Product Review

The imagery on the canvas is relatively spare: a black oblong shape resides at the pictures center encircled by a loose knot of swirling red lines. Its a small painting just 24 by 20 inches. There is nothing to indicate that this unassuming unsigned work has been the subject of an explosive decades-long battle a saga that has drawn in some of Americas best-known artists and the power brokers of the art world. Red Black & Silver is the last painting ever created by Jackson Pollock. That is if Ruth Kligman Pollocks mistress during the last year of the artists life is to be believed. Famous in art circlesor notorious depending on whom you askKligman claimed that Pollock created the small canvas as a love gift to her just weeks before the car crash that killed him in 1956. Kligman had been in the car too; she was the accidents sole survivor. The nickname death-car girl bestowed upon her by poet Frank OHara haunted her for the rest of her life.