Landau argues “Pollocks” are for real

Jackson Pollock scholar Ellen Landau, who organized the “Pollock Matters” exhibit at Boston College, argued in a public speech Sunday that the disputed Pollock-look-alike paintings that Alex Matter says he found in his father’s effects in 2002 are likely real, according to a report yesterday by Steven Litt of The Cleveland Plain Dealer:

The scholar [Landau] said Sunday that despite the scientific data [showing that many of the Matter paintings contain pigments and binding agents not patented or commercially available - according to current knowledge - during Pollock's lifetime], the preponderance of evidence leans heavily toward the authenticity of the works brought forward by Alex Matter.

"If I took a piece of paper and drew a line down the page, and put on the left-hand side all the things that point to the veracity of the story told on the wrapper, there would be seven or eight things on the left-hand side - whereas on the right, there's only one thing, and it's patent dates," she said.

….

When asked by a single questioner in the audience about the authenticity issue, Landau said, "I think there's a lot in those paintings that point to Pollock." She called the conflicting scientific data, confirmed by laboratories at Harvard University, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and a private forensic firm in Williamstown, Mass., "an interesting conundrum."

Landau has declined to talk to Litt and The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research about the subject. For some of my previous reports on this issue, see here, here, here and here.