IT MIGHT look like random splattering, but the artist Jackson Pollock claimed that he could control the drips of paint in his work as they flew onto the canvas.
Mathematical analysis seemed to back him up by showing fractal patterns in the paintings, and this signature has since been used to spot fakes. Now, a closer look at Pollock鈥檚 work claims to rule out the presence of such shapes ().
In 2003, an art collector discovered a cache of 32 works suspected to be Pollock originals, so Richard Taylor of the University of Oregon, Eugene, offered to test if they were genuine by looking for the fractal shapes he had seen in known Pollock originals. He found departures from the pattern in the paintings, casting doubt on their authenticity.
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Last year, Katherine Jones-Smith, Harsh Mathur and Lawrence Krauss from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, questioned Taylor鈥檚 analysis, and they now claim to have proof that it cannot authenticate Pollock鈥檚 paintings.
They applied Taylor鈥檚 method to known originals, paintings in the contested cache and two new works they had commissioned to mimic Pollock鈥檚 style. While one of the originals failed to show the fractal signature, both of the commissioned paintings did. Results for the contested works were mixed.
These findings show the method cannot be trusted, the researchers say. 鈥淭he fractal criteria give no information about authenticity,鈥� says Krauss.
