Press Release

“My gut feeling is that this is an authentic Pollock,” said Rich Ranft, chief auctioneer and president of Beloit Auction Service, speaking of a painting which will cross his auction block on October 25.

The painting in question measures approximately 7 ½ inches by 24 inches, is unsigned, and is accomplished in the drip style of the prolific abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. “Pollock is for sure known to have done some smaller studies,” said Ranft. “And he was not known to have signed all his works.”

The mid-sized auction company received the painting on consignment from the living estate of noted Wisconsin architect Lynn Anderson, who was a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright. Handwritten on the backing of the painting are the words, “Bought in NY 1959 or 60… LA… Jackson Pollock.” It’s believed that the initials LA stand for Lynn Anderson who visited New York during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

Pollock himself died in 1956. Time Magazine wrote a brief but descriptive obituary, “Died. Jackson Pollock, 44, bearded shock trooper of modern painting, who spread his canvases on the floor, dribbled paint, sand and broken glass on them, smeared and scratched them, named them with numbers…; at the wheel of his convertible in a side road crack-up near East Hampton, N.Y.”

In the twenty years between his arrival in New York City to study art and his premature death, Jackson Pollock had emerged as the most original painter in America–famous for his unprecedented physical involvement with the act of painting.

“It is impossible to make a forgery of Jackson Pollock’s work,” Time magazine critic Robert Hughes claimed in 1982. It is a telling comment that gets to the heart of Pollock’s authenticity as an artist. “It is what his imitators could never do, and why there are no successful Pollock forgeries: they always end up looking like…spaghetti, whereas Pollock–in his best work–had an almost preternatural control over the total effect of those skeins and receding depths of paint. In them, the light is always right. Nor are they absolutely spontaneous; he would often retouch the drip with a brush.”

Ranft has researched Pollock’s work and consulted with museum curators and arts appraisers about the authenticity of the Pollock painting from the Anderson estate. So far, no one has been able to confirm or deny Pollock’s authorship of the Action-style painting. “No one will stick their neck out and say with absolute certainty that this is a Pollock,” he explained, adding, “Ms. Anderson is incapacitated and family members cannot offer any further information on the painting’s provenance.”

For more information on this auction, visit beloitauction.com or call (608) 364-1965.

Posted: 09|29|06 at 7:51 am. Filed under: US News.