Ellen Landau: Art historian takes sides in Pollock paintings dispute
A highly detailed art-historical presentation isn't normally the kind of fare that would attract listeners to a darkened lecture hall on the brilliant first afternoon of fall in Cleveland.
But more than 200 people showed up Sunday at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to hear art historian Ellen Landau of Case Western Reserve University. She was speaking for the first time locally on her fresh research into the artistic relationship between photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter and Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock.
The Matter-Pollock relationship has been in the news because of the recent discovery of 32 hitherto-unknown paintings in Pollock's characteristic drip-and-spatter style, which Landau attributed to Pollock two years ago on the basis of their style and history of ownership.
If authentic, the paintings would be worth tens of millions of dollars to their owner, New York filmmaker Alex Matter, who said he found them in 2002 in a Long Island, N.Y., storage unit that had once belonged to his father. A brown paper wrapper with a note in Herbert Matter's handwriting stated that the package contained experimental works by Pollock, painted between 1946 and 1949....
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But more than 200 people showed up Sunday at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to hear art historian Ellen Landau of Case Western Reserve University. She was speaking for the first time locally on her fresh research into the artistic relationship between photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter and Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock.
The Matter-Pollock relationship has been in the news because of the recent discovery of 32 hitherto-unknown paintings in Pollock's characteristic drip-and-spatter style, which Landau attributed to Pollock two years ago on the basis of their style and history of ownership.
If authentic, the paintings would be worth tens of millions of dollars to their owner, New York filmmaker Alex Matter, who said he found them in 2002 in a Long Island, N.Y., storage unit that had once belonged to his father. A brown paper wrapper with a note in Herbert Matter's handwriting stated that the package contained experimental works by Pollock, painted between 1946 and 1949....