it interesting that even though the canvas is covered in complex patterns and undecipherable structures, the painting has a sense of purity and innocence to it that only a new born child can match. This is strange because the painting supposedly expresses the artist’s feelings/ jumbled thoughts.
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Wow you interpreted it in a way that I feel like I completely missed. I really liked what you said about thinking that the artist had started out with a painting that was completely different. I did, however, come to the same conclusion that maybe the meaning of the painting wasn’t a meaning at all, or at least one that we would never be able to understand. You’re right, it is an abstract painting and therefore not a story like we originally thought that we were looking for. Over all I think that you did a really good job explaining the painting and making some really good points over things that I had missed. It’s so interesting to me how everyone views art so differently.
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