May 6, 2007
A Thrift-Shop Jackson Pollock Masterpiece?
Ex-Trucker Claims She Scored A Multimillion-Dollar Painting For $5
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Thrift Store Masterpiece?
Teri Horton, a retired truck driver, talks with CNN's Anderson Cooper about a painting she bought years ago that she believes is the work of famed painter Jackson Pollock. Some experts disagree.
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Cooper's Reporter's Notebook
Only On The Web: CNN's Anderson Cooper discusses his report on Teri Horton, a former truck driver who says she bought a Jackson Pollock painting worth millions for $5 at a thrift store.
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Is it or isn't it? This is the painting Teri Horton maintains is a real Jackson Pollock. Horton believes her painting is worth about $50 million. (CBS)
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Teri Horton (CBS)
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Teri isn’t the kind of person who knows—or cares—much about art. But as CNN's Anderson Cooper reports, she has caused a stir in the upper reaches of the art world because of a painting she bought years ago, a painting she now believes is the work of the famous abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock.
If Teri's painting is by Pollock, it would likely be worth tens of millions of dollars. Not bad, considering she bought it as a gift for a friend and only paid $5 for it in a thrift shop in San Bernardino, Calif.
"I picked up the canvas and took it up to the lady in the thrift store," Teri remembers. "And I asked her what she wanted for it and she said, 'Oh, give me eight dollars. And I said, 'I love my friend, but I don't love her that much.' So she gave it to me for five. And that's why, how I bought, why I bought it."
Teri, who drove big rigs for 20 years, says she never liked the painting much, and only bought it as a joke. 60 Minutes met her in a New York warehouse where she now stores it.
"We were gonna get the darts and throw at it, but we never got around to it," Teri recalls, laughing. "We got to drinking too much beer and never went in the trailer and got the darts."
The painting was too big to fit through the door of her friend's trailer, so Teri put it in a yard sale, where an art teacher from a nearby college saw it. "He looked at it and he said 'I’m no expert,' he said, 'but this could be a Jackson Pollock.' And that’s when I said 'Who the f--- is Jackson Pollock?'" she remembers.
Asked what he told her, Teri says, "He just started laughing. And he went on to tell me who he was."
Jackson Pollock was, and is, one of the most important American artists of the 20th century. His work was stunningly original and extremely influential; the Museum of Modern Art in New York has devoted a whole room to his paintings.
Pollock made those paintings by dripping, splattering and pouring paint on a canvas. He barely eked by, until those so-called "drip" paintings started to sell in the early 1950s. His reputation continued to grow after he died in 1956 in a drunk-driving accident, and so did the prices for those paintings.
One Pollock work, called "Number 5," recently sold for a record $140 million.
Teri may not know much about art, but after studying Pollock's works, and talking to people, she became convinced her painting was the real thing.
Teri thinks her painting is probably worth around $50 million. "And there are collectors that would love to have it, if they could get the art world to back it," she says.
Getting the art world to back it has been the problem for Teri; very few in the high brow world of art take her seriously.
"They tried to be kind about the names they were calling me, but I still figured out that they thought I was absolutely squirrelly," she says.
Teri the trucker was used to long hauls, and began stirring up so much controversy that a documentary was made about her struggle to win approval for her painting. The film, which has just been released on DVD, was made by Harry Moses, a former producer at 60 Minutes. It is called "Who the #$%& is Jackson Pollock?"
To get an idea of the art world's opinion of Teri's painting, the filmmakers showed it to Thomas Hoving, the legendary former director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"My instant impression, which I always write down, you know, the blink, the 100th of a second impression was neat-dash-compacted, which is not good. He wasn’t neat. He wasn’t compacted," Hoving said in the documentary. "It's pretty, it's superficial and frivolous. And I don't believe it’s a Jackson Pollock. It has no appeal. It's dead on arrival. Dead on arrival."
They also showed it to Ben Heller, a collector who bought his first Pollock painting 50 years ago. "I'm looking for the cracks in the, in the paint, and the way the paint is applied. That is, layering of one color on top of another. Makes me uncomfortable. This stuff, it just doesn't, this doesn’t look like a Pollock. Doesn't feel like a Pollock, doesn't sing like a Pollock, doesn't fail like a Pollock," Heller told the filmmakers.
Produced By Michael Rosenbaum
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 100 CommentsI also have an original Pollock where there is a conspiracy against us regular people wherebouts they don't want to authenticate for us. They are afraid that if more Polllocks come out it will lower the value of those snobs. I have provenance & know mine is real.
Pollock drew in Bio-Morphic forms. The same forms used by Dekooning, Gorky and Conrad Marcarelli.
If the paint is the same, the forms are the same and the colors are similar to others he used it has an excellent chance of being genuine. The fingerprints are icing on the cake
Tom Hoving was a Medieval Art expert not a Pollock expert and in fact left the Metropolitan Museum under a cloud of inappropriate acquisitions both real and fake.
Pollock drew in Bio-Morphic forms. The same forms used by Paul Klee, Dekooning, Gorky, Matta and Conrad Marcarelli among others. Bio-Morphism was huge in the 30's and 40's
If the paint is the same, the forms are the same and the colors are similar to others he used it has an excellent chance of being genuine. The fingerprints are icing on the cake.
Tom Hoving was a Medieval Art expert not a Pollock expert and in fact left the Metropolitan Museum under a cloud of inappropriate acquisitions both real and fake.
Pollock drew in Bio-Morphic forms. The same forms used by Paul Klee, Dekooning, Gorky, Matta and Conrad Marcarelli among others. Bio-Morphism was huge in the 30's and 40's
If the paint is the same, the forms are the same and the colors are similar to others he used it has an excellent chance of being genuine. The fingerprints are icing on the cake.
Tom Hoving was a Medieval Art expert not a Pollock expert and in fact left the Metropolitan Museum under a cloud of inappropriate acquisitions both real and fake.
Pollock drew in Bio-Morphic forms. The same forms used by Paul Klee, Dekooning, Gorky, Matta and Conrad Marcarelli among others. Bio-Morphism was huge in the 30's and 40's
If the paint is the same, the forms are the same and the colors are similar to others he used it has an excellent chance of being genuine. The fingerprints are icing on the cake.
Tom Hoving was a Medieval Art expert not a Pollock expert and in fact left the Metropolitan Museum under a cloud of inappropriate acquisitions both real and fake.
Pollock drew in Bio-Morphic forms. The same forms used by Paul Klee, Dekooning, Gorky, Matta and Conrad Marcarelli among others. Bio-Morphism was huge in the 30's and 40's
If the paint is the same, the forms are the same and the colors are similar to others he used it has an excellent chance of being genuine. The fingerprints are icing on the cake.
Tom Hoving was a Medieval Art expert not a Pollock expert and in fact left the Metropolitan Museum under a cloud of inappropriate acquisitions both real and fake.
I am an art lover who finds it incomprehensible how the art "elite" don't make Pollack out for the hack he is.
been there
Don't know how to explain the fingerprint analysis except that it must have been botched. The reason the experts aren't interested in the fingerprint analysis is that they simply don't want to waste their time chasing down such things on an obviously wrong painting.
Teri should have taken the $2M. A bird in hand is better than two in the bush. Suggest she put it on Ebay with a reserve of $5M and see how things sort.
I have a painting my 2 yr old did that looks quite similar.
Think I can get $50 million for it?
Good Luck Teri, hope you get the last laugh (and the money)
Art can be art without being good art. It's subjective and debatable. That is the point of art, to make people think and to create conversation. Pollocks paintings are valued for many reasons, but the original being that it was a new idea. Would peoples children being making splatter painting without him doing it first?
I don't believe that this is a Pollock. The point of his paintings (one at least) was the loosening up of brush strokes and to fight formal, traditional compositions. This painting has a defined composition. From what I can tell the artist or whoever seemed to feel restricted when creating this, as though they had to keep the paint on the canvas. The other possibility is that it is an early work...
Beyond that the art world is not always snobby, but more skeptical. Even finger prints can be subjective and we only have the word of one person that it matches up. Even scientists disagree sometimes. This, of course, is all my opinion.
I wish her the best of luck.
Ma'am, if you do do not get your money for for the painting, a fair price as you asked for, fine. They will wait. They will figure that when you pass, your estate will gladly get what they can for it.
My suggestion is...leave it to no one. Burn it. Have it destroyed. Evidentily there are too many Jackson Pollacks and this is not important enough to warrant serious consideration. Then have ashes dropped on the cars of these art experts, the last great act of Jackson Pollack.
"This kind of painting took no talent, or imagination to create"
Jackson Pollock spent years perfecting his "drip" technique and is considered one of the greatest American painters of all time. I think an art historian would disagree with you.
The man chucked paint at a canvas! This is worth millions of dollars?
Gimme a break!
I hope this painting is the real deal and she proves all the "experts" wrong.
Of course, "usadvisor101"'s suggestion is likely best if she isn't willing to authenticate.
The finger print "evidence" was not as compelling as it may appear. It is based on very few points and could have been made by anyone who picked up the can of paint.
All the dealers and museums already knew about this painting and what to say.
Take the painting, which was created by an artist who dripped messily all over the place, and check it against the paint-covered floor of Pollock's studio. If you can match the lines of paint from the canvas to the floor, you have proof it was painted by Pollock.
Of course, when this method works, I'll expect my cut.
Ted L
Oak Park, IL
I would retain the best respected experts in the field, The McCrone Group comes to mind. But there may be some one better at that kind of work. With today's tools using Back Scattered X-Rays they can compare the canvas, wood paint and dust with Pollock's that have iron clad provenance, no one who have any question of the provenance of there works at all will let you sample their painting. The art world at large may resist this approach as it has the ability bring forgeries accepted as real to light.
They would need to examine a number of Pollock's paintings to get a data base of the paint, canvas, tacks and wood he used. If he worked though WWII he had to compromise on many things. But a good data base of his work could date his work as well.
I don't know if the art world wants to open itself up to this kind of rigor. Replacing opinion with fact put people out of work.
In art I don't bad mouth your *** and you won't bad mouth mine.
Gordon
For starters, his tenure at the Met was punctuated by repeated purchases of art that were unverified and unauthenticated. he even bought some fakes.
I have spent 33 years in art research.It is troubling to see this woman unwilling to submit the painting for further testing, but I suspect the reason may also be emotional and not purely out of evasion.
But it is also possible that Biro ( with no print identification expertise) could have had the means and motive to "plant" the fingerprints after receiving copies from the Pollack museum
I am reminded of the "Edlinger Mozart" that used biometrics to attempt to prove that the sitter was indeed Mozart.Th results were spetacular but the science is not taken seriously.
Still, a Mozart portrait is worth perhaps 20 million and we know there are a number of portraits of Mozart that were lost or unrecorded.
The same applies to Pollack.
The Edlinger Mozart is now on exhibition in major museums in Europe and is probably worth serious money, even though the attribution is shaky.
That, in a nutshell, is how the art world works.
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