The Mathematics of Jackson Pollock on a Street Corner in InwoodIn an impressive display of academic vandalism, uptown artist Mike Saijo created his bigger-than-life work Pollock Equation from pages torn from an advanced mathematics textbook, over which Saijo printed a photo of Jackson Pollock in all his wily glory.
art candy
What Is This? An Art Studio for Ants?Joe Fig’s tiny, meticulously crafted miniature replicas of famous artists’ studios, up at Southampton’s Parrish Art Museum through August 5, are every art nerd’s—and doll house enthusiast’s—happiest dream.
cultural capital
Horton Hears a Pollock
Trucker Teri Horton bought a $5 Jackson Pollock look-alike from a California thrift store fifteen years ago and is still trying to convince the art world of its legitimate provenance. In Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?, the documentary about Horton’s quest that opened last week at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village, former Met director Thomas Hoving is among the experts who scoff at her painting, declaring that the piece “has no soul and no heart” after ostentatiously peering at it from different angles.
A fingerprint on the back of Untitled 1948 matches one on a paint can in Pollock’s well-preserved East Hampton studio, but forensic holds little currency with curators. “Scientists are very interesting,” says Hoving in the film, “but they come after the connoisseurs.” But buyers seem to agree with the CSI approach; Horton refused an initial offer of $2 million and most recently heard $19 million. She’s quiet about the deal’s details. Being coy, she says, “is a scheme I learned from the art world.”
— Wren Abbott