How low can Boston College go?

"Lavender Mist," a real Jackson Pollock - the kind you won't find in "Pollock Matters."

The Exhibitionist reports that despite an explicit order from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation that the "Pollock Matters" catalogue not include any images of actual Pollocks, the McMullen has gone ahead and included images anyway, citing "fair use" principles. This is rather a creative twist on "fair use" - or at least the McMullen seems to have thought so, as it held up release of the catalogue until the opening of the exhibit (if it had been released earlier, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation no doubt would have gotten a judge to block it).

I have to say this must be a new moral low for a local museum - well, certainly not as far as what goes on behind closed doors, but at least as far as the public record. Good thing there are all those priests over there for curator Ellen Landau to confess to.

Why all the love for the "Matter Pollocks"?

Geoff Edgers has been doing a bang-up job reporting on the ongoing imbroglio at CitiCenter - so why does he suddenly go all mushy when reporting on the "Matter Pollocks" (a particularly yucky one is at left)? Incredibly, the McMullen Museum at Boston College is going ahead with "Pollock/Matters," an exhibit that supposedly explores the relationship between Jackson Pollock and the Swiss-born photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter, but is transparently a vehicle for keeping afloat the possibility that a cache of small Pollock-like paintings "discovered" by Alex Matter a few years back are truly by the master. "Now you can decide for yourself," the Globe helpfully explains, as if, Bush-administration-like, we were all free to create our own personal art-historical reality (I've personally decided that La Grande Jatte is by Thomas Kinkade).

It took one glance for me to decide the "Matter Pollocks" were junk - either outright fakes or so bad that Pollock hid them out of embarrassment. Over the past months, of course, the evidence has tilted toward fakery: a Harvard study declared some of the pigments weren't available in the U.S. in Pollock's lifetime, and soon after it came to light that another study, by forensics scientist James Martin, had for all intents and purposes been suppressed by Alex Matter. Since then, it's been announced that the paintings will be hung at the McMullen without attribution (Thomas Kinkade, anyone?) and the show's curator, Ellen Landau, has been spinning possible explanations for those problem pigments (she has hinted they may have come from a shop in Switzerland - after all, Pollock pal/promoter Herbert Matter - at left - was Swiss).

Yeah, and maybe that Martin report should simply be released! It's possible, I suppose, that the "Matter Pollocks" are actually just really bad, but authentic, Pollocks, done in Swiss paint - but no university should be involved in presenting a show in which a key piece of evidence has been withheld from the public. There's a longwinded explanation from the McMullen about how Martin was invited to include his findings in the show's catalogue, but refused (for reasons that remain unclear). The point is that whether or not the Martin report backs up Matter's claims is simply immaterial; the fact that it exists, but is not included in the show, makes the McMullen's methods and intents suspect, and inconsistent with what we think of as normal academic standards. Essentially, the McMullen could be viewed by those unsympathetic to Ms. Landau as colluding with Alex Matter in a deception which could reap him millions. Is that sort of activity part of the Boston College charter? The university should be backing away from the "Matter Pollocks" - or at the very least demanding that the show not go on without public access to Martin's report.

What's the matter with the Matter Pollocks?

So it turns out that there's another scientific study of the "Matter Pollocks" - only its results have been suppressed by Alex Matter himself. According to Steven Litt, art critic of the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

"The author of an extensive and hitherto-undisclosed scientific study of a trove of works attributed to Jackson Pollock said Thursday that he is being barred from releasing his findings by the lawyer for the works' owner, filmmaker Alex Matter."

Hmmm. Now are you thinking what I'm thinking? If the results contradicted the recent Harvard study (which found that three of the supposed "Pollocks" weren't Pollocks), you'd imagine Alex Matter would be trumpeting the results to anyone who'd listen . . .

But wait, there's more, according to this scoop from Greg Cook:

"James Martin, a Williams College chemical research scientist who runs the Williamstown firm Orion Analytical, told Litt that he was hired by Matter’s art dealer to examine 23 of the “Pollock” paintings in 2005 with the agreement that he could release his findings when he was done, but now that he’s completed studying the paintings Matter’s lawyer has told him that he is “not authorized to release or disclose any analysis, findings or conclusions concerning the Matter paintings until further notice" . . . Litt carefully notes that Martin doesn’t reveal the specifics of his research, but that Martin emailed him: "I am delighted that colleagues at Harvard and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston are confirming Orion's findings.” This suggests that his results agree with a recently released Harvard study of three of the Matter “Pollocks” that concluded that the paintings include paints not made until after Pollock’s death in 1956. And that the study Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is doing on four of the “Pollocks” is headed toward the same conclusion."

So . . . will the McMullen Museum go ahead with its planned exhibit of the "Matter Pollocks"? Will Geoff Edgers of the Boston Globe stop promoting this "controversy"? (To be fair, Edgers has already started to backpedal.) Stay tuned. . .