Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?
Documentary Film About a Valuable Painting Found in a Thrift Shop.
Apr 21, 2009
The 2006 documentary film Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? is truly one of the best and most interesting current documentaries about the art world. Harry Moses is the writer and director of this film that focuses on Teri Horton, an American truck driver who finds a Jackson Pollock painting in a thrift store.
Evidence of a Masterpiece
For years Horton has made it her business to find out as much as she can about this painting and to get it authenticated by art dealers and curators. Thomas Hoving, former Metropolitan Museum of Art curator, plays the villain in this film as we see in him the worst of what the established art world has to offer. Even though a fingerprint of Jackson Pollock's is found on the back of the painting, Hoving makes the outrageous claim that his scholarship outweighs any scientific evidence and that the painting is not a Pollock. (Really. Perhaps Hoving is also a Creationist?)
The Heroes
The hero of this film is the plucky Teri Horton who knows she has found a treasure and refuses to take the $9 million (US) that a Saudi Arabian collector offers for the Jackson Pollock painting. The other hero of this film is Paul Peter Biro, a forensic painting analyst who researches paintings based on fingerprints and pigment.
Lower Class vs. Upper Class
The story of the film is how Teri Horton and her family have labored for years to get acknowledgement of an unknown Jackson Pollock. It's not like a painting by Jackson Pollock is hard to identify. Pollock used a unique technique of drip painting and used oil-based house paints. The stretchers and canvas of the painting would also be a clue as to the provenance. But because the painting was unknown and undocumented, and because it was found by a lower-middle-class truck driver in a thrift store, no one in the art world wants to give credibility to this alleged Jackson Pollock painting that could be worth $50 million. (US)
Stay Tuned
The impression the viewer is left with at the end of the film is the arrogance of an art world that refuses to see masterpieces presented by peasants. The class system is alive and well in our country and perhaps most clearly illustrated in this tale of art mystery and snobbery. And the best part is that the tale is not over, the painting has not been sold and Thomas Hoving has not yet been made to eat his words. Only time will tell where Teri Horton's Jackson Pollock painting, (Terri's Find is the title some call it), will end up.
Is It Worth Watching?
Yes! At 72 minutes, Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock is fast and fun, and as the title implies this film comes from the people's point of view in a professional documentary format. Who indeed IS Jackson Pollock, besides the king of Abstract Expressionism?
Look at Jackson Pollock's paintings here.
Read about the life of Jackson Pollock here.
