And this is a Jackson pollock or at least it looks like one, but it's actually a fake here is how they figured it out.

Today.

We will perform all the steps necessary to determine its authorship.

Jackson Pollock was an American painter that painted from the early 20s to the 1950s.

He's best known by the drift for poor paintings that he did from 1947 till the time of his death in 1956.

Pollock's paintings are considered his best period.

So good sized, well preserved Jackson Pollock, you can go for over $100 million.

There's a lot of claims of Jackson Pollock drip paintings and our laboratory was able to identify over 100 fakes.

So we can say that we found more fakes.

Then there are authentic Jackson paul is all there.

We received this painting by clients that chose to remain anonymous.

We're going to call him Sidney.

The first step when we receive a painting, we're trying to establish something called the Province.

Providence is a change of ownership and custody of an artwork from the contemporary ownership.

All the way back to this manufacturing, where the painting came from.

What is the story behind it?

Is there anything that shows the history of this artwork?

Mhm.

So, this is one of the most fascinating documents that I've ever seen.

This is a document to explain why Sydney should have a Jackson Pollock most marjorie's there are not as much forgeries of confidence.

The forgeries of documentation.

This is problematic in all these different ways.

The facts has no number dr Armand Herskovits cannot be referenced.

There's no record of a tear gallery in Dover New Jersey.

Then he says he acquired this painting in 1955 after Pollock died, but he didn't die until 1956.

So, for all these reasons, this is an incredibly unreliable and deceitful document.

The next step will be we try to find a match for the artwork.

Jackson Pollock paintings are specifically hard to look for matches because the nature of the image, most of the sources are imprinted material and the catalog resonate, which is the comprehensive catalog of works for a given artist.

This painting has no match.

The next step is close up visual analysis.

Yeah.

So we're looking close to the painting to try to find anachronistic materials and techniques something that would be uncharacteristic from a given outer or a given time.

It's a very, very thin layer.

Yeah.

Look at how many, how many colours I count that aren't in the drip layers.

It's very hard to prove there is something is, but it's easier to find things that are out of place, things that should not be there.

Look at these underlying colors.

We got a yellow green and neither of them appear in the drip patterns that's done with a brush.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's rather strange because when Pollock starts in the port painting, he really doesn't brush much anymore.

So there's no signature here.

A lot of the work's going into the market in very controversial ways are not signed.

And we suspect that someone is trying to mitigate whatever legal repercussions trying to imply that unsigned work is not a forgery per se.

As you say, it's a next level to take the step to sign our work.

You see here Thiago, I got two holes right here, just that distance and they're repetitive.

You have a series of smaller holes and that indicates that this canvas was a certain point staple And staple canvases will not be a thing.

or 1956 something.

Did you dirty?

Yeah.

That's like a nasty it's being aged to a series of processes to look older.

Like they spilled something on this through carelessness or not carelessness.

You can see by the marks on the back, how it was dabbed with a tea bag.

And if you actually completely close and smell it, you can smell?

T still, the surface is being sprayed with nicotine to emulate ages of exposure to smoking.

But the canvas is actually really good state of conservation.

It hasn't really shredded the way the canvas starts to unravel at its edges over time.

There's like some punctual damage.

There is here.

Yeah.

You should be like all over like this.

Thanks.

Mhm.

Then the next step will be photography.

So we want to see if there's any under drawings or sketches under the paint.

You never know sometimes the campus was reused.

Did you see that?

That squared green there?

Yes.

In this case, instead of finding under drawing?

Actually, we found that this canvas was reused from a prior picture that had very regular geometric shape, which is very young characteristic from Pollock as well.

Now we get out the UV light.

If you're going to analyze the material aspects of the artwork, we want to be sure that we're looking at relevant parts of it.

So we've examined it with ultraviolet light to try to look at the original parts of the pain.

Normally all the restorations would show up, but none of the restorations show up any different as if the thing was done all at the same time.

See look here this cut, there is a big patch on the back and this ripping is held together by a patch and its gluing it together.

You see there's too little canvas threads are actually loose and the restoration was made in a completely substandard way and it doesn't seem to be fulfilling the purpose of a proper conservation.

The X ray fluorescence spectrometer, that's the next step.

Yeah, yeah.

This handy device that looks kind of like a star trek phaser is really outstanding tool in the field of art forensics.

I'm actually emitting a small amount of X rays onto the surface of the painting.

It's exciting the electrons in the pigments there and that allows this to identify what elements are present.

It shows that we have titanium on it, which natural from titanium dioxide white pigment.

It's a very common material from 19 thirties.

For a lot of our cases, titanium is the determining factor and it is tripped up more forgers than any other element.

So if this were purporting to be a painting by digga and we found the titanium immediately, we would no no way in this case.

However, by the time Pollock is working, titanium is widely available white.

So to find it in Pollock's work is not surprising.

In fact it's well documented that his works do contain titanium.

Titanium.

White was already available in the 19 fifties from that, we'll move on to microscopy.

So Thiago is going to be taking tiny nondestructive fragmentary samples of different bits of paint.

This process is mostly used for organic materials with those.

We would then be able to test both the pigment and the binder we're looking for.

What is the kind of paint used.

We try to take a few samples from each color and then we use the Rama spectrometer, we put in a microscope slide and we shine a laser over it and then this laser bounces back inside the machine in a slightly different color from the regional colloquialism that can tell us an idea of what we're looking at.

And we found mostly acrylics.

Although the binder known as acrylics did exist at the time.

Pollock was a lot In this one.

The specific variant of acrylic did not exist.

It only started being manufactured in the 1960s for more than 100 years.

Scientists have just been looking at tiny fragments of paintings under microscopes and this allows us to really make a visual identification based in metals and uh tiny fragments of mineralogy.

So there are studies uh regarding inject some public paintings that describe the type of the breeze found in his paintings.

Look at that either somebody dropped us in a mud puddle or they directly applied this stuff.

And there is a specific type of sedimentary rock and us that he would spread on his work.

I think it's a piece of insulation.

That's what I'm saying.

I don't you can you tell what that is?

But on this case we analyze the debris grease and dust embedded on the painting and it seems to be the breeze from drywall, which is inconsistent with other Pollocks works conclusion.

A Jackson Pollock, the technique per se.

That is not much of a misery.

So it is our opinion that this would not qualify as a Jackson Pollock painting.

As I say, if the deal is too good, there's something wrong.