Most people don’t think they go together. I do. A scientist has been examining the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock. Most people who see them think they’re a random mess of splatters which could be duplicated by any 3 year old. But they aren’t - there is a deliberate pattern which can be mathematically described through fractals.

“Pollock was in control,” says Taylor. The large-scale fractals are a fingerprint of the artist’s body motion, he notes. “But the small-scale fractals are also to do with his choices - his height over the canvas, the fluidity of his paint, angle and force behind the trajectory, and so on.”

Taylor also found that the fractal dimension of Pollock’s works - a value that describes the complexity of a fractal pattern - increased through the years as the artist refined his technique. It seems that Pollock was honing his ability to generate fractals a full quarter century before fractal geometry was formally described.

A number of paintings supposedly by Pollock were discovered recently and Taylor has used his system to help determine if they are legitimate. Unfortunately, Taylor’s analysis seems to indicate that they are not the work of Jackson Pollock.