The Drink Tank 172 (2008).pdf

The Drink Tank Issue 172

garcia@computerhistory.org

Cover Photo of Me, The Apollo Guid-

ance Computer (the one that got us to

the Moon!) and the Babbage Engine

taken by Mike Smithwick!

There was a big lock, maybe 15 or

20 of them. They were calling, trying

to scare another crow from the tree.

They were wild, lying from branch to

branch, calling and jumping and bob-

bing heads. They were so animated,

like the Tiki Room at Disneyland only

magical. In the middle of Suburbia,

where you expect nothing but the same

as every other day, these birds show

up and are dealing with crows, those

damned birds that we see everywhere,

and the Conures, birds that don’t be-

long but seem to love the world they’ve

found, are making it all work. It’s a

wonderful thing and I can’t wait to get

back there with a camera with a good

zoom to try and capture a few photos

of those strange foreigners.

There’s a certain problem too.

The wildness of the birds and keeping

them that way. There are people who

want them eliminated because they are

a non-native species. I understand that

desire, I really do, but I think once an

animal is seriously rooted in a place it

should be allowed to live. That’s just

me. There are those that want to feed

them and make them tourist attrac-

tions. That’s not happening here in

Sunnyvale, but it was such a big deal

in San Francisco that they passed an

ordinance. There’s also a group that

sees them as simply a part of the back-

ground.

Me? I just wanna see them. I

wanna know that they’re there for all

I was driving back from watch-

ing Evelyn and ended up on Matilda,

the street that I live off of. There are

a bunch of trees of all sorts lining the

street and in the median as well. There

are a ton of really big eucalyptus trees

where the street splits off the other

street that leads to Trader Joe’s. At

that location I’d once seen two Mitred-

headed conures lying. Those are wild

parrots that’ve taken root in places like

San Francisco and Chicago. There was

a documentary about the lock (num-

bering somewhere in the 70s) that lives

in San Francisco. I was driving with

the windows open (since it was boiling

hot and I’ve no air-conditioning) and I

heard very parrot-like squawking.

And like that, I went across two

lanes, pulled into the Orchard Sup-

ply Hardware parking lot, turned off

the car and left the keys in the igni-

tion while I walked back towards the

area where I heard it. I walked out and

found a triangulation of trees. Two

were high and obviously old eucalyptus

trees. The other was an old oak tree

across the street. I put myself between

the two eucs and looked up.

There they were: Mitred-headed

Conures. They were beautiful. There

were four or ive of them in the big tree

in the median. They were bunched

around a crow and were wildly calling.

I’ve seen them briely once in Sunny-

vale, but this was awesome. They kept

changing branches and calling, trying

to scare off the crow. They managed

to, and one of the Conures followed,

nipping at the much larger crow. They

went to one of the other trees and there

was screeching and the Conure lew

out of the tree, some of its tail feath-

ers seeming very askew, as if they had

taken a slight beating.

In the tree, more came out of the

other trees and gathered in the Euc.

to enjoy. I’m not going to feed them,

I’m not going to try and catch them, I

just wanna watch them work with the

environment they’ve ended up in ...and

hopefully I can do that for a long time.

Also on Wednesday, I watched a

documentary from Netlix called Who

The !@#$#% is Jackson Pollock?. It

was a good little story that hit me hard

and made me think. The story is of

a Miss Horton who bought a strange

painting at a Thrift Shop and it turns

out that it might be a Jackson Pollock.

Well, on the basis of forensic evidence

it IS a Jackson Pollock, but the Art

World (here represented by the most

arrogant and pompous curator I’ve ever

met, and I’ve worked with a couple!)

refuses to recognise it as such.

And I think they’re wrong.

Jackson Pollock is my second

favorite American artist of all-time (my

irst being Paul Cadmus) and is one

of the artists who I’ve spent the most

time with. Well, not with the artist,

but their works. When I worked at the

National Museum of American Art, I

got to see a Pollock being readied to be

displayed. It was amazing to get to see

the back side of the painting. If you’ve

never seen the reverse of a master-

piece, you’re missing out. I really wish

more museums would do behind-the-

scenes tours and show folks that stuff.

It really makes you realise that all this

stuff is real work. There are marks, in-

gerprints, smears, tape, scratches, all

of it that

doesn’t

make the

surface.

You can’t

really

under-

stand the

work that

goes into

a painting

until you

really un-

derstand

the way

a paint-

ing is put

together,

stretched,

tapped.

I’ve seen paintings in various states,

including a few pieces from the Old

Masters, but mostly I’ve seen all the

American stuff from the 20th Century

at any museum I’ve spent a lot of time

at.

OK, so back to Pollock. I’ve seen

one Pollock from behind and it was

mussed up, paint all over the back too.

It was marvelous.

The ilm deals with Miss Horton’s

trying to get the art establishment to

recognise it as a real Pollock. The view

of the painting shows a work that cer-

tainly carries a lot of marks of Pollock,

the drip-and-run technique, the obvi-

ous splatters that were the hallmark of

Jackson Pollock.

But it wasn’t quite right. It was

all the way to the edge, which a lot of

Pollack’s work tends to be, but he usu-

ally slowed towards the edges, at least

of the canvases that weren’t trimmed

down. This one had some strange

clumping, it was tighter than most Pol-

locks, more compact. It wasn’t a good

Pollock, if you’re the type that believes

that’s possible.

And that’s why I came away with

the idea that it was the real thing and

why it’s more important than almost

any other Pollock in the world with the

exception of Autumn Rhythm, Number

5, and Blue Posts. It’s a bad Pollock!

You see, Jackson Pollock often

tossed his paintings into the dump if

he wasn’t happy with them. A couple

of these have turned up over the years,

only one of which was unknown prior

to its discovery. A few folks caught on

to the fact that Pollock did that and

folks scavenged the ones they could

ind (and the story goes that the MOMA

did a visit or two themselves!) The one

that Horton has might be one of those,

but it’s not too likely. More likely it’s

a part of a bigger painting that he cut

down for some reason and then re-

stretched to try and resell that piece.

The colours are quite similar to a few

different ones, including the untitled

one in the collection of the MFA in

Boston that I spent a lot of time with

while studying art with Joan Brigham

at Emerson. It’s also very similar to

Number 5 in color. Now I believe that

the creation of Number 5 is covered on

ilm, so it’s not a part of that one, and

the one at the MFA is more than 8 feet

long already. That would put the date

somewhere around 1948 or 49, which

is the peak period and the most prized

period for Pollock.

So, let’s say that Pollock cut up

some larger painting and couldn’t sell

the smaller piece. It’s been restretched,

so it’s a sample of a larger work and

could easily have been of a section that

seemed less crowded until it was cut-

down. He tosses it, someone gets it,

sells it a few times, maybe passes away

and the beneiciaries have no idea

what it is and give it to a junk dealer

who sells it to a Thrift Store.

And if it’s a bad Pollock, we have

an idea of what Pollock wasn’t trying

to do. We look at his pieces and get the

idea of chaos, spontaneity and dismiss-

al of style, but if this was a bad Pol-

lack, one he let go, then we know what

his eyes weren’t looking for. It gives us

so much more insight into the brain of

Pollock. There are a lot of pieces that

critics have dismissed, but one that

was dismissed by the artist is really

solid.

So I hope that they’ll pronounce

it a Pollock soon. It’s got a ingerprint

that matches one from Pollock’s home

and a painting in the Tate. It’s also got

paint chips and types that match other

ones that Pollock was using. That’s

enough for any reasonable scientist to

accept, but those art-lovers are pretty

brutal on the matter of proof. I mean,

art forgery is...well...it’s an art. There

are people who are amazing at it (and

they had one of the best art forgers

in history interviewed in the ilm) and

this just doesn’t have the signs for it. A

ingerprint is a convenient plant. If you

can get a copy of an artist’s print and

then come up with a way to transfer it

to a painting, you’ve gone a long way to

making it accepted. The one trouble is,

and this has happened before, is that

even if it’s uncharacteristic of a time.

Period evidence is the worst reason to

discredit a painting, and it’s the irst.

Remember when I said I saw

parrots. Well, I’ve seen them two more

times, and once I had a camera. There

were only about 5 or 6 (maybe as many

as 8) in the trees of a supermarket

parking lot. They didn’t make nearly

as much racket as the irst time I saw

them, but they seemed to only be inter-

ested in chomping away at pods from

the tree.

I promise I did not disturb them,

they lew a lot, but I only got leeting

photos of it. I’m no wildlife photogra-

pher, but here are some shots.

As you can see, I got a total of one good close-up (though the lighting was

crap) and two of the parrots in light (and the blurry one that closes this issue)

but mostly, I just enjoyed watching them. They lew about 10 times, only once

with more than two birds. There were two obvious pairings, the one up in the left

hand corner and once that was tucked in deel to the tree.

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