
Jackson Pollock's painting technique - pseudolus
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/jackson-pollock-painting-technique-scn/index.html
======
headcanon
Slightly off topic, but I had a Jackson Pollock party in my garage where some
friends and I got wine drunk and danced around the garage splattering paint
everywhere (preferably on canvases on the ground). We didn't exactly produce
anything worth $200M but it was tons of fun and I would highly recommend it.

One thing I did learn though was that it would take a lot of effort to get
anything close to actual Pollock. His stuff really is more than "random paint
splashes".

Try it if you don't believe me.

~~~
DataWorker
Look, if you want to hold up the mans work as an example of good art then at
least make an effort to read what real experts thought. To make some strawman
claim that his craftsmanship cannot be matched does no favors to you or
pollock and it’s simply not true. Art is easy to forge and pollock is
certainly easier than to mimic than Goya or Rembrandt.

~~~
97b683f8
You mean those experts ?

1992: Author John Briggs published a book featuring the first observation that
Jackson Pollock’s poured paintings have the appearance of fractal patterns
(Fractals, Touchstone Publishers, 1992)

1997-8: Physicist Richard Taylor built a chaotic pendulum called the
“Pollockizer” to generate fractal paintings using the pouring technique
(Physics World, 76, November 1997, New Scientist, vol. 2144, 30, 1998 and The
Art of Science documentary, ABC, May 1998)

1998: Mathematician Richard Voss conducted the first fractal analysis of an
artwork. He used the analysis to distinguish between illustrative paintings by
different Chinese artists (Fractal Image Encoding and Analysis, Springer,
1998)

1999: Taylor’s group published the first fractal analysis of Pollock’s
paintings (Nature, vol. 399, 422, 1999. See also Scientific American, vol.
287, 116-121, 2002 and Leonardo, vol. 35, 203-207, 2002)

1999: Taylor introduced the term “Fractal Expressionism” to describe fractal
art generated by humans rather than computers (Physics World, 25, October
1999)

1999: Art conservator Jim Coddington proposed that fractal analysis should be
explored as a technique to help authenticate Pollock paintings

2003: Psychologist Branka Spehar collaborated with Taylor to demonstrate that
Pollock’s fractals induce the same physiological responses in observers as
nature’s fractals and computer-generated fractals (Chaos and Graphics, vol.
27, 813, 2003)

2004-5: Physicist Jonas Mureika’s group quantified Pollock’s fractals using a
multi-fractal analysis technique (Physical Review E, vol. 72, 046101-1-15,
2005 and Chaos, vol. 15, 043702-1-6, 2005).

2005: Taylor’s group used a dimensional interplay fractal analysis to
distinguish 14 authentic Pollock paintings from 51 non-Pollock paintings with
100% accuracy (Pattern Recognition Letters, vol. 28, 695-702, 2005)

2005: The Pollock-Krasner Foundation asked Taylor to perform a fractal
analysis on the “Matter paintings” found in a New York storage locker (Nature,
439, 648, 2006). The analysis identified “significant deviations from
Pollock’s characteristics.” Taylor cautioned that the results should be
“coupled with other important information such as provenance, connoisseurship
and materials analysis.” Two years later, materials scientists showed that
pigments on the paintings dated from after Pollock’s death

2006: Physicist Kate Jones-Smith and colleagues published a study of non-
fractal star drawings and claimed that fractal analysis is flawed because
their analysis falsely identified the stars as fractal (Nature, vol. 444,
E9-10, 2006). In their rebuttal, Taylor’s group performed their own fractal
analysis on the star patterns and showed that the stars were, in fact, not
fractal (Nature, vol. 444, E10-11, 2006). Taylor reported further flaws in
Jones-Smith’s analysis. Fractals expert Lansaros Gallos summed up: “What
Jones-Smith has done is just a simple trick – this is bad science about
fractals.” (ScienceNews, vol. 171, 122, 2007) Jones-Smith raised one valid
issue: whether Pollock’s patterns occur over enough magnifications to be
called fractal. However, she admitted she was at odds with the research
community. She would have to dismiss half of all the investigations of
fractals ever published based on this concern. Benoit Mandelbrot, inventor of
the term fractal, summarized: “I do believe Pollocks are fractal.”
(ScienceNews, vol. 171, 122, 2007).

2006-7: Computer Scientist Bruce Gooch’s group used computers to generate
Pollock-like images by varying their fractal characteristics (Proceedings of
the 4th International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering,
97-104, 2006 and Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, vol.1, 73-83, 2007)

2007: Art theorist Claude Cernuschi’s and colleagues presented an “arc-
fractal” model of Pollock’s paintings (Pollock Matters, McMullen Museum of
Art, 2007)

2007: Jones-Smith and colleagues announced to the press that they had
submitted a study of poured paintings to the journal Physical Review Letters.
The study showed that their fractal analysis could not distinguish between
Pollock and non-Pollock paintings. Physical Review Letters rejected the
submission. Computer scientist Hany Farid commented: “I think they [Jones-
Smith et al] took a fairly simplistic way of separating those colors [of
paint] which could have skewed their results.” The study served as a useful
warning: the success rate of fractal analysis in detecting fakes is sensitive
to factors such as image quality of the paintings and the image processing
techniques used. [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-
fractal...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-fractals-
spot-genuine).

2007-8: Three groups (led by psychologist Christoph Redies, psychologist David
Field and computer scientist Jose Alvarez-Ramirez) independently quantified
Pollock’s fractals using a Fourier transform technique (Spatial Vision, vol.
21, 97-117, 2007, Spatial Vision, vol. 21, 137-148, 2007, Journal of Spatial
Vision, vol. 21, 149-164, 2007, Perception, vol. 37, 1341-1352, 2008, Physica
A, vol. 387, 281-295, 2008).

2008: Alvarez-Ramirez quantified Pollock’s fractals using Hurst analysis
(Physica A, vol. 387, 6452-646, 2008)

2008: Coddington and computer scientist Dan Rockmore quantified Pollock’s
fractals using entropy dimension. They summarized as follows: “Fractal
geometry has begun to play an important role in the authentication of the work
of Jackson Pollock. We believe such analyses are necessary for pushing the
field forward” (Proceedings SPIE, vol. 6810, 68100F 1-12, 2008)

2009: Jones-Smith and colleagues’ 2007 fractal analysis of poured paintings
was eventually accepted for publication (Physical Review E, vol. 79, 046111,
2009). In his own publications on Pollock’s fractals, computer scientist David
Stork described Jones-Smith’s publication as: “a failure to follow well-
established principles and methodologies from statistical pattern recognition”
(SPIE Electronic Imaging: Machine Vision Applications II, vol. 7251,
72510Q1–11 2009 and SPIE Proceedings on Computer Vision and Image Analysis of
Art II, vol. 7869, 78690H, 2009). He also recommended combining fractal
analysis with other pattern analysis techniques to increase its detection
capabilities.

2010: Mureika and Taylor used fractal analysis to successfully distinguish
between poured paintings by adults and children (SPIE Proceedings of
Electronic Imaging, vol. 7531, 7531001-6, 2010)

2011: Taylor and neuroscience collaborators developed a “fractal fluency”
model for how observers view Pollock’s fractals. The results demonstrated that
Pollock’s patterns span sufficient magnifications to strongly display the
visual character of fractals (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 5, 1- 13,
2011 and Fractal Geometry of the Brain, Springer, 2016).

2011: Cernuschi’s group employed non-linear physics to examine Pollock’s
pouring technique (Physics Today, June edition, 31-36, 2011).

2012: In a public lecture on Pollock, chief Pollock scholar Francis O’Connor
declared “These fractal occurrences in the facture of Pollock’s pourings can
be read as a very personal signature that can be found in all of his works”
and described fractal analysis as a “tool with which the connoisseur can
perceive falsity in a fake Pollock”
[https://blogs.uoregon.edu/richardtaylor/files/2015/12/Franci...](https://blogs.uoregon.edu/richardtaylor/files/2015/12/FrancisOconnor-1clwmv9.pdf)

2013: Mureika and Taylor quantified Pollock’s fractals using multi-fractal
depth (Signal Processing, vol. 93, 573-578, 2013)

2014: Computer scientist Kang Zheng’s group used computers to generate
Pollock-like images based on fractal patterns (Vis Comput DOI
10.1007/s00371-014-0985-7)

2015: Computer scientist Lior Shamir showed that, when combined with other
pattern parameters, fractal analysis can be used to distinguish between real
and imitation Pollocks with 93% accuracy. He found that the fractal parameters
were the most powerful contributors to the detection accuracy (International
Journal of Arts and Technology, vol. 8, 1, 2015)

2016: Shamir used fractal analysis to distinguish between abstract
expressionist paintings by adults and children (ACM Transactions of Applied
Perception, vol. 13, 1, 2016)

2016: Physicist Elsa De la Calleja and colleagues examined the evolution of
Pollock’s paintings in terms of an “Order-Fractal” transition. (Annals of
Physics, Vol. 371, 313 (2016)

2017: Psychologist Alex Forseythe’s group showed that the fractal
characteristics of a painting can be linked to the artist’s neurological
condition (Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 31, 1, 2017)

2017: Taylor’s group use fractal analysis to explain why Pollock’s paintings
induce perceived images (PLOS ONE, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0171289 Nature |
News, 14th February 2017: [http://www.nature.com/news/fractal-secrets-of-
rorschach-s-fa...](http://www.nature.com/news/fractal-secrets-of-rorschach-s-
famed-ink-blots-revealed-1.21473))

2017: De la Calleja’s group compared the evolution of the fractal
characteristics in Pollock’s paintings to parameters quantifying the painting’
topology (Betti numbers) (Knowledge Based Systems, 2017)

2019: Aleverez-Ramirez employs fractal analysis to compare Pollock’s paintings
to those of the Riopelle Abstract Expressionists (to be published in Physica
A)

~~~
DataWorker
No, I meant art experts. My point was that I don’t think he is all that
important as an aesthetic innovator. I see you perhaps disagree but I think
his legacy was in insisting on the primacy of process. I think he would tell
you that himself; his process was more important than the finished image.

------
pmoriarty
I am reminded of this Norman Rockwell painting:

[https://img0.etsystatic.com/004/0/6939617/il_fullxfull.39168...](https://img0.etsystatic.com/004/0/6939617/il_fullxfull.391683806_fj2y.jpg)

------
Balanceinfinity
always be careful of the following construction "I don't understand X,
therefore I will assume that it's stupid." Better would be "I don't understand
X, therefore I will assume that I'm stupid (or under educated about the
subject)." The second construction, based on humility, opens the mind for
learning and makes you seem infinitely more thoughtful.

~~~
deogeo
Modern art appreciation is all about seeming thoughtful.

~~~
arrrg
When you are talking about modern art you are talking about more than a
century of work from thousands of different artists with probably hundreds of
different approaches.

Those approaches are only connected insofar as they remove traditions and
experiment in new ways. That’s why I always think that a wholesale rejection
of modern art is so ridiculous. You have to at least be more specific.

~~~
deogeo
I'll admit, I was glib - I just couldn't resist.

And you're right - modern art shares the rejection of what came before, and
experimentation in new ways. But rejection for its own sake, change for the
sake of change, lost its novelty about a century ago. That leaves us with ugly
art, that is doing its best to steal the oxygen from anything aesthetically
pleasing.

~~~
goto11
In what way does it "steal oxygen"? There is enough room in the world for both
Jackson Pollack and Norman Rockwell.

~~~
deogeo
There is, but modern art doesn't want to share. Contemporary galleries rarely
display non-abstract/Modern art, and art schools are dropping classical
techniques required for representational art (such as life drawing):

 _The Slade school in London used to be world-famous for turning out fine
British draftsmen. A distinguished British painter who taught at the Slade
asked me, 'How did you learn how to do animation?' I answered that I was lucky
enough to have done a lot of life drawing at art school, so without realizing
it I got the feeling for weight which is so vital to animation.

Then I said, 'What am I telling you for? You're teaching at the Slade and it's
famous for its life drawing and excellent draftsmen.'

'If the students want to do that,' he said, 'then they've got to club together
and hire themselves a model and do it in their own home.' At first I thought
he was joking - but no! Life drawing as a subject went out years ago. It
wasn't even on the curriculum!_

\-- Animator's Survival Kit, page 32.
[https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-OTUJDZcAzLcDhFbVN3TjdwUnc/...](https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-OTUJDZcAzLcDhFbVN3TjdwUnc/view)

~~~
watwut
There are whole youtube channels for life drawing. Free. Both with simply
models and with instructions.

~~~
deogeo
Stealing oxygen does not imply life drawing was completely extinguished - but
it was largely driven out of academia.

~~~
watwut
It wasn't. Schools teach it, just google it. Even mentioned Slade school have
classes on life drawing.

Life drawing was never more accessible then today. For that matter, learning
_any_ drawing was never more accessible then today.

------
dangus
Even to those who believe his famous drip paintings require no talent, works
like Birth and Portrait and a Dream very clearly show that he was a talented
artist in more of an immediately obvious to the Sunday museum-goer kind of
way.

But then again, those aren’t his most famous works are they? Something more
famous like Mural looks like something your one-year-old would spit up.

I think the outsized monetary and historical value lies in the controversy,
and the story behind the art, not the art itself.

I can completely understand why it’s both loved and hated. The end result
_looks_ random and doesn’t convey any particular meaning, basically a defiant
statement against interpretation, but it’s also just planned enough to send
you searching for patterns and meaning. I can see why it could be pleasing and
impactful to the right person.

To detractors it’s like modern art gone too far: it’s just nonsense that’s
fucking with you, like the artistic version of an Internet troll.

Personally, I just can’t come around to it.

~~~
friendlybus
Irvine Kershner (director of empire strikes back) talked about meeting with
and joshing Pollock's work at the time. He then goes on to explain that
Pollock was making a sense of depth without using perspective or other
traditional tools. They call it plastic depth.

The interpretation game is just the 'retail front' for art.

------
ZeroGravitas
Just yesterday I saw a 4 year old turn the page to an unexpected Pollock
painting and react with immediate joy.

I'm not really sure what, but that suggested to me that there is something
there.

------
beat
This is a really interesting article, and reinforces just how wrong the common
conception that he was just "throwing paint at canvas" is. Drip technique, the
way Pollock did it, is technically very difficult and required substantial
time and effort to perfect.

~~~
umvi
> and required substantial time and effort to perfect.

Perfect what, exactly? What's the end goal of the perfection? There's no way
to measure it.

Signing my name is technically _very_ difficult - I've been perfecting it for
20+ years on various random documents and I can 100% tell if someone other
than me signed my name (you can too if you study my signature for a few years
at a college).

Does that automatically make my signature praiseworthy and worth millions?
What if I put my signature in the center of a football field sized canvas and
name it "Football Sig 100.1ZZZ"?

~~~
alasdair_
> What if I put my signature in the center of a football field sized canvas
> and name it "Football Sig 100.1ZZZ”

In all seriousness, a signature of that scale would be art. It’s the ultimate
expression of ego and people may well want to see it, because you had a point
for all that labor involved (even if the point was proving how stupid art can
be).

------
wool_gather
Interesting; I recall seeing a similar discussion or two about "Jackson
Pollock's fluid mechanics" a while back. For example, I found this from 2014:
[https://phys.org/news/2014-11-complex-fluid-dynamics-
techniq...](https://phys.org/news/2014-11-complex-fluid-dynamics-techniques-
jackson.html)

I'm not sure if there's a connection between that and this new paper; perhaps
it's taken a while to get it published?

------
waleham
I honestly don't know why non-photorealistic paintings always inspire this
sort of expressions of disgust. For me, an admitted non-connoisseur, there's
always a tale there of some sort, a little story, and it's enmeshed with the
feeling of the time. So it's referring to a concept and turning it around or
subverting a method or inventing one. I find that enjoyable to see. That idea
of something novel or subverting expectations is not really all that different
in concept from something like
[https://www.reddit.com/r/surrealmemes/comments/88qmx2/half_n...](https://www.reddit.com/r/surrealmemes/comments/88qmx2/half_naked_girls_get_thousands_of_upvotes_how/)
in concept.

As for the other bit: In the end, you're part of it as much as anyone else is.
So if you see nothing there, then there is nothing there for you. So be it.
Onward to the next one. Till you feel emotion evoked. For me, Diebenkorn's
Window makes me feel this longing for this particular life I had briefly. And
that's it for me. I've walked through halls of paintings that are some
repulsive, lots boring, and some just incredibly magnetic. And some of the
'ugly' ones are famous and some of the ones I like aren't and that's it.

------
michalu
To those who claim this technique is "extremely difficult" so would be any BS
"technique" an individual person comes up with according to his own
combination of moves in random sequence ...

The reason why "modern art" is about "abstracts," "concepts" or whatever
dealers and fooled enthusiasts use is because this leaves room for marketing
to BS people into believing it is actually "hard" Just notice the sales copies
are as abstract as some of these BS paintings.

And if that fails you can always use shame "you just don't understand modern
art you pleb" ... and sure just because your scribbles and splashes you tried
at home don't look like Pollock's that doesn't make Pollock's technique any
more "harder" ... I equally doubt Pollock would emulate your scribbles and
splashes ... I doubt any great artist Velasquez or Rembrandt or non-artist
would be able to emulate it either.

It's easy, once you perform a highly repetitive task very high number of
times, you will start to follow a certain pattern as to save brain output.

Thus anyone splashing paints for such a long time would fall into his own
"signature" routine. You don't need to use intellect, deep thought or
inspiration.

And once it's legitimised by "specific foot distance" and nonsense like that
that he (likely entirely randomly) and equations nobody will ever verify you
can safely continue making money not worrying about other BS "artists"
overcrowding the space.

~~~
krsdcbl
While you are correct i think with the observation of "own way of doing it is
hard to emulate and develops naturally by performing it a lot", i see
absolutely no reason to call people like Pollock "BS artists" for it.

------
97b683f8
@those who do not understand and state it is easy to fake a Pollock painting,
read this:

[https://www.collidingworlds.org/how-fractals-science-and-
tec...](https://www.collidingworlds.org/how-fractals-science-and-technology-
helped-to-resolve-a-major-art-scandal/)

I can't copy-paste, but there are a few gems in these pages.

------
HocusLocus
Linked CNN webpage shows only indistinct blur blobs for images/paintings with
Javascript turned off.

Hilarious!

------
blotter_paper

      Jackson Pollock had a quaint
      Way of saying to his sibyl,
      'Shall I dribble?
      Should I paint?'
      And with never an instant's quibble, 
      Sibyl always answered,
      'Dribble.'
    

\--Squeeze Play, by Phyllis McGinley

------
kumarvvr
I am curious as to what an art critic's view of such abstract paintings are.
Like, in what way is Number 17a worth 200 million?

To me all I see is squiggly lines and random colors.

I do enjoy art, but mostly old school art, say Van Gogh. Paintings that depict
expressions, humans, situations, etc.

~~~
WhompingWindows
First off, Van Gogh is not even close to old school, he painted less than 150
years ago. Second, the main reason for high valuations in modern art is
because the artists were well-connected and got to their ideas first. Modern
art is about concepts, not representation of real-life. Thus, you have a blank
white canvas next to the greatest "old school" Van Gogh Monet masterpieces in
NYC and Paris.

Consider, those blank white canvases take very little skill and creativity to
produce. What they are a snapshot of a moment in art where very rich, well
connected artists got to the idea of a blank white canvas as a message
"first." Thus, they staked their flag in the ground and claimed that signpost
in the long road of art history, and their rich, well-connected art selling
friends probably convinced some gullible curators and collectors that those
completely contentless abstractions are somehow valuable.

I'll give Pollock and others their due, that is some very interesting
technique. However, as an oil painter myself, I believe the solid color
canvasses hanging in museums are a slap in the face to the craftsmanship and
sheer genius of the great painters, Pollock included.

~~~
Zeebrommer
Would you count Rothko under the solid colour canvasses? On paper they don't
look like much, but the few that I've seen in real life somehow still really
left an impression on me.

~~~
cromulent
That brought back memories of this great podcast:

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-many-deaths-
of-a-...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-many-deaths-of-a-
painting/)

------
FpUser
I have a very unique way of picking my nose. Just waiting when the scientists
will get around to study it

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

------
droithomme
It's fairly well documented and quite interesting that the only reason Pollock
is acclaimed is that the coked out CIA hatched a long term plan to use
taxpayer funds to bid up the price of the worst and most incoherent art works
they could find in order to somehow confound the Communists. There's no
evidence the Soviets fell for the ruse, but the western public sure did!

[https://medium.com/@MichaelMcBride/how-jackson-pollock-
and-t...](https://medium.com/@MichaelMcBride/how-jackson-pollock-and-the-cia-
teamed-up-to-win-the-cold-war-6734c40f5b14)

[https://www.christopherhallart.com/blog/2015/2/10/jackson-
po...](https://www.christopherhallart.com/blog/2015/2/10/jackson-pollock-and-
the-cia)

~~~
longerthoughts
>the worst and most incoherent art works they could find

Even if either of the sources you cited suggested that the CIA specifically
looked for low-quality art (spoiler: they don't), I'm not sure the CIA
qualifies as the foremost authority on artistic achievement.

