[MSN] Owner rejects analysis of unsubstantiated Pollocks. Harvard researchers question the works' age and authenticity. Their owner doesn't see the findings as definitive.

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Owner rejects analysis of unsubstantiated Pollocks
Harvard researchers question the works' age and authenticity. Their owner
doesn't see the findings as definitive.
By Jesse Harlan Alderman
Associated Press

January 31, 2007

BOSTON - The owner of three paintings attributed to contemporary abstract
painter Jackson Pollock has rejected a scientific analysis by Harvard
University researchers that questions the age and authenticity of the works.

Researchers at the Harvard University Art Museums tested paint pigments and
binding media in the three paintings. They found that pigments used in all
three works were not commercially available until after Pollock's death in
1956. The orange paint in one of the paintings contained a pigment that was
not available until 1971. Brown paint found in another painting likely was
developed in the early 1980s and came onto the market in 1986.

Alex Matter, son of late photographer Herbert Matter, one of Pollock's close
friends, found the paintings in 2002 among a store of 32 works wrapped in
brown paper at his father's storage locker on New York's Long Island. A
photograph Matter provided to the Harvard researchers shows the brown paper
inscribed with words and dates suggesting the paintings were created, bought
or gifted between 1946-49.

"The authentication of works of art is still more art than science," Matter
said in a written statement posted on his website. "The point is that the
science of attribution is still in flux, and no scientific test is
definitive in the absence of traditional, time-tested art historical
research."

He said that varnish used to restore the paintings could have contaminated
paint samples tested in the Harvard study. Matter also noted the Harvard
researchers carbon dated the blue illustration cardboard backing of the
paintings and found they were produced in the 1950s before Pollock's death.

Two works contained media that were most likely not available until 1962 or
1963, according to the Harvard report. The researchers wrote that the
binding medium used to create silver paint on a third painting "in all
likelihood was not commercially available until the 1970s."

Conservation treatment could account for clear coating and adhesives found
on one of the paintings, the report said, "but not the terpolymer medium
that binds the pigment to form the paint, or the very modern pigments, which
were found in untreated areas."

"It would be nice if there were a definitive answer, but this does not help
the case," said Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and
Study Center, the definitive Pollock museum. The center supplied a blue
illustration board similar to the supports of the three works studied, used
for comparison.

Narayan Khandekar, the lead researcher on the 14-month, pro bono study, said
scientific testing should play an important role in determining the
authenticity of Matter's potential Pollocks.

"You can't just dismiss this one piece of evidence. That's not the right way
to approach a scholarly discussion," he said Tuesday. "You have to have an
art historian and a connoisseur who uses his or her eye and the scientist
has to play a role in that."

Khandekar said the Harvard study did not say the paintings were not
Pollock's creations, but strongly suggested that they were at least altered
after the artist's death.

"You can join those dots," he said. "They are laid out and people can use
that evidence to draw those conclusions."

In the mid-1940s, Pollock introduced radical innovations to a new form of
painting that would become Abstract Expressionism. He used pour and drip
techniques, and instead of brushes, he manipulated paint with sticks,
trowels and knives. He would sometimes add sand, broken glass, thumbtacks
and other foreign materials to his paint.

The 32 works that Matter attributes to Pollock have been subjected to
fractal examinations that compare the paintings with Pollock's distinct
dripping technique, expert analysis at the Pollock-Krasner House, and a
range of other tests. But the scholars have not reached any consensus.

The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College will display 25 of Matter's
disputed Pollock paintings beginning Sept. 1 in an exhibit titled "Pollock
Matters."

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