"Is this a genuine, honest-to-God... no-doubt-about-it American masterpiece... possibly worth as much as fifty million dollars?" "Maybe." "But to Teri Horton, a 73-year-old former long-haul truck driver... who bought the painting for five dollars in a thrift shop... there's no "maybe" about it." "To her, it's a fairy tale come true." "Everybody knows that a fairy tale starts out "Once upon a time."" "But a truck driver's tale starts out..." ""Y ou ain't gonna believe this shit."" "I was in this thrift store... to pick up something for a friend of mine that was really depressed." "I saw this big canvas with just paint all over it, no picture." "It was ugly." "There was nothing to it." "It was just all these different colors all over a canvas." "I mean, to me, a painting has to have something that you can look at... and say "Oh, that really looks cool..."" "like Norman Rockwell or something like that." "I asked the lady what she'd charge me for it." "And she was reading a True Romance book, and she didn't even look up." "And she said "Oh, give me eight dollars."" "And I told her that I loved my friend, but I didn't love her that much... and couldn't we do better?" "And she said, "Oh, give me five, then."" "I said "Okay, I'll buy it."" "So Teri put the painting in her pick-up and took it to her friend." "Well, she pulls in and she gets out... and I'm, like, "What are you doing here at this time of the day?" or whatever." "And she goes "Well, I brought you just a little something."" "She said, and it's..." "I'm thinking it's in the cab of her..." "And she goes " No, it's in the back, 'cause the hay's in the front."" "'Cause I'm, like, "I don't need hay."" "So I walk around and I'm like "A little something?" "Where am I gonna put this?" "How... you know, where's this going?"" "And she said "Well, get it out and look." And I'm, like, " Okay."" "And I don't wanna hurt her feelings or whatever." "And it's like..." "All right, Teri, this is really pretty ugly." "Aside from thinking it was ugly... the picture wouldn't fit through the door of her friend's trailer." "So Teri put it in a garage sale... where a local art teacher spotted it and told her..." ""You very well could maybe... maybe..." He said "I'm no expert, but..."" "he said "you might have a Jackson Pollock painting here."" "And I said "Who the fuck is Jackson Pollock?"" "Who, indeed?" "Well, for starters, he's one of the few artists... to have his own permanent room at New York's Museum of Modern Art." "Teri Horton didn't know that." "Nor was she aware of the similarities... between the artist's character and her own." "When a male truck driver collided with Teri's 18-wheeler..." "I called him every name in the book." ""Y ou dumb S.O.B."" "And he's "I'll say one thing, gal."" "And with this Tex-Tennessee drawl, he said... he said "I sure am glad..."" "he said, "you're just a little bitty gal with a trashy mouth... 'cause if you're one of these men drivers I'd done had my ass whipped by now."" "Pollock was just as ornery." "Even when broke... he wouldn't sell a painting for less than he thought it was worth." "Eighty-eight-year-old artist Nick Carone, a friend of Pollock's... remembers the day, fifty years ago... when Jackson finally sold his first big work." "He comes out beaming." "Like that, you know... and we said "Well, tell us." "Did ya sell the painting?"" "And he said "Yeah, I sold it."" "And I said "How much?" To Jackson." "I think it was seven or nine..." "I forget the number." "Seven thousand dollars." "I says "Wow," I says." ""Seven thousand dollars." "Jeez, you must feel like Rembrandt," I said." "The buyer was Ben Heller." "The price was eight thousand dollars." "Payable over four years." "In fact, Teri Horton would have been shocked... to learn just how pricey Jackson Pollock has become." "From when I bought my first painting... on he always got a higher price than anybody else." "The way he painted was so different... than anybody else had ever done." "Something totally new." "Signs and symbols... working in a stream-of-consciousness." "He was selecting images through his subconscious mind." "Energy made visible." "They were beautiful." "I responded to the line, the rhythms, the energy." "When I was with him, I felt the greatness." "And I'm a painter myself, don't forget." "He was the greatest artist of the 20th century." "Better than Picasso." "However large the top group is, he's in there." "Ben Heller owned both of these paintings... before they were sold to the Museum of Modern Art." "Heller bought "Echo" from Pollock for three thousand dollars." "It has since increased in value more than ten thousand times." "He bought "One", spelled O-N-E... for that previously mentioned eight thousand dollars." "It is now worth..." "Let's just say north of a hundred million dollars... and leave it at that 'cause... when you get up at that level, it doesn't make any difference." "And what about Teri Horton's painting?" "If the art world were to accept it as a genuine Jackson Pollock... how much does Ben Heller think it would go for?" "I would say probably... over fifty million dollars." "It's an enormous sum of money." "Knowing what it was worth, that just blew me away." "I thought "My God."" "Something this... ugly to me and, and my girlfriend." "We were gonna throw darts at it." "We thought, that's how insignificant it was to us." "That anybody would pay that kind of money... for this type of artwork... if you wanna call it artwork." "Teri began to look at her painting in a brand new light." "Could her five dollar purchase become a winning lottery ticket?" "She decided to find out." "I started out in Los Angeles... with some dealers that I'd get out of the phone book... and I'd call 'em up, you know, and... and tell 'em that just..." "I just wasn't dumb." "I'd just tell 'em right out front." ""You know, I've got a..." "I came across a painting that... someone has told me that very well could be a Jackson Pollock." "Would you be interested?" "Or can you advise in any way what I should do?"" ""Where did you get it?"" ""In a thrift store."" ""Well, you gotta be outta your ever-Ioving mind." "What are you, crazy?" "Jackson Pollock paintings just don't end up in thrift stores." "They're all in museums, or people with mega-bucks, they all own 'em." "There are none."" ""How do you know?"" ""Well, I'm in the art business." "You're not."" "Thomas Hoving is one of those who is." "A former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York..." "Hoving was not involved in the saga of Teri's painting." "But his views reflect those of the art establishment." "It has no real interest." "It contributes nothing to artistic civilization." "It's a "tch"." "It's a flip." "Teri keeps her painting under lock and key... at this warehouse in New York City... where we asked Hoving to inspect it." "There are a lot of second-rate experts in the world." "I'm not." "Now, if I had been a night watchman... at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for ten years... instead of a curator and director for eighteen and a half... then you might say that my expertise is not so good." "My expertise is very good." "What do you think?" "My instant impression, which I always write down... you know, the blink, the hundredth of a second impression... was "neat, dash, compacted", which is not good." "He wasn't neat." "He wasn't compacted." "It's pretty." "It's superficial and frivolous, and I don't believe it's a Jackson Pollock." "It has no appeal." "It's, it's, it's dead on arrival." "Dead on arrival." "One dealer, he said "You're an absolute imbecile to pursue this."" "I said " Oh, well." "We'll see."" "He said " I was just trying to save ya a lotta heartache and dreams."" "And I said "Why would you wanna do that?"" "I said "Haven't you ever had a dream?"" "He said " Not with a Jackson Pollock, I never have."" "Having tried and failed to sell the painting on her own..." "Teri enlisted the aid of her son, Bill Page... who has a garage in Laguna Beach, California." "Page wanted to get experts to look at the painting." "My sense was, is that they always thought it was a fake... that there was no reason for them to give it any time." "For the better part of six months... it seems like I did spend every waking minute on this project." "Nobody would ever re-contact me." "Uh, I just..." "I gave up." "You know, you couldn't get 'em to return your calls." "What are you gonna do?" "I thought "Who in the hell do these people think they are?" "What if this thing is really real?"" "It became a challenge then for me... that I was gonna show, one way or the other... but I wasn't gonna just let them say "Hey, it's not real"... and just ease on down the road." "I was not gonna do that." "It was gonna have to be proven to me." "Somebody was gonna have to do something to tell me, bottom line... that this painting was not done by Paul Jackson Pollock." "The first time I found out about that painting... was right over there at the corner of the bar." "When Teri told me she had a Jackson Pollock..." "I said "And just what is that?" You know?" "She said "Well, it's, it's a painting, and this guy's, like, real famous... and it's probably worth a couple of million bucks." You know?" "The money is really..." "I don't know..." " We never..." " It's just that we've never really..." " Money's never really been the issue." " Yeah." "It's... no..." "It's a validation of it." "It's a validation of her." "With people telling her "You're out of your mind."" "With everybody saying "Because you don't have any money."" "You know? "You crazy old bitch, you got no money."" "Give me a break." "Tell these people in this art world... if they wanna see a Pollock... buy the fricking painting and leave us the hell alone!" "What Teri got instead was a collection of insults... which rubbed her the wrong way." "But she has no right to be bitter because what she has is no good." "So why should she care?" "She's not bitter about that." "I mean, she, she would respectfully disagree with you." "Yeah, but she knows nothing." "So, why does it matter to me?" "I'm an expert." "She's not." "Finally, one guy took enough time." "He, it wasn't that he felt sorry." "But I think he was playing, having fun with me." "I know now he was." "And I thought he was serious." "And he told me I had to have a provenance." "And I asked him "What is that?" "What is a provenance?" I couldn't even hardly say it." "I used to, I'd say "praivenance" or "pru..." whatever." "It'd never come out the way it's supposed to." "He said " This is the history of where the painting has been... and who has owned it before."" "And I said "What if nobody else has owned it before?"" "He said "Somebody owned it before... because there are just not Jackson Pollock paintings floating around." "You have to have this."" "Ron Spencer, a New York art lawyer... explains why provenance is so crucial." "Provenance insulates a gallery from liability." "If you can trace the possession of the work... from the artist to the present owner... that is strong evidence that the artist created the work." "Thus... the "Mona Lisa"... it came, was bought by, it was Francis the First... in 1500... 1508 or so... directly from the artist." "And it's... you can trace it from the artist... right up to the point that it's in the Louvre." "Jeffrey Bergen is an art dealer who owns a gallery in New York." "Bergen won't go near a work of art... unless its provenance is nailed down." "We all came from somewhere." "We have to trace back, you have to go back to Mama." "Same thing with a painting." "Unless you can document that ownership and go back to Mama... you've got a problem." "Suppose you can't?" "You got a problem." "The only documentation Teri had is this... a bill of sale from Dot's Spot Thrift in San Bernardino, California." "With Dot now gone and her thrift shop now defunct..." "Teri couldn't find out where it had come from." "In other words, as every dealer was telling her... she had a problem." "First of all, they couldn't believe... how come I got a hold of this painting to begin with." "And they weren't buying the thrift store deal." "So I had to tell 'em somethin'." "What she dreamed up was a story so outlandish, so bizarre... it could have been the script for a bad "B" movie." "Teri claimed she got the painting from an elderly bartender named Pops... who had been given it by his friend, Jackson Pollock, back in the 1940's." "When Teri met Pops, he was down on his luck." "He'd get really drunk and slobbering, you know?" "Kind of crying over missing Jackson and all of this stuff." "And he would tell me these kind of risqué stories, you know?" "And they were really funny, some of 'em were." "And I thought "Wow," I said, "this is some relationship." "I should have known who this guy was."" "But, of course, he was much older than I was." "Her story was that Pops owned a bar in Mount Baldy, California... which movie stars of the 40's used to frequent." "And it snowed big time, and they could not get out." "And Jackson always kept paints with him... wherever he was, spending time at." "So since they couldn't get out... he come up with the idea that they should all paint a picture." " All of these movie stars?" " Right." "They were all there..." "Cagney, Bogey, Gable, Davis and the Duke... all painting away." "Tough guy Broderick Crawford would only paint in the nude." "Stand by." "I'll be right over there." "Harris, you get that transmission?" "He wouldn't do it unless he could get naked." "And he did." "Joan Crawford was there, too." "She was noisy, and she was bothering everybody... 'cause she was up at the bar... and trying to watch Pollock, and he didn't want anybody watching him." "And so he always made it a point that you couldn't get rid of Joan Crawford." "She was such a bitch when you were trying to paint." "Get out, Vita." "Get your things out of this house right now... before I throw them into the street and you with them." "Get out before I kill you." "You know, I always thought she was a great actress, you know?" "But so what?" "But Pops thought she was a bitch 'cause she kept wanting to interfere... and tell him how to do the painting... and he didn't want anybody in there watching him." "So anyway, when it was all done and everybody come around... with their paintings and everything to show each other... why, Jackson's painting was all on this mirror behind the bar." "And they were all talking about it." "And all of a sudden he said..." ""Wait a minute." He said "I'm not finished yet."" "So he got up on the bar and signed it with his dick." "His name." "And Pops would laugh." "He would think that was so funny." "And it embarrassed me, but that's what he said they would do." "Teri, this is just shameful." "I mean, it is shameful." "I know it." "Where did you?" "Where did you get this story?" "Where did it come from?" " Where did it come from?" " Yes." "I made it up." "Although it's hard to believe, some dealers actually fell for it." "Had they not believed it..." "I'm sure someone of 'em would have wrote back or something... said " This provenance is bullshit." "I mean, who you trying to kid?" Nobody ever did." "Nobody." "And then when the dealer told me that he knew who Pops was... well, I thought, "Well, shit, I'm in like Flynn."" "But then I had to tell the truth." "In the art world, being "in like Flynn" means... convincing the International Foundation for Art Research, IFAR for short... that Teri's painting was authentic." "And IFAR wasn't about to do that." "In describing it... one of their experts wrote that the splatter pattern in beige or white..." "looks intentional, like an overlay... whereas there should be more of an intermingling of paint." "When Pollock made these little spots and things on his canvases... he wanted them to look like they're just... that's what he totally intended to do... was, like take a brush and hold it back, and just let it go and let it fly." "That's intentional, you bet." "Well, why would they say it's not supposed to look intentional... if that's what he intended to do?" "That don't make any sense at all to me." "But these are experts, Teri." "They're experts." "I'll put myself up against any one of 'em, any day." "But that's hard to do if you don't know who they are." "IFAR's report ruled that Teri's painting... was "not by the hand of Jackson Pollock"." "But the report is unsigned... and the identity of the experts is not revealed." "It seems to me fundamental to decision-making... where people's rights are getting decided upon... that you know who the decision-maker is." "And I have made my position clear with IFAR... namely, that if you can't get a group together... without disclosing who they are... they get out of that business." "It's been a struggle all the way... because I'm bucking people that are college graduates, that are... entrepreneurs... that are all these things that I've never been... or didn't even know what they, what the words meant." "It's something to be proud of." "Who's this, the Hortons?" "Yeah." "That was out in front of the farm." " Which one of these is you?" "The oldest?" " Right." "That the art world has not eaten Teri alive is testimony to her past... which her son knew little about until now." "It was right in the heart of the Ozarks, in Missouri." "When I left at 18, they still had no modern conveniences." "No electricity." "No running water." "We lived by coal oil lamps and wood stoves." "I look back now, and it was tough." "I worked the farm with my dad." "I'd like to have a penny for every furrow..." "I ever walked in behind a team 'a horses plowing." "The first guy I ever dated, I married." "He was Bill's dad." "She was eighteen." "Three years later, the marriage ended." "To make a long story short, he had took the children." "He met somebody else, is what it was." "They were gone, lock, stock and barrel." "It's Grandma!" "Teri's had to live most of her life apart... from this recently discovered family." "A son who tracked her down just seven years ago." "Grandkids she didn't even know she had." "He played his first game in Triple A, okay?" "He strikes out the last six batters, they maintain a seven to six score... he gets... the game ball." " The dugout emptied..." " When's he gonna go pro?" "And they mobbed him on the field." "Is that right?" "Gimme five." "Give me ten." "I don't have ten on me." "No, I'm not talking money." "I'm just talking fingers." "Teri's newly-found family... had been her only respite from ten years of taking on the art world... which had got her nowhere." "So she decided to try something radically new." "On the internet, Teri located Peter Paul Biro... a forensic scientist and art authenticator from Montreal... who uses techniques straight from "CSl"." "I've done this kind of investigation at the Tate Gallery... at the Metropolitan Museum in New York... at the National Gallery in Washington... at the Palazzo Pitti... at The National Gallery in London... the Ashmolean Museum... and many, many others." "I look at a painting almost like a crime scene." "But not who committed a murder." "I'm looking for who committed the art, and under what circumstances." "What did he use?" "How did he use it?" "How is this typical or characteristic or uncharacteristic... to the painter we theorized created that work?" "Here at the Tate Gallery in London... he is gathering forensic evidence on famed British painter J.M. W. Turner." "I found a number of years ago... that J.M. W. Turner was fond of using his fingertips when he painted." "The fingerprint would be left in the paint, it dries... and it's recorded for as long as the work of art lasts." "If these works did not go directly into a museum... you would find them in little antique stores and garage sales here and there." "How would you know they are Turners?" "They're not signed." "But the fingerprints are there." "This painting was worth next to nothing until Biro found a fingerprint... and matched it to one of Turner's he found at the Tate." "What could a painting like this sell for?" "Millions." "I suspect ten, fifteen million dollars." "By this time, Bill Page knew the potential worth of his mom's painting." "So he hired Biro and flew him out to California... hoping against hope that the scientist would find something... anything, that could authenticate it." "He stayed in a little hotel here on Laguna Beach." "He showed up in this room." "We had the painting laid out on a table, with some lights... actually shop lights." "And he spent two days in this office... poring over this painting with microscopes... and high-powered photographic equipment and... and tweezers, and whatever." "It was a pretty impressive display." "What went through my head was..." ""It's fine that it looks like a Pollock." "I believe it's a Pollock." "But how am I gonna prove it?"" "I photographed the painting in many details." "I started taking paint samples." "Then I turned the canvas around and... right there, on the back of the canvas... is what appears to be a fairly clear fingerprint." "Now that he had a usable print to work from..." "Biro needed a print to compare it with." "And there the problems began." "Jackson Pollock was never in the Army... was never charged with a crime... never, in fact did anything that caused him to be fingerprinted." "So Biro began to search through art catalogues... for high-quality reproductions of Pollock's work... hoping to spot a fingerprint." "Finally, on a privately-owned Pollock painting in Berlin... he found an apparent match to the fingerprint... on the back of Teri's canvas." "I know this one painting reproduced... that seemed to have had a fingerprint on it." "But it was a that was a snack." "And one that I didn't like... in that the fingerprint on the Berlin painting... was somewhat larger than the one on the back of Teri Horton's painting." "Biro, who couldn't justify the discrepancy in size... was at a temporary dead end." "Not so for Bill Page." "An art dealer he knew had found a buyer for Teri's painting." "The buyer, who did not want his identity disclosed... was offering two million dollars, no questions asked." "I presented it to her." "I felt it was a real deal." "Her answer was " I ain't selling that painting for two million dollars... so don't even try and talk me into it."" "Teri." "Five dollar investment... becomes two million dollars?" " That's, that's real money." " Is it really?" "Not when you're sitting on principle." "It was principle that I'd not sell it for two million dollars." "I said " Ma, take a couple million dollars."" "I said "You don't realize how much that's gonna be worth." "You're 73 years old and you can make a hundred grand a year... never touch the principal and then... when you pass on, each of us kids will get another quarter of a million."" "You know, I'm trying to give her some business advice." "It just never worked." "So she's just not gonna take it." "I know damn well what his work is worth." "And I wouldn't do it." "Teri's conviction comes from a lifetime of hunting treasures." "Virtually everything in her home has been discarded by someone else... and left in a dumpster, where Teri salvaged it." "Some of it's junk, some of it's useful." "And some of it is of real value." "This one here, I used to get all new sheets and stuff out of it all the time." "It belonged to a department store, that's around front." "And I have no idea what's in it now." "She's come up with some pretty amazing things." "Computers, fax machines, telephones... electronics, toaster ovens, toasters, blenders, coffee pots..." "And I found some of the nicest expensive shirts for Mikey." "And Mikey at that time was about three." "Brand new shirts, in the package." "In the seven years I've been around her, I think she's been on time once." "She goes by some store... and she was at that store a week ago and she found something." "So she pulls behind it, and she winds up spending 20 minutes... going through a dumpster." "And that's, you know, that's what she does." "He said " Mom, I don't want you..." "I don't want you bringing me stuff home for the kids from the dumpster any more." ""I said "Why?"" "He said "I don't want my kid..."" "They're going to preschool, kind of a fancy preschool." "And he said " Because I don't want my kids going into the school... and somebody compliments him on what a nice shirt he's got on... and he says "Yeah, my grandma got it out of the dumpster."" "He said "I don't want that at all." And I said "Okay."" "The biggest find, short of her painting, was this watch." "I took it down to get a battery... and the guy at the jewelry store said the battery was eighty-five dollars." "And I said "Eighty-five dollars?"" "I said " The watch isn't worth eighty-five dollars, is it?"" "He said " Oh, yeah." "Those are real diamonds." "That's an Ebel." "It's probably worth 2,000 to 2,500 dollars."" "All these things that she found." "I tried to tell her, "Sell it." "Pay your own rent for a couple of months."" "But so far she hasn't sold any of them that I know of." "Even with Paul Biro in the picture..." "Teri's prospects of selling her painting were growing dim." "Her son had run out of money, and Biro was about to abandon the project." "Then the solution to Biro's problem became clear." "On his own, he traveled to the small Long Island town... of East Hampton." "The best way, really the only viable way to interpret evidence... is through its relationship to its environment." "This is plain, old-fashioned forensic approach." "Pollock's studio is basically a 20- foot-square barn." "It is like an undisturbed gravesite." "I approached it as an archaeological site." "I was looking for anything that could link..." "Teri's painting to the studio." "The whole floor is covered with paint... the overshot flings of his creative process... where he painted his drip paintings." "What can I find in the paint?" "I was examining the floor, taking paint samples with a scalpel." "I was looking for fingerprints on the floor as well." "About a dozen paint cans that Pollock used for painting... are exhibited in a showcase." "I have found some of those with the same paint brush in it... on photographs dating back to 1950... when Pollock actually physically worked there." "I examined all of them." "I was looking at a fingerprint on a blue paint can." "By this time, I had memorized Teri's painting's fingerprint." "I felt this could be it." "This could be the end of the search." "Was Biro right?" "It would be several months and a battery of tests... before he'd know for sure." "One of the problems in working with this fingerprint was that... the printing on the label of the paint can comes through it." "I wanted to remove the bright end of the dark bands... so that the fingerprint ridge characteristics... can be seen more easily." "Fortunately, through digital image processing... the background could be extracted." "I also adjusted contrast, brightness... and gamma... so as to display... the ridge characteristics... with the greatest clarity." "Through this kind of methodology..." "I was able to see... that there was a perfect match... between the fingerprint on the back of Teri's canvas... and the blue paint can from the Pollock-Krasner house." "To verify his results..." "Biro enlisted the services of Sergeant Andre Turcotte... a fingerprint expert who, for fifteen years... was in charge of the Montreal crime lab... of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police." " What do you think?" " It's good." " Perfect match." " I think it's about the best I can do." "Turcotte demonstrated that the branches of the ridgelines... called bifurcations are the same on both prints." "We have a first bifurcation out here." "The same bifurcation, the first one, out here." "A second bifurcation out here." "The second one out here." "And the third bifurcation here." "And here." "An examination like this, it's easy to see that it's a real match." " You're sure?" " I'm sure." "On the left is the fingerprint from the back of Teri's painting." "On the right is the print from the can of paint in Jackson Pollock's studio." "The bifurcations described by Andre Turcotte are outlined in yellow." "And when the two prints are brought together... it is apparent they are one and the same." "Scientists are very interesting." "But... they come after the..." "the true connoisseurs." "The fingerprints, all that stuff, is kind of that lovely "What if?"" "But it's not essential to the heart... and the artistic soul of that thing." "And that has no Pollock soul or heart." "If this gentleman, in some rage, butchered his wife... and was taken to court... and the bloody knife was produced as evidence... and put in front of the judge, what would this gentleman say?" ""I don't recognize the fingerprint?"" "He'd be booted out of court." "You think anyone would care... that he doesn't recognize the fingerprint?" "It's not like you're talking about a painting for ten thousand dollars." "You're talking about a painting for twenty, thirty million dollars." "You know, you're talking real money." "You know, that's..." "If you make a mistake with that kind of money... you know, some businesses will be out of business." "Is it worth it?" "I don't know." "Not, not to me." "The art world doesn't understand fingerprints... any more than it understands DNA." "So you're asking them to take what they don't understand." "You say "Is, is there a match?" I don't know what a match means." "They don't know what a match means." "Does a match mean... there could be 50 other people out there with that fingerprint?" "I don't know." "And also it's partial... which would not stand up necessarily in court." "So it's one of these fantasies... build on dreams, very easy to build on dreams." "Well, I've talked to..." "That could be the guy that cleaned out his room... the paint can out in East Hampton." " There's no index, so..." " That also painted the painting?" "Who knows?" "If you can send somebody to the electric chair on fingerprints... and test the blood on their clothes, DNA and all this other stuff... why in the hell can't you do it on a piece of art?" "Well, the art world and the justice system... are kinda two different worlds." "Two different worlds for sure... because more scientific evidence was accumulating... that Teri's painting did come from Pollock's studio." "I did collect a match... that was embedded in paint from the Pollock studio floor." "When you look at the underside of this match... under the microscope... what you find is a large particle of gold paint." "We know that Pollock used to spray paint." "And when you do that... these very tiny, microscopic airborne particles can travel." "And it will deposit on the walls, on the floor, ceiling... whatever objects are inside that studio." "So I started to look at samples from Teri's painting... very closely under the microscope." "This is about 400 times magnification on Teri's painting." "On the surface, you can see many, many gold particles." "It's just covered with gold spray paint." "This was for me a very important link... because materially... now the painting can be related meaningfully... to the contents of the studio." "Biro says a further link was the presence of acrylic... in the paint on Teri's canvas." "Not so, says Ron Spencer." "If you found a painting with acrylic paints... you'd know it wasn't by Pollock... because acrylic paints didn't come into use... general use, until after Pollock died in 1956." "So you know that that painting is not a Pollock." "But when British scientist Nicholas Eastaugh... a colleague of Biro's... compared the paint on Teri's canvas with the paint on Pollock's floor... he found the same chemical component in both." "The conclusion has to be that there is acrylic, both in Teri's painting... but also in drips on Pollock's studio floor... that can be tied to his drip paintings." "Meaning that for all these years, the experts have been wrong?" "In this instance, yes." "Forensic science is fascinating... in the role that it's... you know, beginning to play." "But in and of itself, I think it's not enough." "We have to have scholarship... as well as forensics." "There's no question that this thing is not a Jackson Pollock." "And every topnotch person you're ever gonna talk to will say the same." "And if this thing is gonna be marketed in any way... that there's a chance that it really is real... that's dangerously tipping on fraud." "Connoisseurship... is how the art market, how the art world... decides on authenticity." "There has to be a consensus behind the painting... by quote, unquote, "experts" or else... you could end up in a pile of problem." "I wanted nothing more to do with the art world." "None." "I knew they were not going to authenticate it." "I don't care if I went to IFAR or whoever I went to." "Nobody was going to authenticate this painting." "I knew that." "By what I'd already studied, there just was no way they were gonna do it." "So Teri went back to her home, in the trailer park." "She'd overcome much in life... mostly through grit." "But now she was running on empty." "A decade of being ignored by the art world... had left her with no place to turn." "Then suddenly, one appeared." "I was in a bookstore one evening." "I have never paid twenty-five dollars for a hard copy book in my life." "But I was running my hand down the row of books and... by the time I got to the door, I realized I had a book in my hand." "It was called "Framed" and it was about an art dealer who tells all." "When Teri read the book... she realized that its author might be the key to her predicament... even though he wrote it while serving two years in prison for fraud." "Nonetheless, Tod Volpe was smooth." "He was connected." "And he was completely at home in the art world." "I was the center of the American art world... in New York for ten years." "My first relationship was with Jack Nicholson." "He started buying and selling art." "Eventually, I became his dealer." "That was the road to Jack Nicholson's house..." "Mulholland Drive." "He's lived there since the 1950's." "Joel Silver and I became very close friends." "He brought me to Hollywood... introduced me to a lot of very important people in the art world." "People like Terry Semel and Bob Daly and Bruce Willis." "And I ended up selling art to all these people." "My life was wonderful." "The pinnacle of my life." "This is the beginning of Castillian Drive... if you can see it up there." "I saw this Buddhist mansion on a big rock... overlooking the whole city of L.A." "All the movie stars coming up there." "My mother sitting there saying "Y ou really made it."" "I walked in there and I just closed my eyes and said "I'm doing it."" "I didn't even think about the money, and what it would mean to do what I did." "Then, as Teri read in Volpe's book... when the bottom fell out of the art market... his ability to make a living went south." "To keep afloat, Volpe, among other things... sold various works of art his clients had paid for... but not received." "And pocketed the proceeds." "By the time it was over... he had relieved his clients of over 2.5 million dollars... including 600 thousand from Jack Nicholson." "Although Nicholson forgave the debt, the government did not." "One morning, 6 o'clock, the helicopters are all over the roof of my house... there's bullet-proof vest guys running all over around me with machine guns." "I'm saying "What the hell is going on here?"" "I thought I was in a movie." "I thought I was in one of Joel Silver's movies." "And I..." "Guy knocks on the door." "I look out... and there's a crowd of FBI agents all outside on the lawn." "And I said "What are you here for?" And he said "Tod Volpe?"" "I said "Yes." He said "We have a warrant for your arrest."" "They pulled me into a car and said "What do you know about Jack Nicholson?" "What do you know about Joel Silver?" "What do you know about this person?"" "You know, "What do you know..."" "and I said "What are you asking me these questions for?" "I don't know."He said" Because tomorrow morning your name is gonna be... on the cover of every magazine and newspaper in the country."" "He said "You're famous."" "I said "For what?" He said "For frauding people."" "Two minutes before I was ready to go into a courtroom... they offered me a plea agreement, and I went to jail for two years." "You'd read his book." "He did some prison time." " Right." " For fraud." "Right." "This is a guy that you want to represent your painting?" "That didn't bother me." "The fact that he... had went to prison for fraud... because by this time..." "I know the whole art world is a bumbled freffing fraud." "So why would one person that got caught... deter me from following up on it?" "So Teri phoned Volpe... and asked him to represent the sale of her painting." "Volpe agreed, believing it was a chance to become a player again... in the world he had been forced to leave." "For the first time, Teri had someone on her side... who understood the art world..." "and all of its nuances." "I always saw the art world as a kind of "Through-the-Looking-Glass" experience." "Kind of "Alice in Wonderland"." "A lot of illusion." "Costumes... disguises... people who were masquerading." "There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in the art world." "Money is no object." "It's big business." "Creating opportunities for hedge fund managers." "High leveraging of art deals." "It's all about money." "It's power and it's also about greed." "You have to be very clever... very skillful... have enormous understandings of financing... art history, business." "The art world is not what it was twenty years ago." "It's a dog-eat-dog shark tank business... where we would've seen Teri Horton as a peasant." "So Volpe began his sales campaign by doing what Teri couldn't... approaching the art world's royalty." "We offered the painting to Steven Wynn, Ken Wynn..." "Bill Gates, David Geffen." "Lots of different people." "And the answer was always the same." ""Until you get authenticity on the picture... until you get the art world to say it's okay, we're not interested."" "Volpe then went to plan B... raising the money to buy Teri's painting... through the sale of shares in the Legends Art Group... which would use Paul Biro's forensic skills... to authenticate other masterpieces of dubious origin... which, like Teri's, would later be sold for profit." "Just one stumbling block remained before the new concept could be put in play." "As much as I love Teri, we have to take her out of the mix." "We have to take her out of the mix." "This painting has to get into other hands." "I've fought with her about that." "I told her "You have to let go of this picture."" "It was very hard for her to do that... because she believed her whole life was wrapped up in this painting." "But it's, if it's gonna sell, you have to turn this... into a business proposition." "So Teri has been brought in to meet her new business partners." " Hi, how are you?" " It's nice to meet you." "It's nice to meet you." "Mitch Kemper is the spokesman for the group." "But Volpe is worried that she won't buy their new approach." "As you know, we formed a company, the Legends Art Group." "A lot of the members are here today." "Teri's a complicated character, like Jackson Pollock." "She's very self-destructive on a certain level." "I love Teri Horton, but I think she's her own worst enemy." "Just view me as the person selling the picture." "And they're my tools." "She identifies with my cleverness... and ability to pull something like this off." "But she's like a drowning person." "She will pull you down because she's afraid... that she's not gonna get her dream." "We wanted you to have a sense of how seriously we're taking this project..." " Okay." " And trying to achieve the goals." "We're hoping to do it by June 1st." "And if not?" "If it's within that framework..." " we'll be very pleased." " So it could go further then?" "It might be." " I wouldn't make a promise of June 1st." " That's an honest answer, I mean..." "I think it's all great." "I think you guys are doing a wonderful job and all that... but I could care less." "I'm burned out." " Can ya understand that?" " Oh, absolutely." "Do you feel any more comfort in knowing..." " No." " The plan." " Well, that we are sincerely working..." " No." "I believe that." "I knew you were sincere to begin with." "But how you sell it... doesn't matter to me." "I don't care how you sell it." "I know that" " Just sell it." " I know." "What we're trying to do..." "Volpe's first potential investor... a well-heeled actress-turned-writer named Adrienne Rogers." "Whether we do it with a group of people... each person putting in a little bit of money... or one person." "As soon as this painting is purchased, it makes worldwide news... and it's automatically a win." " We can't lose." " Right." "The money will make it win." "But while it sits here with no money attached to it... it's like an orphan without a home." "It's like Heathcliffe in "Wuthering Heights"." "He couldn't get his inheritance until he had a title." "He had, as soon as he gets a title, he wins." "You know what I'm saying?" " I do." " I mean, this is the truth." "Good seeing you." "Rogers buys in for a hundred thousand dollars." "Helpful to be sure... but chump change compared to what Volpe promised Teri she'd receive." "How much is Teri getting for her painting?" "Twenty-five million dollars." "Tod could sell snow to Eskimos, you know." "He's a very persuasive person." "You know, he might find somebody." "I'm not discounting that." "Neither would this man." "For twenty-five years, Pelegrino Lopez has been a mover at the warehouse... where Teri's painting is stored." "He knows that since big money entered the art world... anything is possible." "It went crazy in the 80's... when the Japanese started buying art." "'Cause when I started..." "I believe the guy's name was Nagashima, he bought a Mark Rothko painting." "And I think he had set the price... for the first one to be in the upper millions." "And this guy had a shopping bag full of money." "And the bag tipped over, and the rolls are just rolling on the floor." "I'm talking rolls like this." "And I was like "Ooh, look at that."" "And to me, they kind of, like, set things and... kind of screwed up the art market, I think." "Because now everything's worth something, and... some paintings aren't worth what people are asking." "Whether he can achieve a 25 million dollar price point... solely on the basis of a fingerprint... you know, remains to be seen." "Twenty-five million dollars?" "I don't have it, but sure, why not?" "If you can get it... more power to you." "Does she deserve it?" "I dunno." "A little luck?" "It's like playing the lottery." "Volpe and his business partners... are hoping that their number will come up on Wall Street... even if the offering is shares in a painting... with a twenty-five million dollar price tag." "Here we go." "When I first saw this painting... when Teri Horton pulled it off the back of her truck..." "I did not believe that this painting could be real." "Today they are pitching Bear Stearns, investment professional Rick Ciraco... who brought along his wife to help size up the painting." "Since this is the first time I've seen the painting, it really is... it's quite amazing." "It's almost hallucinatory, in a way." " It is." " But he hasn't signed it, correct?" "It isn't signed and there isn't provenance." "But we believe there's something even greater." "There is a fingerprint on the back of this picture... discovered by one of the world's leading forensic scientists." "I would like you to see the print." "It's really important." "This is the print that Paul Biro found a triple match on." "He found a match on a paint can in Jackson Pollock's studio." "He found a match on a surface of a painting in Berlin." "He was allowed to go to the studio?" " Yes." " And..." "So there's a grid being created here... which is why we believe there's such a great investment potential here." "It is sensible, the way you're explaining it." "But to go back to investors... without documentation, without a signature... you really need, I think, a unique person." "Or unique company... that's willing to, you know, put 25 million dollars out... you know, on a fingerprint." "Why isn't this as good a signature as one that's on the front?" "Wall Street is very old school... and, you know, without a... without a signature, even if it may be a false one... without a document... indicating that it was sold from one dealer to another... without some sort of authentic, authentication... which is what really Wall Street..." " bases its reputation on..." " Paper." "To a certain degree..." "Paper." "Whether you're buy..." "If you buy a bond, you have a piece of paper." "If you buy a stock, you have a piece of paper." "If you want to buy a work of art, they want a piece of paper." "Volpe finds these requests for documentation frustrating... since he knows how easy it is to get around them." "I would always say "Look, you know... this painting came out of Jack Nicholson's collection."" "When I was buying and selling for Jack, I was using our investment group." "I would say "Jack owned this painting."" "The truth is, it never even hit his hands." "Even Thomas Hoving agrees that a paper trail of ownership can be meaningless." "Sure." "It's faked all the time." "Particularly with antiquities... because you find a gorgeous thing in Turkey... a Roman 2nd century A.D. Sculpture... the size of this room... and the provenance is a private collection by Lord So-and-so... who got it on the grand tour in the 18th century." "Don't you remember?" "And it came from So-and-so House, the stately home in England."" "Sure." "It's done all the time." "You can fake provenances, but... you can check provenances." "What's more, Ben Heller is sure that every important Pollock... has been accounted for." "As the prices have gotten so high... any Pollock that might have surfaced, it seems to me, would have surfaced." "But after Heller's interview, thirty-two possible Pollock's... none of which are accepted as authentic by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation... were discovered in the garage of a friend of Pollock's... almost fifty years after Pollock's death." "They're finding Picassos at flea markets." "They're finding the Declarations of Independence... hidden behind prints in other frames." "The "Antiques Roadshow..."" "is one of the most popular television shows in America... because it proves that there's treasures everywhere that are on earth." "For example, art dealer Allan Stone... acquired a Jackson Pollock that was in a garbage dump." "It all began when Stone got a call from a man about a painting." "But when Stone arrived, he saw this sign." "I said " I'm not really interested in signs, you know."" "So then he said " No, but you'll probably be interested in this."" "And then, then we took, he took this... flipped it around like so... and he said..." ""This is a beautiful Jackson Pollock painting."" "And I said "Yeah, it looks pretty good."" "So I bought it... and the first thing I did was to show it to Clement Greenberg... who was the authority on Pollock." "And Greenberg said "It's absolutely Jackson Pollock."" "He obviously had some problems in here." "But he said "That's real."" "Stone learned that the painting was fished out of the East Hampton dump... by a car dealer." "He used the back of it to advertise his wares." "Everybody knew that Pollock dumped a lot of his unsuccessful things... in the dump in East Hampton." "You know, in those days, they weren't worth anything really." "You know?" "Allan Stone sold his Pollock to the American Broadcasting Company... which has it in its permanent collection." "But Teri's painting hasn't had the same success." "In order for it to join the pantheon of other Pollock's... like these in New York's Museum of Modern Art... the experts need to be convinced... that it has the right style... the right technique, the right stuff." "That it's the real thing, and not a clever knock-off." "But experts can be mistaken." "Take the case of the Andy Warhol soup can." "I bought a solid bronze Campbell Soup can... when Warhol was just, you know, emerging." "And... not too long ago, we showed it to the Warhol Committee... they said " Oh, it's an absolute fake." "It's not right."" "It's signed on the bottom with, you know, with his signature." "And I constantly run into this issue with so-called experts." "I mean, they don't seem to really... know their stuff." "I challenge them to prove that it's not a Jackson Pollock." "Everybody's saying "Prove that it is." I'm saying "Prove that it isn't."" "That's a proposition we put to Nick Carone... who knows Pollock's work better than most." "There's certain areas in the picture... that I question." "I can't say whether it was cut down from another larger piece... or it was painted on that particular rectangle." "I would say technically, it's just like he painted." "You know?" "And it would be questionable, you know..." "It could, could be and it could not be." "I can't be certain about that." "One of the reasons that Carone may be on the fence... is that there were Pollock imitators by the dozens." "Even during the period in East Hampton, there were guys painting like him." "Nobodies." "But they were talented guys, you know, never amounted to anything." "But they painted just like that." "So could Teri's picture have been painted by one of those Pollock imitators?" "Who..." "I ask... worked as an imitator in Jackson Pollock's studio... had access to his painting materials... and was generally allowed into the studio during the time of about... 1948, '49, 1950?" "Painted like Pollock?" "Because the picture does look like a Pollock." "Who was this person?" "I ask this question now." "There was nobody." "He had no assistants." "He hardly allowed his wife into his studio." "It is documented that he worked alone." "So to bring this kind of a... a ghost into the picture... and say that this was an imitator..." "Well, did Jackson Pollock allow somebody who painted exactly like him... to work in his studio?" "Who is this person?" "Where is this person?" "Deep in the English countryside lives one man with the credentials... to do what Biro says never happened." "John Myatt is the most accomplished forger of recent times." "He still paints fakes for a living... but now he's labeling them like this Picasso... as not the real thing." "There's different words for what this is:" "Pastiche or homage, or... or... yeah, I can't think of any others." "Certainly not fake." "Well, yes, fake would do, as a matter of fact." "Except, of course, in this case... as you can see from behind me..." "I'm using ordinary house emulsion... from..." "I bought around about 2004... which any forensic analysis would certainly reveal... was not oil paint from 1911." "Myatt does not limit his knock-offs to Picasso." "Raoul Dufy, 1938." "Not an exact copy, but very much in his style." "Claude Monet." ""Morning on the Seine." He did a series of these." "Vincent Van Gogh." "And Alberto Giacometti, 1953." "So successful were Myatt's forgeries... that Christie's Auction House in London... sold them for exorbitant prices." "Myatt eventually confessed and went to prison for his fakes... none of which were Jackson Pollock's." "There's a reason for that." "He had a considerable alcohol problem... so if I were starting that, for instance, I would get drunk first." "That's how I'd start." "I don't think you could be sober and do one." "That's just one of the pitfalls." "And there's hundreds of them." "The right kind of paint, the right kind of brush... the right kind of speed of the throw." "The right kind of dynamic in the way the painting moves." "All of that... it's just so much to think about." " Too much." " Too much to think about." "I mean, it could be done." "But it wouldn't be a good fake." "It wouldn't be a good..." "to use your word, forgery." "It just wouldn't be." "Would you like to have a look at the painting in question?" "Yes." "There you go." "That looks good to me." "It's lovely, isn't it?" "Could you do this?" "No." "Lf, as Myatt suspects Teri's painting is authentic... then how did it get from Pollock's studio to a thrift shop in California?" "Pollock was an absolute madman." "I mean, he'd give pictures away to anybody." "If you were in his studio one night and you were drunk... he was drunk... and you said " Hey, you know, can I have that?" He'd say " Take it home."" "He'd give it for food." "He'd give it for airplane rides to go visit his mother." "I mean, who's to say what ended up where?" "Is Volpe right?" "Ben Heller doesn't think so." "You have works in a studio." "You put things in storage." "You do have records." "And... you have had a widow... who was assiduous... in protecting and... doing everything proper about the estate." "Was Pollock's widow, Lee Krasner, all that careful?" "According to accountant Jay Goldberg... who tracked the inventory of paintings, she was not." "I was concerned with her ability to remember... where all the paintings might have gone." "She was getting old." "She was forgetting certain things." "She would sit in front of me, and I was very concerned, as her advisor... as to her ability to follow the inventory... which I knew was very valuable." "Is it possible then, that a painting this size, in your opinion... could have somehow left the studio unbeknownst to her?" "I absolutely believe it could leave the studio unbeknownst to her." "Yes." "If keeping a proper inventory was difficult for Krasner... it may have been impossible for Pollock." "He was, don't forget, under psychiatric treatment." "He was a sick guy... psychologically under observation." "He was an alcoholic." "Deep alcohol... alcoholic." "He was, since he was seventeen years old." "Eventually, Pollock's despair led to his death." "He died in an automobile accident in East Hampton... after friends said he didn't want to live any more." "At one point in her life, neither did Teri." "Although she'd reunited with her son, Bill... and had always been close to another son, Joe... a horse trainer and aspiring country and western singer... it was the death of her daughter Corey... that tested Teri's will to survive." "We lived in a mobile home park there just right behind the VFW." "Yeah, we were real close." "And it wasn't until after I lost her... that I found out from some of her friends... they told me that they're always kinda... had one little bit of jealousy about Corey." "And I said "Why?"" "And what they're jealous of was because Corey used to tell 'em... that her mom was her best friend." "Yeah, we were close." "When Corey died from heart failure at the age of nineteen... a day after scuba diving..." "Teri fell apart." "Liquor made it worse." "After I got about three sheets to the wind..." "I just decided..." "I thought..." "I should commit suicide." "It never had entered my mind before, nor since." "So I had my, got the bartender to fill me up a brandy and water... and you could look out the bar, and look right out to the ocean." "And I proceeded to walk out into the ocean." "Colder than hell." "And I got my brandy and water up in the air... and I'm going out in this water... and I'm sobbing." "And all of a sudden it dawned on me..." "I had these brand new Tony Lama boots on... and they're not cheap." "And I decided I couldn't drown with these boots on." "So I went back up on the shore, sat down, and I took my boots off... dumped the water out of 'em, and left 'em on the beach... for a beachcomber or somebody to get." "Back out into the water I went." "And the water got up to about my bustline... and I still got my drink up here." "No way am I gonna let that salt water get into it." "And I finally said "Corey, I cannot do this." "There's just no way I'm gonna waste this drink." "And besides that, the water is too damn cold."" "So I just turned around and went back up to the beach and sat down there... and quit my crying and gathered up my boots... and went back into the bar and ordered another drink." "And I drank that and went back to my room." "And that was the one and only time I ever tried to kill myself." "When she started talking about the Pollock painting..." "I saw a spark that was gone for a few years in Teri." "You know?" "Because her health was so bad." "And this woman has been up a hill." "I was so glad to see that spark back." "'Cause that's what the Pollock did... in my opinion." "My personal feeling..." " is what Pollock did for her." " Oh, yeah." "She might have brought this Pollock to life... but this Pollock gave life to Teri, too." "Not too many people would have fought it like she has." "You gotta give her credit." "She just, she has never stopped from day one on this." "You know?" "She still, to this day..." "I think she lives, breathes, and eats this project." "That she's going to get her day in court, so to speak." "This is an all or nothing game... because you're dealing with something that's so exquisitely expensive... and so incredibly important, if it were real... that you don't have much option, there's no middle ground." "Ben Heller is one of half a dozen experts in the world... whose opinion can make or break a Pollock." "What did he think of Teri's painting?" "I'm looking for the cracks in the, in the paint." "And the way the... paint is applied." "That is, the layering of one color on top of another on top of another... makes me uncomfortable." "This stuff just doesn't look like a Pollock." "It doesn't feel like a Pollock." "Doesn't sing like a Pollock." "Doesn't feel like a Pollock." "I mean, I think there's just not a question in my mind." "I don't have a doubt... that... this is wrong." "Then Heller suggested a way to show the difference... between the real thing and Teri's painting." "You know, if you wanna do this thing right... you gotta go in front of other Pollock's... and take close-ups of this thing and close-ups of those... and you'll see why, the why and the wherefore." "While the Pollock-Krasner Foundation rejects Ben Heller's idea... as a method of evaluating Teri's painting..." "Paul Biro took up the challenge." "Biro put it next to an undisputed Jackson Pollock... worth more than fifty million dollars." "On the left-hand side of this screen, we see... a detail from Teri Horton's painting." "On the right-hand side, we see a detail of roughly the same size... from a Pollock painting entitled "Number Five."" "When you put these pictures close together... what we end up is an image like this." "And I tried putting several areas... taken from different areas of both pictures... and I end up with the same result." "Which is which?" "It is a Pollock." "I didn't make this journey for nothing." "There's a purpose somewhere at the end of this." "And until then, I'm not going to quit... if I have to go sell it myself." "There's an 18-wheeling lady" "Running down a dream" "She's the master of the thrift stores" "And a dumpster-diving queen" "She's traveled the highway" "Yes" "Searching coast-to-coast" "Trying to find treasures" "That would drive away her ghosts" "Now, maybe she's lucky" "Or maybe it's divine" "Have you heard the story" "About Trucker Teri's find?" "Should've been easy" "To prove her painting true" "A world full of experts" "She could see right through" "No one could beat her" "Yeah, she found another way" "A knight in shining armor" "Riding a horse called DNA" "Listen him." "It ain't a Da Vinci" " Or a Michelangelo" " That's cool." "It's not a Pablo Picasso A Rembrandt" "Or even Van Gogh" "I know she's finally found it" "Been on a ten-year rush" "To find a home for the painting" "Whose canvas never felt a brush" "Yes!" "That was good." "Thank you, Jackson Pollock." "Somebody was gonna have to do something to tell me, bottom line... that this painting was not done by Paul Jackson Pollock." "I challenge them to prove that it's not a Jackson Pollock." "Everybody's saying "Prove that it is." I'm saying "Prove that it isn't."" "This doesn't look like a Pollock." "It doesn't feel like a Pollock." "Doesn't sing like a Pollock." "Could be and could not be." "I can't be certain about that." "Would you like to have a look at the painting in question?" "Yes." "Could you do this?" "No." "What is the difference between a fingerprint on a murder weapon... and a fingerprint on a painting?" "Scientists are important, but... you've gotta be a historian like me and a fake-buster like me... to know... that they're helpful, but they never prove anything." "The art world and the justice system, they're kind of two different worlds."