[MSN] The Case of Pollock’s Fractals Focuses on Physics

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The Case of Pollock's Fractals Focuses on Physics

By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: December 2, 2006
Correction Appended

In an article published this week in the prestigious science journal
Nature, two physicists contend that a method intended to identify
complex geometric patterns in the seemingly chaotic drip paintings of
Jackson Pollock is flawed and may be useless in the increasingly
convoluted world of authenticating Pollock's work.

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Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Alex Matter and three of the works he believes are by Jackson Pollock.
He found them in a storage locker.

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Katherine Jones-Smith
"Untitled 5," the drawing used by Katherine Jones-Smith and Harsh
Mathur for the fractal study.
The article, written by a physics professor and a physics doctoral
student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, provides a
new twist in the mystery surrounding a group of small drip paintings
discovered several years ago in a storage locker in Wainscott, N.Y.
They were found by Alex Matter, whose father, Herbert, and mother,
Mercedes, were artists and friends of Pollock's. Mr. Matter believes
the paintings are authentic Pollocks, and if he is proved right, they
will not only be worth millions of dollars but will also add an
important new chapter to Pollock's work.

But the paintings have incited a lively and sometimes bitter debate
among Pollock scholars. And as a result, greater attention has been
focused on the role science is now playing alongside connoisseurship
in the business of art authentication.

Last winter the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which represents the
artist's estate, commissioned Richard P. Taylor, an associate
professor of physics at the University of Oregon, to examine some of
the disputed paintings. He used a technique he pioneered, which he
said identified consistent patterns known as fractals — regularities
that recur on finer and finer magnification, like those in snowflakes
— in several authentic Pollocks.

Using the same computer analysis on transparencies of 6 of the 24
paintings discovered by Mr. Matter, Dr. Taylor found "significant
differences" between their patterns and those of the known Pollocks he
had examined.

Dr. Taylor, who said he was not paid for his research, though the
foundation reimbursed the university for its equipment and time,
emphasized at the time that his work was only one among many pieces of
evidence that should be used to make conclusions about the paintings.
But he said his finding put the onus on Mr. Matter to provide a
plausible explanation of why the patterns didn't match up.

In 2004, before the examination of the disputed paintings, a physics
doctoral student at Case Western, Katherine Jones-Smith, became
interested in Dr. Taylor's published reports about Pollock and
fractals and made the research the subject of a presentation. But
while preparing it, she said, she found that simple, childlike
drawings she made using Adobe Photoshop exhibited the same fractal
characteristics that Dr. Taylor said were exhibited in Pollock
masterpieces.

"I entirely expected them not to be fractal," Ms. Jones-Smith said of
her drawings, one of which is composed of hastily scrawled stars. "So
I was really startled when they turned out to be."

She enlisted the help of Harsh Mathur, an associate professor of
physics at Case Western, and the two focused on the method of
identifying fractals. This involves dividing a painting into boxes of
varying sizes, from the dimensions of the entire painting down to the
smallest paint speck.

In the article published this week, the two researchers conclude that
Dr. Taylor's analysis of Pollock paintings is flawed because it did
not use a great enough range of box sizes to establish fractal
characteristics reliably. Using only the range he did, a childlike
drawing like the one made by Ms. Smith-Jones turned out to be,
mathematically at least, the equal of a Pollock — a notion that would
undoubtedly amuse critics who still dismiss his work as child's play.

Dr. Taylor, in a reply in the same issue of Nature, says he stands by
his work. If Dr. Mathur and Ms. Jones-Smith are right, he argues,
their findings "would also dismiss half the published investigations
of fractals." He adds that in his examination, Ms. Jones-Smith's star
scribbles do not show fractal patterns.

Dr. Mathur, who firmly believes they do, said he welcomed more
scholars to weigh in on the debate.

"Either our drawing is worth $40 million or his criteria is wrong,"
Dr. Mathur said in a telephone interview yesterday. He added,
laughing, "I guess I'd accept either outcome."

Correction: December 5, 2006


A picture caption in The Arts on Saturday about research by two
physicists challenging another scientist's fractal analysis of
patterns in Jackson Pollock's drip paintings misidentified one of
them. He is Harsh Mathur, not Richard P. Taylor. (Dr. Taylor is the
physicist whose work was challenged.)



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/books/02frac.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin


-- 
Ton Cremers
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