Pollock is Relevant

I went to see an exhibit called Pollock Matters last night. It was a big reception for my husband's work. The food was really good. I also enjoyed looking at Jackson Pollock's paintings, or paintings that are possibly his and look like his and i like them as much as his paintings, even though they are not authenticated.

The paintings in question were found by the son of a photographer who used to pal around with Pollock. His name was Herbert Matters, and that is how the show got it's name. Here I was thinking it was trying to say that Pollock is relevant. That's probably what you're supposed to think. Anyway, the son found these paintings wrapped in paper in the basement of his father's old studio. They even had one of the papers they were wrapped in. I told my husband it was the best art there, but I was joking. No one knows why the paintings were there, who put them there, or if Pollock wasn't the painter who was and why. It's just one of those mysteries.

Jackson Pollock gets a bad rap because his paintings look like they would be easy to do. He's the original "my kid could do that" painter. But when you really look at them, they are very complex planned layerings of paint. It's not easy to get paint to do what you want when you are dripping it or flinging it.

So is it art, if they are not Pollock's paintings? I say yes, but not as collectible but still somewhat collectible because of all the notoriety.

It would be funny if the fakes turned out in the future to be worth more money than the originals, like the Japanese shells my dad told me about once. They were shells that were only found in very deep water, so it was hard to get them and they were worth more money to shell collectors. So they started making fake ones, but the problem was the fake ones would dissolve in water. Then they invented better diving equipment, so the shells were easy to find and not worth as much. But the fake ones were now collectible.

To apply this to the situation with Pollock's paintings I guess you'd have to find a huge warehouse full of easy to authenticate Pollock paintings, like thousands of them. So it's not going to happen, but it's interesting to think about.