I think part of what makes an artist stand out in a medium like this is that they are able to stand out in a medium like this.
Going and seeing something like “the fountain” (Duchamp) is surely accompanied by many people remarking “I could have made that” and it could be true, but they didn’t. And that’s the difference.
To some degree that accessibility makes some of these things even more interesting.
I brought up a Dadaism piece on purpose. In fascism, one tool of the leaders was to declare some art pure and acceptable and some as “not art.” Dadaism was a rebuke of the idea: that authority can or cannot tell us what art is and isn’t.
Dadaism is intentionally absurdist. And it’s that quality that many would use to discredit it, is the very thing that makes it so powerful (to some).
Not saying that pollock is playing with absurdism, but saying that sometimes the things that make something “not art” or “not interesting” to one person are the things that elevate it to another.
Not sure if that’s what you were asking, but that’s a riff I was inspired to share.
(Not that abstract painting really describes what made Pollock famous, action painting is obviously it.)