Abstract
Arising from: R. P. Taylor, A. P. Micolich and D. Jonas Nature 399, 422; 1999 Taylor et al. reply
We investigate the contentions that Jackson Pollock's drip paintings are fractals produced by the artist's Lévy distributed motion and that fractal analysis may be used to authenticate works of uncertain provenance1,2,3,4,5. 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 Lévy motion, both by freehand drawing and gaussian random motion. Several problems must therefore be addressed before fractal analysis can be used to authenticate paintings1.
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Jones-Smith, K., Mathur, H. Revisiting Pollock's drip paintings. Nature 444, E9–E10 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05398
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05398
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