Post 21: Fractals in Jackson Pollock paintings

I read this article on fractals which talked about using computer analysis and pattern analysis to investigate the fractals in Jackson Pollock’s art. Australian researcher Richard Taylor writes that his “scientific curiosity was stirred when I learned that many of nature’s objects are fractal, featuring patterns that repeat at increasingly fine magnifications. For example, think of a tree. First you see the big branches growing out of the trunk. Then you see smaller versions growing out of each big branch. As you keep zooming in, finer and finer branches appear, all the way down to the smallest twigs. Other examples of nature’s fractals include clouds, rivers, coastlines and mountains.” When his team looked at Jackson Pollock’s paintings, they found that the pattern analysis showed that his paintings display as many fractals as patterns found in natural scenery. More than ten other groups of researchers found the same result when they performed similar fractal analysis on his paintings. When paintings are authenticated to be genuine Pollock works, they use this analysis to look for his trademark pattern of fractals.