How Science Uncovered $80 Million of Fine Art Forgeries
Something was wrong with the Jackson Pollock. For one thing, 3-D images from a stereomicroscope revealed that the signature was traced with a needle\u2014forged. And, working with a hyper-precise Raman microscope, a tool capable of analyzing sample areas as small as a thousandth of a millimeter across, Jamie Martin identified the presence of Red 170, a pigment that wasn\u2019t widely available until decades after Pollock\u2019s death. Yep. The painting was a fake.