From Art News, after MOMA turned up more, or clearer hand prints of the artist during a recent canvas-cleaning:
Now more than ever, the work evokes the walls of a prehistoric cave, the oldest known mark-making of primitive man.
“He’s declaring his identity free of language in the most elemental way,” Temkin says. “He wanted to bring modern art to that same level of essentialism. He’s harking back to a period when humankind was not far past the ape stage.”
Oogah me painter. (You don't get to call abstract artists stupid -- only art magazines get to do that. Also, this is the latest effort by MOMA to reinvent Pollock as a figurative artist, previously having done it with Pepe Karmel's computer analysis of Hans Namuth photos to show the reassuring human form underlying all that weird chaotic stuff.)
tip of the sabretooth skin hat to bill