Jackson Pollock Authentication Analysis with Kate Jones-Smith
Our guest this week is\xa0Hamilton physics professor Kate Jones-Smith\xa0who joins us to discuss the evidence for the claim that drip paintings of Jackson Pollock contain fractal patterns. This hypothesis originates in a paper by Taylor, Micolich, and Jonas titled\xa0Fractal analysis of Pollock's drip paintings\xa0which appeared in Nature.\xa0
Kate and co-author\xa0Harsh Mathur\xa0wrote a paper titled\xa0Revisiting Pollock's Drip Paintings\xa0which also appeared in Nature. A full text PDF can be found\xa0here, but lacks the helpful figures which can be found\xa0here, although two images are blurred behind a paywall.\xa0
Their paper was covered in the\xa0New York Times\xa0as well as in USA Today (albeit with with a much more delightful headline:\xa0Never mind the Pollock's\xa0[sic]).\xa0
While discussing the intersection of science and art, the conversation also touched briefly on a few other intersting topics. For example,\xa0Penrose Tiles appearing in islamic art\xa0(pre-dating Roger Penrose's investigation of the interesting properties of these tiling processes),\xa0Quasicrystal designs in art,\xa0Automated brushstroke analysis of the works of Vincent van Gogh, and attempts to\xa0authenticate a possible work of Leonardo Da Vinci\xa0of uncertain provenance. Last but not least, the conversation touches on the particularly compellingHockney-Falco Thesis\xa0which is also covered in David Hockney's book\xa0Secret Knowledge.\xa0
For those interested in reading some of Kate's other publications, many\xa0Katherine Jones-Smith articles\xa0can be found at the given link, all of which have downloadable PDFs.