ARS GRATIA PECU: Art for the Sake of Money

     "From the school of..." will do. "In the style of..." is fine. "After..." is just as real.  Unlike horseshoes, in Art - especially painting - close is a score.  Look, if you will, at Susannah at her bath  (c. 1555) by Jacopo Robusti (known as Tintoretto) (1518-1594) now valued for insurance purposes at $5 million. (A lesser Tintoretto was sold by Christies on 9 July 2008 for $199,882.)    Now consider a painting or two  by artists who imitated Tintoretto, e,g., Andrea Zucchi (1679-1740)  Jacob's ladder "after Tintoretto"  [$65,981], or Silvestre Maniago (1518-1594) Column of Fire "after Tintoretto" [est. $38,000].   Would you mind owning either?
     So what does a Pollock  -- say Number 17A -- go for? How about $200,000,000 in a private sale in 2016.  An "average" Pollock goes for between $12 and $16 million.  I make 'em, sell 'em and frame 'em at $ 2,499 a yard.  A Rothko recently sold to the  San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for $50 million.   I gotch'er Rothko right here, at $1,500 a yard.  Imitations - you bet your ass.  Perfect imitations.
     You couldn't tell the difference, neither could the critics. See, e.g., Caveat Emptor?: The Proliferation of Pollock Forgeries in the Art Market.  (One asshole paid $17 million for an "authenticated" Pollock painting on which  the artist's alleged signature was misspelled.   I shit you not.  Likewise,  I do not forge.   
      "Ohhhh Avery,  you cynic, you Philistine, you dullard.... you... you... American."     Bite me.  No names appear on my work, but my own.  Fine art is fine art.
     If it's the money and prestige of owning an authentic Pollock or a real Rothko - I can accept that.  You're surrounded by an effete swarm of trust-funded "art-world" connoisseurs who'd shun and shame you if you bought a  "Husband"  for a Pollock.  What would they say if you bought a Maniago or a Zucchi  after Tintoretto?  What will they say about your family's "Pollock" in a hundred years?  In five hundred?
     What? You don't have art critics and cultural cognoscenti as pals?  You don't give a shit what Art in America has to say about your collection.   You're a surgeon who owns a Tesla Dealership and has a place at the shore - or whatever.  But you and your better-half don't hang with Francis Valentine O'Connor, or kibitz with Katie Rothko on a regular basis.  And let's face it, you wouldn't fork over $50 million for a painting, even if you had it.  Which you don't.  
     Still, in addition to some BIG BLANK WALLS,  you also have a modicum of taste.  At least you know what you like.   You grew up with mid-century modern - you get it, its elegance, its sense of humor.  You know who Pollock was - and you like the color and the movement and the energy and  - I donno the swank - of his work.  He wasn't "Jack the Dripper"  he was an ardent student who found and eased his pain in painting.  Lee Krasner -- Pollock's wife and a clutch painter herself -- would put a straight pin in his canvas, and he would hit the pin with paint from 10 feet away... drunk.  "The idea that he was erratic or out of control is ludicrous.  Jackson was, in fact, precise, controlled, prim even."   He was self-educated, but then apprenticed to the preeminent  American muralist of the day (Thomas Hart Benton) who kept him from starving during the Depression, and taught him to master order, structure, eye movement across a canvas, color, and all he needed to know to paint BIG.  Benton is there in each of Pollock's best paintings. Pollock veiled Benton's strict academic foundation in layers of paint and sweat and smoke... and genius.  Peggy Guggenheim put him on the map in 1947, Life magazine put him on the cover in 1951.  By 1956 he was dead, at 44.      
     Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) was and remains America's Greatest Artist because he changed everyone's concept of what constitutes a beautiful painting.  Nothing  -- least of all art -- could be the same after him.   Robust, and beautiful, alive and susceptible to endless gazing - each of his paintings is a masterpiece. 
     Rothko was a bit of a hack, but people like his paintings: so do I.  Pousette-Dart - you never heard of - he was mostly a pointilist as gifted as his fellow irascibles: De Kooning, Motherwell, Still, Sterne, Lee Krazner, Newman, Gotlieb, Walker, Reinhardt, and Joan Mitchell,  each deserves a serious disciple [me] who labors to provide their work  - as original homages - to discerning collectors [you].  
     If my paintings "in the style of Pollock", or "after Rothko" give you that same zing,  spend a little, and hang one in your family room.  Hell, put one in your office - a very amusing pastime in itself. ("Hey, is that a whaddayacallit, a Pollock?"  "Yeah Jim, I broke three commas last quarter."   "Yeah Jim,  Sandy's a Guggenheim."  "I donno Jim, the last guy left it here." ) 
    The point is either the thing or the experience.   These things are just as beautiful, just as lovable, and equally capable of endless renewal as their inspirations.   But affordable.  The experience is up to you.   You can have it.