[MSN] Estate Sale Turns Up Possible Pollock.

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Estate Sale Turns Up Possible Pollock

By DINESH RAMDE
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 19, 2006; 1:49 PM



BELOIT, Wis. -- Auctioneer Richard Ranft and his staff were preparing Lynn
Anderson's belongings for an estate-sale auction when a piece of artwork
caught their eye.

The painting was created in a drip style, lines of black, red and yellow
enamel paint dribbled along tan tag board. On the back was written, "Bought
in New York summer 1959 or 60 LA Jackson Pollock."

"I'm not an art expert by any means," Ranft said, "but if it is an original
Pollock, it's going to be a wonderful find in Wisconsin."

Ranft will auction off the painting Oct. 25, but let the buyer beware _ it
comes with no appraisal or guarantee of authenticity.

"The only way you can have it appraised is to have it authenticated," said
Ranft, the president of Beloit Auction Service in southern Wisconsin. "We
don't want to do that because of the cost to the estate. If you're the
buyer, you'll have to do it."

Pollock was known to have produced more than 350 paintings from the 1930s to
the 1950s. One sold for $11.7 million at a 2004 auction, according to Dr.
Elin Lake-Ewald, the president of O'Toole-Ewald Art Associates Inc. in New
York.

Nicknamed "Jack the Dripper" by Time magazine in 1956, the year he died in a
car crash, Pollock was known for pouring and dripping paint over huge
canvases to create swirling, intricate layers of color and seemingly random
designs he insisted were the result of deliberate technique.

So is Anderson's painting a genuine Pollock? Experts say without careful
inspection, it's difficult to tell. It has been on display for two months in
a locked glass case that's nestled among racks of bygone firearms, fine
china and miscellaneous curios.

Anderson, 70, a Milwaukee native and renowned architect, is incapacitated
and can't describe the painting's origins. Her cousin, Agnes Lee, said that
Anderson picked it up at an auction, but Lee didn't know the price. Lee
didn't even know her cousin had the painting until Ranft's staff found it on
the floor among piles of dusty drawings in Anderson's home.

Lee, a farmer from Clinton, Wis., said she never heard of Pollock and wasn't
impressed by the painting.

"If I'd have saw it in her possessions, I'd have probably thrown it away,"
she said. "I certainly wouldn't have thought it was valuable."

At least 17 of Pollock's paintings have sold for more than $500,000 each
since 1989, said Lake-Ewald.

Large international auction houses such as Sotheby's provide guarantees of
authenticity for art created since 1870, said company spokesman Matthew
Weigman.

"If you were thinking of buying this (piece), I'd advise you to take along
an art adviser, someone who knew about Pollock, who can tell you what it's
worth," Weigman said.

Weigman said it's usually the seller who demands a pre-auction appraisal to
ensure the product fetches a fair price. But Lee, as guardian of Anderson's
estate, said she just wants the estate sold and any money to go toward her
sister's care.

The painting is about the size of two sheets of notebook paper placed top to
bottom. Ranft speculated that the painting may have been part of a larger
piece.

A skeptic may argue that it's easy to generate a Pollock-like forgery. The
facetious Web site jacksonpollock.org even allows people to make their own
drip-style drawings with the click of a mouse.

But true Pollock paintings have a subtle charm hidden in the multiple layers
of paint, said Marilyn Stasiak, the curator of art at the Neville Public
Museum of Brown County in Green Bay.

"These paintings, they're very intuitive, they're romantic, poetic," she
said. "It's a dance that he does with these things."

___

On the Net:

Beloit Auction Service: http://www.beloitauction.com/

Unofficial Jackson Pollock drawing Web site: http://www.jacksonpollock.org/