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A thoughtful post, but I'm a little unclear on what you're trying to say. Are you saying that because Pollack, Rothko, et al produced works which sometimes defy a single interpretation, that they are failing to perform one of the single-most important goals of the artist, that is, to offer meaning/order to chaos, thus their art is incomplete?

Perhaps that is true of some of their works some of the time, but I think it telling that Pollack, for example, was very specific on what portions of his paintings were 'up' and 'down' when he dealt with museums and private buyers, which wouldn't be true, I don't think, if he thought of his works as a kind of Rorschach test of the collective unconscious, where any interpretation is as valid as the next. Or Rothko. I've seen several Rothko paintings in person; the plate reproductions in books simply don't do justice to the man's mastery of color. I was awash in gold and yellow and red and orange, viewing the one I saw in Chicago many years ago. It was warm and invigorating and powerful and, well, big. One doesn't look at a painting like that; one experiences it.

I don't think they created meaningless swaths and blotches. What they did mattered, at least to me. As an artist, if I wanted to faithfully depict the real world, I'd buy a camera. Otherwise, I just keep doing what I'm doing. To each his own, I suppose.

As an artist, if I wanted to faithfully depict the real world, I'd buy a camera.

That's a throwaway line that almost any photographer can tell you is NOT true. The camera does not faithfully depict the real world (although certainly when it first made its appearance artists thought it did and saw it either as a challenge or a threat.) It distorts, it flattens, it emphasizes . . . It can capture a lot of detail in the blink of an eye, but so did the pre-Raphaelites . . .

(I'm no painter, but I was a general factotum and tripod-carrier for a very good photographer in my misspent youth.)