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Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?

“Who the fuck is Jackson Pollock?” is what San Bernadino trailer park resident Teri Horton asked when a shopper pointed out that the oversized canvas she had at her garage sale might be a lost work by the famed American painter. A hard-bitten trucker with an eighth-grade education, Horton had purchased the painting at a junk shop (for $5, arguing the clerk down from $8) as a joke gift to cheer up a friend, who laughed at it and refused to let it in her house. With tastes that run more to Norman Rockwell than abstract expressionism, she was astonished to learn that the painting that “We were gonna throw darts at” could be worth as much as $50 million. All she had to do was prove that it was an authentic Pollock—a task far easier said than done, as this hugely entertaining documentary by 60 Minutes producer Harry Moses demonstrates. Aided and funded by her son, a garage owner, Horton quickly runs afoul of Manhattan art cognoscenti who aren’t about to have their opinions revised by an “outsider.” Even when respected forensics experts prove, to levels acceptable in any court of law, that Pollock worked on the painting (the evidence includes a fingerprint), they merely sniff that it doesn’t look like a Pollock to them. Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? succeeds on several levels: as a mystery, a lesson in art history and a comedy with a twinge of bitterness demonstrating that the class system in America is not going away anytime soon.