First of all, it is large. So that the blue shape of a bay does not compare (visually) to the bubble gum the way you guys are joking.
Secondly, the connection to Pollock is not that far fetched. Frankenthaler knew Pollock, thanks to Clement Greenberg, the critic who supported Pollock. There is a woman playing Frankenthaler in a small part in Ed Harris's movie of Pollock (a very good movie, by the way).
So Frankenthaler tried to extend the dripping technique of Pollock. And she was Greenberg's girlfriend for about 5 years. When they came back from a vacation in Nova Scotia, she created the first stained painting: Mountains and Sea.
Then when some of Greenberg's pals were visiting, he showed them her work. Then Ken Noland and Morris Louis went back to D.C. and began the whole color field movement. Greenberg, and Michael Fried, and other critics wrote volumes about their work. But they never mentioned Frankenthaler, who started it all. Was that because she was a woman, Greenberg's squeeze, or wealthy enough not to need the attention?
There is supposed to be a great deal of talent to pour the paint into such little stripes as did Morris, on the right. But the center is so empty. Seems rather revealing to me. The lower stories of Empire Plaza in Albany, NY are filled with works like this, quite hot, no doubt, when it was built. They seem very blank and depressing to me now (or when I saw them a couple of decades ago).
Well, the upshot is that after 40 years, the color field stuff looks pretty shallow to many. Critically, it was acclaimed back in the '60s because the stain was one with the canvas, the bare essentials of painting (the picture plane, he stretcher, the flatness, etc.) were all emphasized.
The cool thing, to me, is that Frankenthaler's work looks a great deal richer than Noland's or Louis's. It has curving references to nature that beat the "targets" of Noland.
I do find Frankenthaler's Spiritualist quite spiritual because of the light and the floating shapes. But in these little pixels, it doesn't affect me the way the much larger work does in person.