Who the Fuck Is Jackson Pollock?

Infobox Film
name = Who the Fuck Is Jackson Pollock?


caption = Promotional movie poster for the film
starring = Teri Horton
Peter Paul Biro
director = Harry Moses
producer = Don Hewitt
Steven Hewitt
Michael Lynne
released = November 9, 2006
language = English
imdb_id = 0903664

"Who the Fuck Is Jackson Pollock?" (usually displayed as "Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?" due to the profanity in the title) is a documentary following a woman named Teri Horton, a 73 year old former long-haul truck driver from California, who purchased a painting from a thrift shop for $5, later to find out that it may be a Jackson Pollock painting. [ [http://www.themonitor.com/onset?id=3707&template=article.html] Deiner, Paige Lauren. "Woman’s quest to authenticate Pollock art riveting." "The Monitor". 12 July 2007.]

According to an interview from the film, Horton purchased the painting from a California thrift shop as a gag gift for a friend. [ [http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117932130.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&p=0] Scheib, Ronnie. "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?" "Variety" 15 November 2006] When the dinner-table-sized painting proved too large to fit into her friend's trailer, Horton set it out among other items at a yard sale, where a local art teacher spotted it and suggested that the work could have been painted by Pollock due to the similarity to his action painting technique. The film depicts Horton's attempts to authenticate and sell the painting as an original work by Pollock. The authenticity is difficult to establish because the painting was purchased at a thrift store, is unsigned, and without provenance, the documentation of a painting’s history. On another level, the movie explores the challenges faced by an average, but determined, citizen who takes on the elitist, high-stakes world of art dealership.

Some art connoisseurs, including Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, believe the painting to be inauthentic, while others, such as Nick Carone, an artist and friend of Pollock’s, are uncertain. Teri hires Peter Paul Biro, a forensic specialist, who matched a partial fingerprint on the canvas to a fingerprint on a can of paint in Pollock’s studio and to fingerprints on two authenticated Pollock canvases. Additionally, through an analysis of paint samples from Pollock's studio, he was able to confirm a match with particles of paint found on the canvas in question. She also involves Tod Volpe, an art dealer previously convicted of defrauding his clients, who invests in the painting as a means of recuperating his reputation and financial solvency.

Both Volpe and Biro are involved together in a business venture to manage and sell works of art with ambiguous or questionable authenticity. Volpe and Biro are listed as consultants in the film's credits, although their business relationship is not discussed in the documentary. Volpe approached producer Steven Hewitt, who, along with executive producer Don Hewitt (creator of "60 Minutes"), had formed the Hewitt Group to produce documentaries. Harry Moses,cite web |url= http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/arts/design/09poll.html |title= Could Be a Pollock; Must Be a Yarn |author= Randy Kennedy |work= The New York Times |date= November 9 2006 |quote= The filmmakers were initially fascinated by the science-versus-art angle of Ms. Horton’s story, about how forensics may be starting to nudge the entrenched tradition of connoisseurship from its perch in the world of art authentication. But as they spent more time with her, they began to see the movie as being about something more important than whether the painting was a real Pollock, a question left very much for the viewer to decide. “It became, really, a story about class in America,” Mr. Moses said. “It’s a story of the art world looking down its collective nose at this woman with an eighth-grade education. ] an Emmy, Peabody, and Directors Guild of America award-winner, and a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, is the film's other producer, as well as its director and writer.

Horton, who appeared on "The Montel Williams Show", "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", and the "Late Show with David Letterman" with the painting, once turned down an offer of US $9 million for it.

References

External links

* [http://www.birofineartrestoration.com/Pollock/Pollock.htm Biro's documentation of his forensic work on Horton's painting.]
* [http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/10/22/071022ta_talk_mcgrath New Yorker (October 22, 2007) article about the film.]
* [http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/movies/15poll.html?ex=1321246800&en=cadc22c6ea4b9e0b&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss New York Times Review]
*imdb title|id=0903664
* [http://theorangepress.com/WOID16/WOIDXVI-9.htm WOID Review]
* [http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=919d2cd1-ca9b-4123-b62c-49520ddea9d9 "Cameron Skene, Montreal Gazette, Nov. 8, 2006". Profile of Paul Biro, interviews with Horton and filmmakers; a further look at the authentication of Pollock in this case.]