Editing Jackson Pollock (section)

===Critical debate===
Pollock's work has been the subject of important critical debates. Critic [[Robert Coates (critic)|Robert Coates]] once derided a number of Pollock's works as "mere unorganized explosions of random energy, and therefore meaningless".<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/nyregion/05spotli.html Steven McElroy, "If It's So Easy, Why Don't You Try It"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', December 3, 2010.</ref> ''[[Reynold's News]]'', in a 1959 headline, said, "This is not art—it's a joke in bad taste."<ref name="Expression of an age" /> French abstract painter [[Jean Hélion]], on the other hand, remarked on first seeing a Pollock, "It filled out space going on and on because it did not have a start or end to it."<ref>Gray Martin, Quote in Book One 'Breaking the Ice' of 'Jackson Pollock&nbsp;— Memories arrested in Space', Santa Monica Press, 2003, {{ISBN|1891661329}}</ref> [[Clement Greenberg]] supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds. It fit well with Greenberg's view of art history as a progressive purification in form and elimination of historical content. He considered Pollock's work to be the best painting of its day and the culmination of the Western tradition via [[Cubism]] and [[Cézanne]] to [[Manet]].

In a 1952 article in ''ARTnews'', [[Harold Rosenberg]] coined the term "[[action painting]]" and wrote that "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint'. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value&mdash;political, aesthetic, moral." Many people{{who|date=August 2021}} assumed that he had modeled his "action painter" paradigm on Pollock.<ref>{{Cite web|last=MacAdam|first=Barbara A.|date=2007-11-01|title=Top Ten ARTnews Stories: 'Not a Picture but an Event'|url=https://www.artnews.com/artnews/news/top-ten-artnews-stories-not-a-picture-but-an-event-181/|access-date=2021-03-23|website=ARTnews.com|language=en-US}}</ref>
 
The [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]], an organization to promote American culture and values, backed by the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA), sponsored exhibitions of Pollock's work. Some left-wing scholars, including [[Eva Cockcroft]], have argued that the United States government and wealthy elite embraced Pollock and abstract expressionism to place the United States in the forefront of global art and devalue [[socialist realism]].<ref name="Expression of an age">{{cite web |url=http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr229/molyneux.htm |title=Expression of an age |publisher=Pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk |access-date=August 30, 2009 |archive-date=February 5, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205061454/http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr229/molyneux.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>Saunders, F. S. (2000), ''The Cultural Cold War. The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters'', New York: Free Press.</ref> Cockcroft wrote that Pollock became a "weapon of the [[Cold War]]".<ref>Eva Cockcroft, "Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of the Cold War", ''Artforum'', vol. 12, no. 10, June 1974, pp. 43–54.</ref>

Pollock described his art as "motion made visible memories, arrested in space".<ref>Text written by Pollock on the reverse of a photo of himself, taken in his studio, circa 1948/49</ref>