Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollock?

Who the Fuck is Jackson Pollock? (2006, Harry Moses)
A similar-styled expose of the art world as "My Kid Could Paint That," except flipped: where that film seemed to be about a fraud, this one seems to be about an authentic work. Teri Horton, the trucker who finds the discarded painting that looks like a Pollock, isn't dumb, but she's not an aesthete -- she's flabbergasted that people could be interested in Pollock's paintings. In many ways the film is drawing comparisons between Horton and Pollock. The art establishment -- by and large made up of businessmen -- doesn't much care for Horton and doesn't believe in her painting. The former director of the Met, Thomas Hoving (a man who contorts his body wildly when examining a painting for authenticity), claims she "knows nothing." The film portrays her as a hard drinking woman who's led an unconventional and sometimes tragic life, including the death of her daughter; it's easier to see similarities between her and Pollock than with Pollock and the Tiffany's heir and Princeton-educated Hoving.

Although the painting has no buyer history, striking scientific evidence seems to point in the direction of authenticity. A finger print on the back of the found painting matches a print on a paint can in Pollock's studio, as well as a Pollock painting in a gallery. A celebrated forger, whose fakes were sold by Christie's, says Pollock's painting method would be too much to think about and says he wouldn't be able to replicate them himself. Standing mostly on principle and turning down offers less than what she imagines the painting to be worth (in the millions), it's perhaps ironic that the painting Horton views as ugly is the same thing that's inspired her for a decade.