[MSN] Shadows of doubt loom over Pollock-style works

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Shadows of doubt loom over Pollock-style works
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Steven Litt
Plain Dealer Art Critic

Art historians have spent whole careers trying to re-create the halcyon years when Jackson Pollock revolutionized 20th-century art by hurling paint at raw canvas on the floor of his barn on Long Island, N.Y.

Alex Matter doesn't have to imagine it. He was there.

His parents, Herbert and Mercedes Matter, both of whom were important artists in their own right, were friends and neighbors of Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner.

Young Alex knew nothing about Abstract Expressionism and only later learned of Pollock's reputation as a violent drunk. To him, the progenitor of "action painting" was the most magical friend a kid could have.

Matter was thrilled at age 7 when Pollock taught him how to summon a wild crow -- nicknamed "Caw Caw" -- from a nearby tree and have it land on his shoulder. The boy also once ran barefoot across one of Pollock's unfinished drip-and-spatter paintings, which angered his mother so much she ran after him with a knife.

"She would have slashed me up and put me into the painting," he said.

But while Matter's mother was shouting that Alex needed to be punished, Pollock shouted back that he loved the footprints, which Matter said are still visible in the painting, now part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Today, such memories are mingled with a more troubling legacy-- the imbroglio over the authenticity of 32 paintings and studies that Matter, a 64-year-old New York filmmaker, said he discovered in 2002 in a storage unit that once belonged to his father.

They were wrapped in brown paper on which Matter's father had written a note in pencil in 1958 describing the contents as "32 Jackson experimental works (gift & purchase)."

Ellen Landau, a noted Pollock expert and art history professor at Case Western Reserve University, first viewed the paintings at Matter's request in August 2004. She was convinced immediately that they were Pollocks.

Encouraged by her enthusiasm, Matter went public with the discovery in May 2005.

As he now admits, that was a mistake.

By allowing Landau to come forward with the Pollock attribution before having gathered scientific evidence to back up the assertion, Matter unleashed a controversy that has attracted global attention and embroiled Landau and himself in a drama neither foresaw.

Within weeks after the announcement, long-established Pollock experts Eugene Victor Thaw and Francis V. O'Connor expressed serious doubts about the paintings. Their word carried weight because they serve the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, whose mission includes safeguarding the artistic legacy of Pollock and Krasner.

The dispute took on the complexion of an intergenerational battle over Pollock's legacy, because Landau once served on a panel authenticating Pollocks for the foundation.

Matter admits he weakened his position by not doing more homework on the paintings before his announcement in 2005. Art museums typically perform extensive scientific tests on paintings or sculptures before deciding to buy them. But Matter said he knew nothing of such practices.

Matter said he made other crucial mistakes early on, such as not having the paintings examined and documented by an art museum or a materials analyst before having them heavily restored in 2003-04.

The restoration may have complicated recent scientific tests that found pigments and binding agents in the paintings that didn't exist during Pollock's lifetime.

"I was naive and didn't know anything about any of this," Matter said during extensive conversations over the past two weeks from his home in western Connecticut. "I definitely made mistakes, and we're going to find out what those mistakes meant."

Science and history

collide over art

The TV program "Antiques Roadshow" makes it look easy to authenticate artworks: Bring in your family treasure and show it to an expert. Listen to a few moments of historical explanation. Smile ecstatically when the estimated price flashes across the screen.

The reality, as Matter has discovered, can be very different.

Disagreement over the Matter paintings set off a heated debate over whether art historians or scientists should have the upper hand in attributing works of art.

The fracas has spilled from traditional areas such as pigment analysis into highly disputed areas of research such as "fractal analysis," in which physicists try to see whether visual patterns in Pollock paintings can be measured like fingerprints to sift the real from the fake.

Last February, a fractal analysis commissioned by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation raised new doubts about the Matter paintings. Physicists at CWRU lobbed back a counter salvo in November, rebutting the validity of the first study.

The conflict has complicated negotiations over when and where the newly discovered works will be shown for the first time -- and how they will be placed in context with known works by Pollock.

An exhibition is scheduled to open Sept. 1 at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, a year later than Matter and Landau had planned.

Matter said that all available research on the paintings will be revealed at that time, including the opinions of experts not already on the record who will back up Landau's convictions.

The show could include more than 80 artworks and place the newly discovered works in the context of others by Pollock, Herbert Matter, Hans Hofmann, Alexander Calder and others in their circle.

Landau, who said she still believes that the Matter paintings are Pollocks, emphasizes that while they'll be in the Boston College show, "they are not the main focus of the exhibition, and people have to understand that."

But with Landau's attribution still on record, her scholarly acumen is on the line. That has focused sharp attention on every new twist in the story.

More studies,

more doubts

It looked bad in January, for example, when Harvard University announced that researchers found that three of the Matter paintings contained pigments and binding agents that weren't available during Pollock's lifetime.

More doubts arose in February, when Matter withheld the results of a far more extensive laboratory analysis of 23 of the paintings. That analysis, which he financed, had been completed in October by a firm in Massachusetts.

He said he intends to release the report at the time of the Boston College exhibition or sooner, when certain questions about it are answered. But that raises even more questions about the report and why Matter considers it unfinished.

Matter said he now realizes it would have been wiser to line up far more scientific and scholarly research before announcing his discovery and the attribution to Pollock.

"It was my decision, it was a bad decision and I have to live with that," he said. "The right way -- now that I know this world -- is to bring it to a museum and have all the work done and then announce it."

For her part, Landau sounds taken aback by the frenzy over the paintings.

"No other Pollocks that have come to light have ever been subjected to this kind of scrutiny," she said. "That was not standard operating procedure."

At stake: A father's memory,

a scholar's reputation

Part of the intense interest in the Matter paintings is explained by the mystique of Pollock, whose meteoric career ended when his car crashed into a tree near his Long Island home in 1956, an accident that also claimed the life of a female passenger.

But along with Pollock's fame, money has fueled the controversy. After a huge rise in wealth among elite executives and investors, the art market is awash in cash. A Pollock recently sold privately for $140 million.

If authentic, the disputed works could be worth a fortune. But Matter and Landau both say they aren't motivated by profit.

"I don't know if these are ever going to sell or if I'll want to sell them," Matter said. "If they ever do get authenticated and accepted, I'd like to donate most of them to museums."

Landau, who said she has no financial stake in the paintings, said they inspired her to explore the little-known link between Herbert Matter's experimental "action photography" and Pollock's breakthrough to "action painting."

The elder Matter was a photographer and graphic designer who was deeply involved in the New York avant-garde in the 1940s and '50s.

"The discovery of this package alerted me to the fact that there was a closer relationship between Herbert Matter and Jackson Pollock than anyone had recognized," she said. "I want my discoveries to become part of the Pollock lore."

Landau's research into the relationship between Pollock and Herbert Matter has unearthed a wealth of new information, which opens new perspectives on one of the most important chapters in 20th-century art.

But the debate over the authenticity of the works threatens to obscure Landau's scholarship and Matter's desire to honor his father's memory. That, for him, is the most important objective.

Herbert Matter died in 1984. After Mercedes died in 2001, Alex inherited their house in Springs, a hamlet on Long Island, along with the contents of a storage unit in nearby Wainscott.

With help from his son, Jordan, Matter began sifting through the house -- and then through eight metal bins of material from the storage unit.

Matter said he focused first on saving his father's photographs and papers and sending them to Stanford University, where they were later studied in depth for the first time by Landau. Some artworks went to New York dealer Mark Borghi for sale.

It was in late 2002 that Matter said he found the paintings that would launch one of the hottest controversies in the art world and change his life. Most were on small, blue artist's boards. He remembers being unimpressed at first.

"Certainly, when I found them, I didn't think they were worth anything," Matter said. "It was six or seven months before I brought them to anybody. One really couldn't see through the dirt."

Matter said that "on four or five of the boards, the paint had come completely off. Some chips were sticking straight up in the air and some big chips had come off." He said he discarded several that he thought were beyond repair, but said he can't remember how many.

Matter also remembers thinking that the haphazard wrapping around the paintings was not typical of his father.

"He was very meticulous, and this was not meticulous at all, which leads me to believe that he did not treasure these things -- that he knew something about them that did not make them very important. He didn't consider them works that Pollock would have wanted circulated and out there. That's my guess."

Restoration

was a mistake

The more he looked, however, the more Matter grew excited about the paintings.

"I looked at them and they were so incredibly beautiful that I couldn't imagine the harm in having them seen," he said. He decided to have them restored by an independent art conservator in New York named Franco Lisi to arrest further decay.

That was a big mistake, according to Pepe Karmel, a respected Pollock expert and an associate professor of art history at New York University.

By failing to have the paintings examined and documented first by conservators at an art museum or specialists in materials analysis, Matter left himself open to questions about whether the restoration introduced contemporary pigments.

"When these pictures were discovered, it should have been obvious that they should have been kept in a fresh, unaltered state so they could be analyzed with good technical results," Karmel said. "One would have to ask, What on earth were you thinking when you had them restored?' "

Matter freely admits he blew it. Landau, however, said she doesn't feel the restorations are a problem. She said the paintings' style, and the paper wrapping with Herbert Matter's handwriting, point to Pollock.

"I based my interest in these works on the provenance, which was golden, and on stylistic issues, which I still believe to be true," she said.

Landau is also not dismayed by Harvard's analysis of three of the disputed works, which showed they contain materials not patented or commercially available during Pollock's lifetime.

"I'm not rejecting the Harvard report, but I'm saying it could go further," Landau said. "There are still other avenues of exploration."

She believes deeper research could reveal that pigments in the paintings were, in fact, available to Pollock. She's especially curious about the reference to "Robi paints" scribbled by Matter's father on the paper around the paintings. That's a reference to Alex Matter's uncle, Robi Rebetez, a paint dealer active in Basel, Switzerland, after World War II.

Matter, who said he has spent $1 million on research, shipping and publicity associated with the disputed works, is ready to spend more to investigate the Robi connection, by researching the history of paints patented in Switzerland.

The Museum of Fine Arts Boston has also entered the fray, offering to analyze pigments in four of the Matter paintings.

But Matter still won't allow the release of the most extensive analysis of the paintings so far, performed by Orion Analytical, a firm in Williamstown, Mass.

Orion's principal, James Martin, revealed in early February that he completed more than 350 analyses on 23 of the paintings in October, and that his contract with Borghi, Matter's art dealer, permits him to share the results.

But Martin held off on releasing his study after getting a written warning from Matter's lawyer, Jeremy Epstein.

Martin's lawyer, Stanley Parese, said his client would meet with Matter and Epstein if they guarantee not to sue Martin. Matter called the request "very negotiable."

Looking at such clashes, Karmel, the NYU art historian, said: "The public is hungry for scandal. Everyone wants to believe there's a conspiracy in favor [of] or against the pictures. What's very unfortunate is that the whole discussion is conducted with the threat of lawsuits hanging over people's heads.

"Nobody wants to speak frankly about this, because no one wants to end up in court."

In Matter's case, controversy over the attribution and uncertainties over how to reconcile science and art history have made him realize how hard it can be to find the truth about works of art.

"It may be years and years and years and maybe not in my lifetime, maybe in my son's lifetime, that they'll be authenticated and accepted," he said.

When asked what he's learned from his experience, Matter laughed. "I don't know how the whole art world works," he said. "But it's as dirty a business as the film business. As a matter of fact, it's dirtier."

Still, he can't even bring himself to consider the possibility, however slim, that the paintings could be fakes.

"Why would somebody try to do fakes of 32 paintings instead of one big one? It just doesn't make sense. And why do experimental' pieces? Why would somebody do that? It's just ridiculous."

And so he vows to press on, as much to find out about the paintings as to illuminate the extraordinary world he knew as a child, and to have his father remembered.

"My father had a profound influence on many artists, and that's what's important to me -- to get that out."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

slitt at plaind.com, 216-999-4136 

http://www.cleveland.com