Spotting A Fake

Last winter a professor from the school I attend gave a lecture in my contemporary art class. His subject matter was first on his experiences in art school, then he told us that he was a physicis professor. His art endeavors were circulated around movements and motion. He then began to describe how he created fractal patterns through the use of a penjulem and wind and paint.

The professor is Richard Taylor from the University of Oregon. The second half of his lecture was centered around the techniques used to authenticate a Jackson Pollock painting. Since Pollock paintings fetch upwards of tens of millions of dollars, the science behind spotting a fake is quite involved.

The issue of whether some paintings are actual Pollock's spouts from the fact that many of Pollock's works are unsigned and his style can be easliy recreated. Or so most peopole think. In the 1999 Nature article, "Fractal Analysis of Pollock's Drip Paintings," the process of analyzing a Pollock painting is shown. The group of scientists, which include Taylor (i am leaving them out due to the fact that i have not attended one of their lectures) scan the alleged Pollock paintings into their computer program which then creates certain scales according to grids and levels of overlap in his drip style. According to the digital process of using computer code to verify the fractal geometry of the paintings lets the scientists see if the alleged painting matches up to like patterns of known Pollock's.

This whole process is extremely intersting, yet I still am wavering if this is a legitimate source of information. Acoording to Taylor in his lecture, no one else on the planet has been able to reproduce a drip painting that has the same fractal ramifications as Pollock did. This is an amazing statement, and one almost has to belive it based on the fact that the statement is backed by computer computations. I, like countless other people, I am sure, would love it if Pollock was still alive and could respond to this state of the art procedure in verifying the authenticity lof his work. Being one who creates pieces of art at a university level, I am almost positive that his response to the question of, "Mr. Pollock, were you conscious of fractal patterns in your drip paintings of the late 1940's and early 1950's?" His response is obviously not known, however I would not be surprised if he mentioned that all he tried to do was to create a certain feeling inside himself as he was creating.

You could counter my statement about feeling good, with research that Taylor has constructed of the effects of fractal patterns in nature, such as tree branches and repetitive waves having a euphoric effect on humans. However the topic of your thoughts should concern the legitimacy of computer based codes telling the world if certain paintgs were created by someone or not. Becuase every artist copies someone else's style at one point or another, and every famous artist changed their artistic style over the years.