{"id":247,"date":"2008-06-12T15:31:50","date_gmt":"2008-06-12T19:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=247"},"modified":"2009-09-09T19:42:06","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T23:42:06","slug":"who-the-is-jackson-pollock-2006-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/?p=247","title":{"rendered":"Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? (2006) – Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Grandma

Grandma Teri Horton buys an authentic Jackson Pollock for $5 at a garage sale, but New York's elitist art snobs aren't about to let her buy her way into their rarefied environment<\/p><\/div>\n

Show Me State of Mind<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h1>\n

\u00a0[xrr rating=4\/5]<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?<\/em> Featuring Teri Horton, Tod Volpe, Ben Heller, Nick Carone, John Myatt, Peter Paul Biro, Thomas Hoving, Jeffrey Bergen, Joe Beam, Judy Hill, Teri Paquin, Bill Page, Ron Spencer, and Allan Stone. Original music by Terence Blanchard, with additional music by Derrick Hodge. Cinematography by William Cassara. Edited by Jay Freund. Written and directed by Harry Moses. (Picturehouse\/Hewitt Group, 2006, Color, 74 minutes. MPAA Rating: PG-13.)<\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Teri Horton\u2014a 73-year-old grandma and retired over-the-road truck driver with only an eighth-grade education\u2014just won\u2019t (in the words of Tom Petty\u2019s immortal ditty) back down. She\u2019s a tough old broad on a mission, and she won\u2019t let anyone or anything get in her way. I would<\/em> say this plainspoken dame is just about the best-written heroine I\u2019ve seen onscreen in a long time, save for one thing: She\u2019s not \u201cwritten\u201d at all, but the real-life subject of this first-rate documentary directed by Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning \u201c60 Minutes\u201d producer Harry Moses.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This delightful movie has its origins on a fateful day about fifteen years ago, when Horton purchased a huge painting for five bucks at Dot\u2019s Spot Thrift Shop in her hometown of San Bernardino, California. She intended it as a gift to cheer up a friend, Teri Paquin. But the painting, an oversized canvas with a mass of colorful swirls and squiggles, didn\u2019t exactly impress Paquin. Both gals thought it downright ugly and wanted to practice throwing darts at it. When they were unable to get it through the door of Paquin\u2019s mobile home, Horton threw it back into the bed of her pickup truck and later tried hawking it at a yard sale.<\/p>\n

When one of her customers, a local art teacher, informed her that she just might be the owner of an original Jackson Pollock\u2014and that it was potentially worth millions\u2014<\/p>\n

Horton\u2019s response was, \u201cWho the f— is Jackson Pollock?\u201d (Hence the title.)<\/p>\n

Teri Horton soon finds out plenty about the seminal twentieth-century abstract artist who worked in the \u201cstream of consciousness.\u201d She also finds out that her painting is potentially worth $50 million. But when she starts to approach art dealers, none will take her or her painting seriously.<\/p>\n

You see, the painting lacks provenance. <\/em>In the high-stakes world of art investment, provenance is a paper trail that authenticates a work\u2019s origins as well as its chain of ownership. By this point, years have passed, and Dot and her thrift shop are long gone. And, unlike a 1967 Belvedere GTX, paintings don\u2019t come with VIN numbers.<\/p>\n

After the International Foundation for Art Research declares, in an unsigned document, that the painting is \u201cnot by the hand of Jackson Pollock,\u201d Teri\u2019s son\u2014auto mechanic and businessman Bill Page\u2014puts her in touch with someone whose expertise might turn her fortunes around.<\/p>\n

Peter Paul Biro is a leading forensics art authenticator from Montr\u00e9al, with many years experience restoring art masterpieces. The soft-spoken but self-assured Biro is the movie\u2019s cerebral hero, working the case much as a police detective would. \u201cI look at a painting almost like a crime scene,\u201d he says. \u201cBut not who committed a murder. I\u2019m looking for who committed the art.\u201d In the course of his investigation, he compiles an impressive amount of forensic evidence, exactly matching a fingerprint from the painting to two established Pollocks, one in a private Berlin collection, the other from London\u2019s Tate Gallery. He also matches the same print to a paint can in Pollock\u2019s Long Island barn, which was also his studio and is now preserved as a museum. Further, Biro finds paint splatters from the barn\u2019s floor that, when examined spectrographically, exactly match those found on Teri\u2019s canvas.<\/p>\n

In a sane world, with Biro\u2019s credible findings, authenticating the painting as a genuine Pollock ought to have been a done deal. Ah, but no. New York art dealer Jeffrey Bergen summarizes the extreme reluctance of art connoisseurs to give Biro\u2019s findings credence: \u201cThe art world and the justice system, they\u2019re kind of two different worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed. As much as this documentary is a study of the nature of art, it\u2019s also a dissection of the subjectivism, evasion, intellectual pretension, and epistemological obfuscation that typifies the art world\u2019s highest echelons.<\/p>\n

For example, contradicting Biro\u2019s scholarship and evidence, expert Pollock collector Ben Heller remains dubious of the painting\u2019s authenticity. \u201cThat . . . layering of one color on top of another . . . makes me uncomfortable. This stuff, it just doesn\u2019t, this doesn\u2019t look<\/em> like a Pollock. Doesn\u2019t feel<\/em> like a Pollock, doesn\u2019t sing<\/em> like a Pollock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the film\u2019s chief villain. If an actor were to deliver such an arrogant performance as a pompous ass of a curator, he\u2019d be mocked as an over-the-top ham. It\u2019s hard to believe that this is no performance, but an actual interview with a real person.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy instant impression, which I always write down\u2014you know, the \u2018blink,\u2019 the one-hundredth of a second impression\u2014was \u2018neat-dash-compacted,\u2019 which is not good,\u201d Hoving pontificates. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty, it\u2019s superficial and frivolous. And I don\u2019t believe it\u2019s a Jackson Pollock. It has no appeal. It\u2019s dead on arrival.\u201d<\/p>\n

When director Moses counters that Horton would respectfully disagree, Hoving gesticulates nervously, revealing transparently thin skin and patrician annoyance that such a specimen of the hoi polloi<\/em>\u2014whose home is in a trailer park and whose idea of art is Norman Rockwell\u2014would dare question his authority. \u201cShe has no right to be bitter, because what she has is no good, so why should she care?\u201d Hoving sniffs (not figuratively, but literally <\/em>sniffing). \u201cYeah, but she knows nothing, so why does it matter to me? I\u2019m an expert. She\u2019s not.\u201d Hands fluttering, Hoving dismisses investigator Biro\u2019s evidence out of hand: \u201cSo fingerprints, all this stuff, is kind of that lovely \u2018what if.\u2019 But, it\u2019s not essential to the heart <\/em>of the artistic soul of that thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the interview, Biro poses a rhetorical question: \u201cIf this gentleman, in some rage, butchered his wife, and was taken to court, and the bloody knife was produced as evidence and put in front of the judge, what would [he] say<\/em>? \u2018I don\u2019t recognize<\/em> the fingerprint?\u2019 He\u2019d be booted out of court!\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if Biro and Teri were able to get past Hoving\u2019s antagonistic snubbing, they still have a gauntlet to run. Facts pale in comparison to the \u201clearned\u201d opinions of art investors. As Bergman explains, \u201cThere has to be consensus<\/em> behind the painting by quote-unquote \u2018experts,\u2019 or else you could end up in a pile of\u2026problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConsensus\u201d as the authoritative basis for scientific evidence? Hmm, where have we heard that<\/em> before?<\/p>\n

Teri enlists the aid of Tod Volpe, a smooth shark of an art dealer who\u2019s served time in federal prison for embezzling clients\u2019 money. When asked whether that bothered her, she replied, \u201cThat didn\u2019t bother me, the fact that he went to prison for fraud, because by this time I know the whole art world is a bumble-frapping fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a TV interview this past May, Teri expanded on this corruption. \u201cThere is no way anybody can get up and look at that painting, or any Pollock for that matter, and be able, by visual examination and wait for this mystical feeling that they get that comes over them, to decide whether it is, or whether it is not authentic.\u201d The native Missourian added: \u201cThey call it \u2018connoisseurship.\u2019 [I call it] bulls—.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a thoroughly enjoyable, even entertaining, documentary. Harry Moses avoids the outright manipulations of a Michael Moore, instead skillfully juxtaposing Paul Biro\u2019s exacting scientific methodology with lengthy interviews of the haughty elites who run New York\u2019s art scene. Even unedited, they hang themselves with their own words.<\/p>\n

Viewers find out more about who the hell Teri Horton is than they do about Jackson Pollock (despite the director\u2019s tenuous, somewhat unsuccessful attempt to draw parallels between the volatile characters of the two). What I admire most about Teri is her utter refusal to be patronized. She remains adamant about selling her painting not one penny below market value. Despite having the collective doors of the art establishment slammed in her face, she has received an anonymous offer for $2 million and another from a Saudi Arabian collector for $9 million. She has refused both. \u201cIt was principle that I would not sell it for two million dollars,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The day may or may not come when Teri Horton can sell the painting she bought for five bucks for what it\u2019s worth in the marketplace, but one thing\u2019s for certain about this plucky woman: Her soul is not<\/em> for sale.<\/p>\n

Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Show Me State of Mind \u00a0[xrr rating=4\/5] Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? Featuring Teri Horton, Tod Volpe, Ben Heller, Nick Carone, John Myatt, Peter Paul Biro, Thomas Hoving, Jeffrey Bergen, Joe Beam, Judy Hill, Teri Paquin, Bill Page, Ron Spencer, and Allan Stone. Original music by Terence Blanchard, with additional music by Derrick Hodge. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,37,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentaries","category-independent-films","category-mreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}