It's the title of a 2006 documentary film about a woman named Teri Horton, a 73-year old former long-haul truck driver, who bought a thrift shop painting for $5 for her friend in 1992. She bought it as a joke because it was ugly, but she had to take it back when it didn't fit in her friend's trailer. So she brought it home and tried to earn her money back, attempting to sell it at a yard sale. There a local art teacher informed her it may be a Jackson Pollock. Guess what she said next?
In his own words, Hoving describes why he thinks the painting is NOT a Pollock:
* It is too neat and too sweet, using soigné colors that Pollock never used.
* Some lines are perfectly straight. It’s hard to drip straight lines.
* The canvas is commercially sized, which means that paint does not come through the back of the canvas. All real Pollocks are unsized and his paint patterns can easily be seen from the back.
* The thing is painted with acrylics. Pollock never used acrylics.
"I figured that the $5 picture was not a fake, but a decorator’s piece. You know, 'Gimme some big abstract -- like Pollock -- but make it with the colors of my new living room.' There are dozens around."
So the art world said no to her and she turned to science. Horton hired a respected, Canadian forensic scientist, Peter Paul Biro, to scientifically authenticate the painting. What he found was compelling: a fingerprint on the back of the canvas matches a fingerprint on a paint can in Pollock's studio. (The studio is preserved as a museum.)
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| The fingerprint on Pollock's paint can. |
Game over. It's a Pollock. $50 million dollars please.
Not so fast.
With her evidence in hand, Horton applied to the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) to officially have the painting attributed to Pollock. IFAR said it was a fake. The painting is "too obsessively finespun," and the colors "too coyly, too consciously chosen." As for the fingerprints, the report states "Biro's methods of analyzing fingerprints have not been universally accepted." He used somewhere between 6 and 19 points to positively identify the prints, but "some experts in the forensic field believe that those numbers are too low. Interpol, for example, uses a minimum of 12 points."
Sylvia Hochfield then wrote an editorial in June 2008 for ARTnews claiming that both the print on the paint can and its matching print on the attributed Pollock are forgeries. The prints were reexamined by Pat Wertheim, a criminalist in the Arizona Department of Public Safety and an expert on fingerprint forgery and fabrication detection. Biro reacted strongly to Wertheim’s report, accusing him, in an e-mail to ARTnews, of “supercilious interfering” and calling his work “suspect.” Wertheim responded, “My report is scientifically verifiable.”
So is it real? Some experts say yes. Other experts say no. A friend of Pollock isn't sure.
Here is an interview with Teri Horton herself, talking to Anderson Cooper about her painting:
And here is the other side. Thomas Hoving's article in full: The Fate of the $5 Pollock as well as Hochfield's editorial The Blue Print.
Whose side are you on? Is this controversy about proving the authenticity of the piece? Or is this a story about the challenges faced by an average citizen taking on the elitist, high-stakes art world? If this painting had been found in a loft in New York City would the story be different? Can science prove something meaningful while "experts" say it's not? If science someday does authenticate it for sure, how will people react to the piece?
Teri Horton gets the last word today. She told the New York times in 2006, that she remained confident she, and her painting, would be vindicated. Despite the lack of confirmed attribution, Horton has been offered several single-digit million dollar prices for her painting, which she constantly turns down on principle. She maintains that she she will sell her painting at her price — no less than $50 million — within her lifetime. And if that does not happen?
“Before I let them take advantage of me,” she said, smiling broadly, “I’ll burn that son of a bitch.”
This is one of my favorite stories to come out of the art world in recent times. I find it fascinating that Thomas Hoving can sit in front of the art work and say it doesn't "feel" like a Pollock. Has he seen every Pollock? Has anyone besides Pollock seen every Pollock created? Artists go through transitions, phases-perhaps this is why it doesn't "feel" like a Pollock.
ReplyDeleteI wholeheartedly believe this is the art world's rejection of a working class woman. I think the interview with Anderson Cooper suggests this as well--how is it that other Pollocks which show up in strange places elsewhere have been accepted elsewhere? People are afraid to denounce the art world as elitist and class-based but Horton isn't; this is what scares people and what makes people in the art world try to push her further away. Provenance is never an issue with art or with historical objects if its' authenticity is proven; in Horton's case, matching fingerprints should be enough.
I agree that there is a class bias going on in this situation, but I don't think it is a problem just in the art world. This story is very similar to a controversy that focused on the "discovery" in 1985 of a stash of wine in the walls of a house in France the belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Not only was the authentication too quick and faulty, the most expensive wine bottle sold to date is one of those from this stash. Wine experts battled it out cause those who bought it (I think Forbes) of course wanted the most expensive bottle of wine ever to be real, while some experts and scientists who ran tests claim that evidence points to it being a fake. The entire situation was mishandled and ended up becoming the basis for a book by Benjamin Wallace entitles The Billionaire's Vinegar. (http://www.vinography.com/archives/2008/12/book_review_the_billionaires_v.html)
ReplyDeleteI do think that because of the class and status of the people who fist discovered the wine stash the authenticity of the bottles was overall accepts easily, whereas in this Pollock scenario something equally as unlikely is found and poor Horton is being harassed. Clearly there is more riding on the determination of both cases other than the desire to determine the authenticity of the object. I think if someone from the art world had discovered it and made a big fuss the authentication process would have been much easier (as it was in the case of the wine) Unfortunately for Horton, she didn't buy it with the understanding of the art world and therefore it is possible she just advertised it wrong to the people who have the power to determine its originality. I have to say that this is now giving way too much credit to the art world who clearly will have to backtrack fast if overwhelming conclusive evidence is found in Horton's favor.
The scientific evidence proving the wine bottle a fake was highly extensive and still people refused to believe its accuracy, the first tests were as simple as the fingerprint tests in Horton's case, and then in the end the wine was a forgery and science was right! Therefore in some forms of associative logic, the same levels of scientific evidence can prove the Pollock is real.
I personally think the authenticity SHOULD be a priority. If I found a rare item on the street I would want to know its provenance regardless of its worth. Now that might just be the purist in me who loves items for their history. But in all honesty why does it matter who finds it as long as it is found!
I think the troubling thing to me with all of this is the assumptions being made by people in the art world. Stating that the investigator used between 6 and 19 matching points on the fingerprints and that Interpol requires 12 points...ok. So he might have used fewer than 12. But then, there's a lot of room for him to have used more than 12. I also find it interesting that others in the art world felt it necessary to write editorials, etc discrediting the research on spurious grounds (number of match points, etc)...if you have valid, scientific proof that previous research was faulty, then fine. If the research just tells you something you don't want to hear....that's a little different.
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