CLOSE Josh Levine talks about an original Jackson Pollock painting, June 6, 2017, in a conference room at J. Levine Auction and Appraisal in Scottsdale. Mark Henle/azcentral.com 
 
 Josh Levine with an original Jackson Pollock painting, June 6, 2017, at J. Levine Auction and Appraisal, 10345 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale. "I've spent hundreds of hours researching how this Pollock could end up here in Arizona, and I am confident that this is an original Pollock." Josh Levine, owner and founder of J. Levine Auction & Appraisal LLC, said that he received a phone call from a Sun City resident, asking his firm to look at Los Angeles Lakers memorabilia that was signed by longtime star Kobe Bryant. What they found in addition seemed to be a proverbial treasure chest of 20th-century modern art, including works that appear to be created by Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Cora Kelley Ward and Pollock. Gordon (Cosgriff) lived in New York and was a known, lifelong friend of Clement Greenberg, an influential visual art critic most closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century, Hazel Guggenheim McKinley, a mid-20th century modern artist and sister of Peggy Guggenheim, and Jackson Pollock. One of the finds, a Kenneth Noland diamond-shaped acrylic painting titled "Replace!," caught the attention of art collectors when J. Levine auctioned it in January 2016.  SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., June 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A rare, lost Jackson Pollock painting is going up for auction on Tuesday, June 20 at J. Levine Auction & Appraisal after the Scottsdale-based auction house spent nearly 18 months and tens of thousands of dollars researching and authenticating the forensics and ownership history.
– What does Kobe Bryant have to do with the possible discovery of a "lost" Jackson Pollock painting? Something, it turns out. An Arizona auction house says it was contacted by a Sun City resident who wanted someone to take a look at a 1992 LA Lakers poster signed by Bryant. "We ended up signing a contract to auction the contents of the estate, and that's when we found many of the paintings," among them one that Josh Levine of J. Levine Auction & Appraisal believed to be a Pollock. The Arizona Republic reports Levine was so intrigued by the potential Pollock that he spent more than $50,000 over 18 months in an attempt to establish it was done by the artist's hand. "I'm brave enough to call it a Jackson Pollock and put my entire reputation on it," he says. Still, Levine acknowledges potential Pollocks have long been a source of art-world consternation; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation does not authenticate Pollock paintings. But in a press release, the auction house describes the painting's provenance as "strong": The man who owned it—he had never heard of Pollock—was given the gouache painting by his half-sister, who was a longtime friend of an art critic who knew Pollock. The auction house further explains forensic tests established "the dating of the painting to the mid-twentieth century ... as no pigments or binding media introduced in the late 1950s and 1960s have been detected." The work, which measures 22.5 x 32 inches, will be auctioned June 20; Levine expects it will fetch $10 million to $15 million. (A painting made by a 21-year-old in 1982 recently sold for $110 million.)