Revisiting Pollock's Drip Paintings
Physics and Society
2009-09-02 v1
Abstract
We investigate the contentions that Jackson Pollock's drip paintings are fractals produced by the artist's Levy distributed motion and that fractal analysis may be used to authenticate works of uncertain provenance[1-5]. We find that the paintings exhibit fractal characteristics over too small a range to be usefully considered as fractal; their limited fractal characteristics are easily generated without Levy motion, both by freehand drawing and gaussian random motion. Several problems must therefore be addressed before fractal analysis can be used to authenticate paintings.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0909.0084,
title = {Revisiting Pollock's Drip Paintings},
author = {Katherine Jones-Smith and Harsh Mathur},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.0084},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Appeared in Nature Nov.2006. Previously unavailable on arxiv. Figures here are low resolution version