Pollock in a Thrift Shop
California truck driver Teri Horton spent a lot of time bargain hunting around Los Angeles. According to the New York Time's Randy Kennedy, that's how she found a painting in a San Bernardino thrift shop in the early 1990s that she bought for five bucks.
Now a buyer (said to be from Saudi Arabia) is willing to pay $9 million for it, but Ms. Horton, who is now retired, turned him down without a second thought.
What did Ms. Horton find? According to the article, it is "a dinner-table-size painting, crosshatched in the unmistakable drippy, streaky, swirly style that made Jackson Pollock one of the most famous artists of the last century."
The former truck driver has enlisted a forensic expert and a "once-powerful art dealer" to get ammunition and evidence which will make scholars and the art market acknowledge her painting as authentic. This could make her many millions on the secondary art market.
Authentication has been slow to come from the art world, but "her tenacity has made her into a minor celebrity, a pantsuited David flinging stones at the art world's increasingly wealthy Goliaths."
Even more interesting is the fact that her story landed her the starring role in a documentary opening next week in New York and later around the country called Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?
The movie, directed and produced by veteran documentarian Harry Moses, benefits from the help of Don Hewitt, the creator and former executive producer of 60 Minutes, and his son, Steven Hewitt, a former top executive at Showtime.
Moses said that he "first became aware of Ms. Horton’s quest when he was approached by Tod Volpe, a high-flying art dealer who fell to earth, and landed himself in prison, in the late 1990s for defrauding several of his celebrity clients."
But it looks like the story gets better! "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."
One part of the story that bugs me is that in this documentary Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, apparently examines the painting in a "somewhat dramatic fashion, tilting his head and almost touching his nose to the canvas before pronouncing it 'dead on arrival.'" Later in the movie Mr. Hoving says Ms. Horton has no right to be bitter about her treatment by the art world. When told that she would vehemently disagree, he adds sternly: “She knows nothing. I’m an expert. She’s not.”
Article comments
1 - Baronius
Five dollars?! A Pollock is easily worth twice that! (I couldn't resist. He's not my fave.)
2 - PB
It appears to me that portions of this story are lifted directly from the New York Times article. Mr. Campello adds his own viewpoint to the story, but that does not excuse his decision to lift direct (or almost identical) quotes with attribution.
I offer these observations:
Campello states: "...a buyer (said to be from Saudi Arabia) is willing to pay $9 million for it..."
The New York Times article includes this portion: "A buyer, said to be from Saudi Arabia, was willing to pay $9 million for it..."
He does not include that section in quotation marks, so he can't be quoting it. If he is, in fact, attempting to paraphrase it, he has done so using virtually the exact same words. Odd choice for a paraphrase. Further:
Campello states: ...in a San Bernardino thrift shop in the early 1990s..."
The New York Times article says this: "...in a San Bernardino thrift shop in the early 1990s."
Another example:
After a quotation from the New York Times story, he states: "...will make scholars and the art market acknowledge her painting as authentic."
The New York Times article includes this phrasing: "...to have her painting acknowledged as authentic by scholars and the art market."
In this case, he has merely rearranged virtually the same words. That doesn't seem to fit the definition of paraphrasing.
Campello includes this passage: "The movie, directed and produced by veteran documentarian Harry Moses, benefits from the help of Don Hewitt, the creator and former executive producer of 60 Minutes, and his son, Steven Hewitt, a former top executive at Showtime."
The New York Times preferred this phrasing: "The movie, directed by Harry Moses, a veteran television documentarian, was produced by him; Don Hewitt the creator and former executive producer of “60 Minutes”; and his son, Steven Hewitt, a former top executive at Showtime."
Campello added the words "and produced," remove "television," and add "benefits from the help of." The last 22 words of your sentence are the exact same as the article in the New York Times.
I fully understand the difference between paraphrasing and plagiarizing. The portions that I note above are not in quotation marks. They are, however, almost identical to the article in the New York Times. It simply cannot be considered paraphrasing.
I understand that Mr. Campello adds his take on the story. That does not excuse cutting and pasting large chunks of the original work into your version.
Some may not see this as a big deal, but I would hate to think that Mr. Campello condones plagiarism, even if it is in the context of this piece.
3 - STM
How would you know whether a Pollock is an original? Much of Pollock's work in my view is a rort: he's splashed a bit of paint on a canvas, had the hide to call it art and charged a fair-dinkum f.cking fortune for it.
Have a look at Blue Poles. What a disgrace. My youngest daughter can do that (in fact she did, when she was in Kindy. Her work actually bears a striking resemblance to that of Pollock's, and she's had no formal training)
Here is a great quote from the National Galley of Australia, which bought that particular Pollock painting, for an absolute fortune at the time:
"The abstract paintings of the American artist Jackson Pollock (1912"1956) are among the highest achievements of 20th-century art. During an unparalleled period of creativity from the late 1940s to the early 50s, Pollock abandoned the conventional tools and methods of the painter, putting aside brushes, artist’s paint and traditional composition, and poured and flung house paint directly onto large canvases placed on the floor."
The last sentence of that speaks volumes. In other words, he was just creating the same kind of dreadful f.cking mess I did when I slipped and knocked four tims of paint onto the kitchen floor whilst renovating.
Methinks those who marketed Pollock's art after his death are laughing all the way to the bank and probably beyond.
While Pollock was a painter, he went off the rails with his conceptualism. For more information on the nonsense that is post-modernism and so-called conceptual art (someone's dirty bed, or a pair of shoes with a lump of shit in them, or a bit of paint splashed on a broken surfboard), google Stuckism.
The Stuckists are an art movement originating in Britain who believe that to be called an artist, you actually have to be able to paint.
Sounds good to me.
4 - Mickey Violette
Of course they are lifted! They are facts from the story! It reads to me as she's just re-stating essential facts from the Times' report, not plegiarizing them. Facts are facts!
There's nothing wrong with that.
I mean: In how many ways can one state that the documentary was directed by Harry Moses?
And I like the conclusion, which is what this piece is about, not the history of the Pollock or the documentary itself.
Pollock sucks anyway...
5 - ekj
haha. 5 bucks is all it should be worth.
6 - Art Girl
It's only worth that amount. I see no history going forward for Pollock and his work. What he wrote is a readable experience.