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Arts & Communication Identification of Pollock Art

addition to the qualitative analysis of the work of Jackson not capture all information provided in the painting and
Pollock, the drip paintings of Pollock were also analyzed might therefore not provide a complete analysis of the
using quantitative approaches, for analyzing and also art. Another downside of deep neural networks for the
authenticating the art of Jackson Pollock. 5,10-14 The artistic purpose of analyzing art is that the high dimensionality of
and historical value of Jackson Pollock painting is also the paintings requires significant downsampling, and the
reflected by the extremely high monetary value of his downsampling leads to the sacrifice of many of the fine
paintings. For instance, the painting “Number 17” was sold mathematical elements.
by music producer David Geffen for a record-breaking Here, an analysis of multiple numerical image content
amount of US$200 million. Figure 1 shows examples of descriptors was used to identify the unique artistic style of
four of the most iconic paintings of Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock. The analysis was conducted by comparing
Naturally, methods for authentication of Jackson authentic Jackson Pollock’s art to paintings by unknown
Pollock art should rely on characteristics of Jackson artists who attempted to create paintings as similar
Pollock’s drip paintings that are difficult to mimic. While as possible to the authentic drip paintings of Jackson
fractals were identified as one of the unique characteristics Pollock. Because these paintings were made in an attempt
of Pollock’s drip paintings, other elements also showed to resemble authentic Jackson Pollock drip paintings,
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differences between Pollock’s drip paintings and drip differences between these paintings and authentic Jackson
paintings created by other painters. Identifying distinctive Pollock paintings can provide insights regarding the
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elements that differentiate between Pollock drip paintings unique signature style of Pollock. Such analysis can reveal
and non-Pollock drip paintings can be based on methods the unique mathematical elements of Jackson Pollock’s
for automatic painting classification, many of them are artistic style that make Pollock’s paintings different from
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based on deep convolutional neural networks. 16,17 However, careful attempts to mimic Pollock’s work by other painters.
while deep neural networks provide good classification The quantitative analysis can be used to identify the unique
accuracy, they work by a set of complex rules determined aspects of Pollock’s artistic style that are not necessarily
automatically from the data. These rules are non-intuitive visible through visual inspection.
and therefore make it difficult to characterize and profile
the differences between the artistic styles. Furthermore, 2. Data and methods
deep convolutional neural networks mimic the way the 2.1. Data
human vision works by prioritizing the relationship
between neighboring pixels compared to pixels that are The data include authentic paintings of Jackson Pollock that
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located farther apart from each other in the painting. were used in a previous work, and paintings that attempted
While that method is effective for analysis of natural to mimic Jackson Pollock artistic style as carefully as possible
images, art does not merely stimulate human vision, but to make the viewers believe that the paintings were authentic
many other data processing centers in the human brain. 18-22 art created by Pollock. These paintings were provided by
Therefore, using convolutional neural networks might numerous sources for the purpose of authentication of the
paintings as genuine Jackson Pollock. After the publication
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of Shamir, a large number of people contacted the author
A B and proposed that a painting in their possession was an
authentic drip painting of Jackson Pollock. Since 2015, 181
different persons contacted the author with such inquiry.
From these inquiries, 47 also provided an image of the
painting in the resolution of more than 850k pixels, which
was the criterion for analysis of the paintings in Shamir.
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These 47 paintings made the dataset of non-Pollock drip
C D paintings. The purpose of these inquiries was to increase
the monetary value of the paintings and ultimately sell
them. Because these paintings were claimed to be authentic
Jackson Pollock while they are in fact not authentic, these
paintings can be considered fake Pollock.

Although these paintings are considered by their
owners as paintings that were likely created by Jackson
Figure 1. Examples of Jackson Pollock paintings: Number 5 (A), Number Pollock, in this study, they are considered paintings
8 (B), Lavender Mist (C), and Number 31 (D). that attempt to mimic Pollock’s artistic style, but are not

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2024) 2 doi: 10.36922/ac.1628