Intimate Relations

   Intimate Relations, Authenticity, and the Art Market

Continuing the social theme, we turn our attention to romantic relations between artists.  Earlier we pointed out that Jackson Pollock died in an auto accident. Now we will look into the details and aftermath.  Jackson Pollock married Lee Krasner in 1942. She promoted his career by introducing him to collectors, critics, and artists as well as orienting him to contemporary art.  He became famous by the mid 1950s but due to his alcoholism, Jackson and Lee became estranged and she was in Europe at the time of his death in 1956.

Further, at that time in 1956, Jackson, 44, was having an affair with a younger woman, Ruth Kligman, 26, also an artist.  As to the auto accident, two women passengers were in the speeding car that Pollock was driving recklessly. In the resulting crash, Jackson and one woman died, but Ruth Kligman fortunately survived.  She says his foot was all the way down on the gas pedal. He had a drinking problem and was despondent about the lull in his career. In 1974, Kligman published a book, Love Affair: A Memoir of Jackson Pollock.

For decades Ruth Kligman kept a painting that she said Pollock painted for her before he died – his last painting.  He had not painted for a few years, and she brought the canvas and paint to him and asked him to paint for her. Was this to cheer him up and get him painting again?

                                       

                                   

  The painting is small by Pollock's standards, 24 by 20 inches, which we will refer to simply as Red, Black, and Silver (RBS).  After Pollock’s death, Lee Krasner and the Pollock-Krasner foundation refused to authenticate Kligman’s painting.  Eventually Krasner and then Kligman died.

So what about the painting RBS?  According to a number of sources including the New York Times, a new investigation supports the painting being by Pollock.  A forensic specialist, Nicholas Petraco, formerly of the NYPD, looked for crime scene type evidence that could be relevant. And so it was.  He found in or on the painting Pollock’s hairs and polar bear hairs. As it turns out, Pollock had a polar bear rug in the house.

Francis V. O’Connor, a connoisseur and editor of the definitive Pollock Catalog, says the painting, RBS, does not look like a Pollock painting, although other experts say it does.  O’Connor says the painting has different characteristics than other Pollock works.

Now we come to the money part.  There are named categories used in the art trade. In this case :  1. Accepted as authentic Pollock 2. Attributed to Pollock 3. Unresolved-disputed.

From dealers, a rough idea of the likely auction prices in dollars are: Authentic – tens of millions, Attributed – tens of thousands, Unresolved – no basis, so unknown likely low price.

The main story brings us to the back stories, especially regarding authenticity.  There are on record, cases where connoisseurs were proved wrong by science or by historical provenance sleuthing.  I take this as similar to the wine experts who don’t do very well in blind taste tests, and they don’t take it gracefully.

There is another idea I see here – that of an artist changing his or her style.  In that case the artist’s style would seem inconsistent. Back to the Pollock case.  He had not painted for two years before his death. I think an artist can pursue a certain idea and develop that idea, until it is exhausted.

Pollock may have felt there was nothing new left for him to do in Abstract Expressionism.  The creative artist may then fall into a rut, or even depression, until some new path or style is found.  That happens in other endeavors – the person succeeds – then events or tastes change. In the crisis, the person may be able to recoup and reinvent themselves or maybe not.