Recently, I bought this documentary on impulse, just because of the title, "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock." The DVD is about a truck driver who bought a painting for $5.00 in a thrift store, which could potentially be an original Jackson Pollock painting worth over $50,000,000.
In her quest to find out the painting's origins, she had several art experts examine the work.
She had the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York lo
ok at it, but he deemed the painting inauthentic based on the fact that it didn't feel like a Pollock. Many art connaisseurs though the same due to the fact that it was purchased in a thrift store and that it was unsigned.In an effort to prove all the critics wrong, she had an art forensics expert look at the painting. He was able to link the work back to Pollock in a few ways:
1. The technique used to apply the paint was similar, if not exactly the same when you compared magnifications of the painting to other samples of his work. (On the right is an authentic Pollock, his "Number One", done in 1948.)
2. The composition (the actual make-up of the paint itself) was the same as the paint on the floor of Pollock's studio.
3. Lastly, there was a fingerprint in paint on the back of the painting that was a match to one found on a painting done by Pollock in Germany, and one found on a paint can in Pollock's studio.
In spite of all this compelling forensic evidence, the art world refuses to accept this work as an authentic Pollock because of a 'feeling', which is ridiculous. However, until the art world accepts this painting as real, no art dealer will touch it, no one will buy it, and the painting may as well be fake and worth only $5.
1 comment:
I have always been interested in seeing what kind of value people place on certain objects.
People will go broke buying their fiancé a diamond ring, when really, it's just metal and a rock.
The painting in the documentary you were discussing - 5 dollars or 50 million. It's so interesting to me that people will associate value and worth on such trivial things.
What exactly makes the painting worth something? It's the same painting. You could say that anyone painted it, but only if this Pollock person painted it is it worth something.
Something in all of that reasoning seems a little faulty to me.
That thing is huge. I'd pay 100$ for it - and I don't really care if a monkey painted it.
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