something about pollock

A few months ago, I found myself staring at a Jackson Pollock painting at the Met. I've done it before and didn't get anything out of it. (Well, I was amused once when a National Gallery security guard pointed out the few bugs and cigarette butts entombed in one.) But that day I just stared. Stared like I love to do with bright modernist paintings, waiting for the afterimage to show me the most vivid opposing colors this side of drugged Van Gough viewing. Of course, Pollock doesn't have much for color.

Then layers of the painting started to shift and move. You can almost direct the movement if you keep your gaze focused. This happens naturally, I think, or anyway, I remember it happening to me as a kid staring at a big plywood board. Perhaps when the visual cortex gets a fixed input of a pattern for a long enough time, the brain invents movement?

Is this something that people see in his paintings? That they are alive, and alive like others cannot be because of the pattern? If not, maybe they should, and otherwise I'm still searching for what they're worth.