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Is it a fake or could it be a load of old Pollocks?
Last updated at 11:52am on 08.11.06
Spot the difference: On the left is an original Pollock, No 5, 1948, that sold for a world record last month and on the right is the disputed canvas bought from a charity shop
When Teri Horton bought an oil painting from a charity shop as a joke, she had never heard of American abstract painter Jackson Pollock.
After sitting in her trailer and laughing at the paint-spattered canvas with a friend, the 74-year-old retired lorry driver from California put the painting into storage.
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It wasn't until she offered it for sale to an art-professor friend a few months later that she found out the painting could be by famous American artist Jackson Pollock and worth more than US$100 million (£79 million)- a far cry from her US$5 acquisition.
Now Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal art restorer, says he's matched a fingerprint on Horton's painting to fingerprints from a paint can found in Pollock's studio in East Hampton, New York and from a Pollock painting in a London gallery, the Toronto Star reported.
But not everyone is so sure of the work's authenticity - the International Foundation for Art Research denies the painting is an authentic Pollock, and art expert Thomas Hoving thinks it was done as a joke.
"I think somebody had a lovely house in some sunny part of the world, Palm Beach or something like that and wanted an abstract painting, maybe like a Pollock, in colours that would have fit the room," said Hoving, former director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Biro told the Toronto Star, "I think it's strong enough to go to court with," adding he learned the fingerprinting trade in private study with a police expert in the field, who also reviewed his work in this case.
Pollock died in a car crash in 1956.
Reader views (2)
It is beyond me why anyone would pay money for what appears to be (in my opinion) a well used house painters dropcloth. Now, if it were a Monet or a Cassett or even a Bouguereau, maybe I could get behind that kind of cash. But Pollock!? He is about 2 steps below Picasso in the "Damn, I spilled my paint again, I wonder how much will those fools pay for it this time?" catagory.
- Ronin, Orlando, US
Sounds like a load of pollocks.
- Caroline, Richmond Upon Thames
