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Posted on 07/17/2003 5:21:06 PM PDT by lainie
Edited on 04/13/2004 3:31:34 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
COSTA MESA, Calif. - The bright abstract painting Teri Horton bought from a Southern California thrift store eleven years ago was supposed to simply cheer up a friend.
But the retired truck driver is smiling herself after hearing from some art experts that what she calls an "ugly" splattering of paint could be a genuine Jackson Pollock worth millions of dollars.
(Excerpt) Read more at bayarea.com ...
Horton's painting looms 66 by 48 inches and is awash in shocking weaves of color — characteristics that have persuaded some art connoisseurs it is pure Pollock, particularly his work from the late '40s. A forensic art specialist from Canada, Peter Paul Biró, concluded it was real after discovering one of Pollock's fingerprints on the painting.
But that wasn't enough to convince the influential International Foundation for Art Research, a New York-based nonprofit organization that specializes in authenticity and other legal and ethical issues concerning works of art. The organization declined to authenticate the painting because its origin and history are unknown.
Horton has heard all of the arguments. She believes Biró and is ready to cash in.
"I've been waiting for a long time," she said. "I have no bond with [the painting] except monetary."Horton had never heard of Pollock when she bought the painting in 1992. All that mattered was that her down-on-her-luck friend would get a good laugh from it, which she did.
Even funnier was Horton's attempt to get the canvas inside her friend's 32-foot-long mobile home. When it didn't fit, Horton took the painting home and stashed it in a closet. But it was hogging too much space, so Horton offered it to a friend who was an art professor, figuring he could use the canvas for his own work.
That's when she learned about Pollock.
"I couldn't believe it," Horton said, chuckling. "It's just such an ugly painting." It is unclear how much money the painting would bring if authenticated. However, a Pollock painting similar in size sold for $11.5 million.
With little art knowledge, she contacted experts at UCLA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and, the one that proved most helpful, AskART.com, whose president and co-founder, George Collins, referred Horton to Biró.
Biró analyzed the technique and materials. The fact that Pollock's brother lived in the Inland Empire suggested a link between the artist's work and the West Coast.
But Biró said the "real break" occurred two years ago, when he found a fingerprint on Horton's painting. Biró matched it with prints discovered on Pollock's tools, such as a turkey baster, sticks and brushes, from the Long Island studio where the artist worked.
"The fingerprint puts Teri's painting that looks like a Pollock right in Pollock's barn — his famous studio," Biró said in an e-mail interview with The Times.
He compared his investigation to that of a detective at a crime scene.
"They scour everything for any evidence that may lead to a suspect," Biró said. "Later, a fingerprint is shown to match that of some individual's. With that discovery, this individual is placed at a crime scene So, my work is essentially that of placing an artist at the scene of the creation of a work of art."
However, the International Foundation for Art Research reached a different conclusion.
"We did a lot of research on the painting in question," Sharon Flescher, IFAR's executive director, wrote in an e-mail. "It was our opinion, based on the opinions of the experts we consulted and on current scholarship, that the work was not by Jackson Pollock."
Flescher noted that her group has no stake in whether the painting is a Pollock.
A sticking point is the painting's lack of provenance. IFAR has argued that without knowing the painting's history, it's difficult to determine whether the piece is legitimate. Biró dismissed that argument.
"Most of Leonardo's [da Vinci] works in museums have no known history before the 19th century," he said.
"Would we throw them out for lack of provenance? When there is a lack of exhaustive technical and scientific research there is typically an unbalanced importance placed on provenance."
No matter the outcome, Horton said she doesn't expect her life to change much. Even if the painting brings millions, she plans to stay in her Orange County mobile home.
Horton said she'll be generous with her two adult sons, friends, those who helped her and those who need help.
"It's not right to squander money," she said. "If not by the grace of God, I wouldn't have had this damn thing."
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American master Norman Rockwell mocks Pollock in his painting of a puzzled gentleman examining a Pollock piece in the 1962 The Connesiur
Teri Horton paid $5 for the colorful painting,
hoping to amuse a friend who needed a laugh.
(Karen Tapia-Andersen)
Sure, but if **most** people aren't told it's a Pollock, that sort of "art" will just get sold in garage sales and flea markets for $5.I've got a Lee Reynolds personal story about that very thing. Even though I told my wife that it was an authentic Lee Reynolds, she said it was ugly and insisted upon giving it to a Junior League charity auction, where it sold for pennies.
Finally one day she asked me what the signifigance was of an authentic Lee Reynolds, so I pulled up a couple of galleries online who were selling his work for $5,000 to $25,000 a piece.
Then she started liking the painting, but alas, it was too late!
Sigh... Not worth arguing about. Everyone has their own opinion about "art".
I would have done a similar thing if she'd had a Pollock. Such is life.
A mathematician did a fractal analysis of Pollock's works and concluded that they have a very high fractal dimension.
The researchers discovered that Pollock’s patterns could be characterized as fractals—shapes that repeat themselves on different scales within the same object. In a fractal object or pattern, each smaller structure is a miniature, though not necessarily identical, version of the larger form. Fractals often occur in nature, from the meanderings of a coastline, in which the shapes of small inlets approximate the curves of an entire shoreline, to the branchings of trees and the lacy forms of snowflakes and ferns.A fractal pattern, whether in nature or in a Pollock painting, is subconciously pleasing, Taylor suggests.
--from http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/9_18_99/mathland.htm
The painting in question is probably not a genuine Pollock. The gestures and flow of the paint don't look like his other works. If course he did experiment with the new (at the time) acrylic paints, so this could be one of those experimental paintings. My opinion is that it's not his.
Biro Fine Art Restoration & Forensic Studies in Art
3014 St. Antoine St. West, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H4C1A5
Phone and fax: (514) 933-6708
e-mail: artsleuth@sympatico.ca
www.birofineartrestoration.com
Conclusions
As the result of these latest examinations my conviction that Teri's Find is indeed a work by Jackson Pollock has been further strengthened. The confluence of both direct and indirect evidence proved additive. Since February of 2001, I have not encountered one single material aspect of this painting that would contradict authorship as I ascribed and none (based on scientific examination) have been received.
Peter Paul Biro
August, 2002
Montreal
But he couldn't bear to part with any of them, so he hid them in his basement and sold the public his dropcloths, instead.
LOL. I think you're right.
Interesting. Thanks for the insight.
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