tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/jackson-pollock-9537/articles
Jackson Pollock – The Conversation
2020-01-22T19:03:53Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/130285
2020-01-22T19:03:53Z
2020-01-22T19:03:53Z
James Mollison: the public art teacher who brought the Blue Poles to Australia
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311288/original/file-20200122-117943-2q2uyo.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1026%2C566&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Then prime minister Gough Whitlam and director of the Australian National Gallery James Mollison in front of Blue Poles in 1973.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Pollock-Krasner Foundation. ARS/Copyright Agency</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>James Mollison, the founding director of the National Gallery of Australia, died on Sunday at the age of 88. He was a pivotal force in Australian art collecting, believing Australian galleries should work to educate both the public and our artists. </p>
<p>Mollison was born in Wonthaggi, Victoria, in 1931. When he left school in the late 1940s he approached the National Gallery of Victoria for what we would now call an internship. </p>
<p>He was taken on by Dr Ursula Hoff, who had just been given a permanent position at the NGV as Keeper of Prints after six years on temporary contracts. Mollison wrote in his <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/a-personal-tribute/%22%22">personal tribute</a> to Hoff in 2014:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Many of us at the Australian National Gallery have sought Dr Hoff’s opinion, drawing on a tradition of teaching that I know has continued for forty years.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A great gallery for the nation</h2>
<p>It is a fair bet Mollison attended Sir Kenneth Clark’s lecture on <a href="http://digital.slv.vic.gov.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1579662956773%7E330&locale=en_US&metadata_object_ratio=10&show_metadata=true&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&preferred_usage_type=VIEW_MAIN&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=10&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true">The Idea of a Great Gallery</a> at the NGV on January 27 1949.</p>
<p>The British art historian was a great admirer of Hoff, and her promotion was largely due to his power to make or break careers – his letters supporting her are in the Tate Archive in London. </p>
<p>Clark <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/history/the-gallery-in-wartime/the-gallery-in-wartime?viewPage=4">spent the war years</a> making the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square – founded in 1824 – a truly public space for Britons and others to see and learn about art, despite the Blitz. </p>
<p>In his Melbourne lecture, Clark urged the gallery to purchase experimental work, saying: “[This] seems to me particularly necessary in this country, where you have a young and vital and adventurous school of painting.”</p>
<p>To “guide and stimulate” Australian artists, he said, they needed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] a sight of the best modern work, something which still has about it the thrill of experiment. They are trying to discover a fresh way of seeing, and they must be allowed to study the work of those European and Latin American artists who are doing the same.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Following his informal internship with Hoff, Mollison trained as a secondary school teacher, becoming an education officer at the NGV in 1960. After a short stint at the NGV, he became a bureaucrat with the <a href="http://www.menziescollection.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/biogs/E000085b.htm">Commonwealth Art Advisory Board</a>, working under three prime ministers – Gorton, McMahon and Fraser. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311289/original/file-20200122-117927-1iakdrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311289/original/file-20200122-117927-1iakdrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311289/original/file-20200122-117927-1iakdrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311289/original/file-20200122-117927-1iakdrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=845&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311289/original/file-20200122-117927-1iakdrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311289/original/file-20200122-117927-1iakdrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311289/original/file-20200122-117927-1iakdrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1062&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fred Williams James Mollison 1964-65, etching, engraving, flat biting and mezzotint, printed in black ink, from one copper plate, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Gift of Lyn Williams 2018. Donated through the Australian government’s Cultural Gifts Program.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Estate of Fred Williams</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During this time, it was decided to build a national art gallery in Canberra – a building which had been long advocated for. It is an indication of the respect in which he was held that Mollison was appointed acting director in the 1970s. </p>
<p>Finally, with the endorsement of Fraser, he was confirmed as full director in 1977.</p>
<h2>1973</h2>
<p>1973 was a particularly memorable year for Australia’s accumulation of cultural capital: <a href="https://meanjin.com.au/%E2%80%A2-essay/peevish-paddy-and-sir-neddy-patrick-whites-nobel-prize-for-literature/">Patrick White</a> won the Nobel Prize for literature on the same day <a href="https://theconversation.com/40-years-on-how-gough-whitlam-gave-indigenous-art-a-boost-19749">the Queen opened</a> the Sydney Opera House. </p>
<p>In Canberra, Mollison was authorised by Prime Minister Whitlam to pay A$1.3 million for Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles: then the highest price ever for a contemporary work of American art.</p>
<p>Blue Poles still hangs at the NGA, where it is now speculatively valued at <a href="https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/arts-and-culture/jackson-pollocks-blue-poles-now-worth-350m-20160928-grq3cj">A$350 million</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-looking-at-blue-poles-by-jackson-pollock-51655">Here's looking at: Blue poles by Jackson Pollock</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It seems Mollison was following Clark’s advice to buy experimental art to educate Australian artists. Prior to the opening of the gallery, Mollison also collected works such as <a href="https://nga.gov.au/international/catalogue/detail.cfm?IRN=47761">Woman V</a> by Willem de Kooning, Sidney Nolan’s <a href="https://nga.gov.au/nolan/">Ned Kelly series</a>, and significant works by Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311284/original/file-20200122-117907-1ezkp7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311284/original/file-20200122-117907-1ezkp7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311284/original/file-20200122-117907-1ezkp7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311284/original/file-20200122-117907-1ezkp7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311284/original/file-20200122-117907-1ezkp7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311284/original/file-20200122-117907-1ezkp7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311284/original/file-20200122-117907-1ezkp7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Mollison AO and Robert Hughes AO with Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Pollock-Krasner Foundation. ARS/Copyright Agency</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My research has traced the <a href="https://meanjin.com.au/blog/who-sold-blue-poles-to-australia/">purchase of Blue Poles</a> by Mollison and his colleagues through connections to the London gallerist Bryan Robertson, another of Clark’s proteges, who promoted both Australian artists and Jackson Pollock by exhibiting them at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.</p>
<p>Barely a year after the sale, Robertson was offered the position of associate director of the NGV, given without an interview on the basis of Clark’s reference. However, Robertson didn’t take the post because of his “<a href="https://meanjin.com.au/essays/ern-and-ned-sun-and-sid/">dread, really.</a> Of going off to the other side of the world.”</p>
<h2>After Blue Poles</h2>
<p>The controversy over the price paid for Blue Poles overshadowed Mollison’s directorship, but he continued to acquire both contemporary Australian art and overseas works with what was regarded as a good eye. </p>
<p>In 1990, Mollison left Canberra for the NGV in Melbourne, where he stayed until 1995. </p>
<p>The NGV is now 22nd on the <a href="https://www.museus.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/The-Art-Newspaper-Ranking-2018.pdf">list</a> of the world’s most visited art museums. More than 2.5 million cross its doorstep each year. Despite Blue Poles and the Ned Kellys, the NGA comes in 86th, with 928,000.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311290/original/file-20200122-117927-14yx7ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311290/original/file-20200122-117927-14yx7ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311290/original/file-20200122-117927-14yx7ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311290/original/file-20200122-117927-14yx7ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311290/original/file-20200122-117927-14yx7ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311290/original/file-20200122-117927-14yx7ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311290/original/file-20200122-117927-14yx7ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">James Mollison AO giving a lecture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When I interviewed the American art collector <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-30/daughter-of-art-collector-reunited-with-blue-poles-pollock/6900046">Ben Heller</a> in 2018, he said one major reason why he sold Blue Poles to the Australians was they promised him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No child could graduate [from school] without going to Canberra to see Blue Poles.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even though Mollison started his career as a public art teacher, that promise seems to have been lost – although the painting did tour Australia (complete with armed guard) before being put in storage to wait for its gallery to be built. </p>
<p>The acquisition of Blue Poles divided the art world and the Australian public who paid for it. But certainly it was an educational exercise, which was probably the legacy James Mollison wished to leave.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Rabbitt Roff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The first director of the National Gallery of Australia has died at 88.
Sue Rabbitt Roff, Researcher, Social History/Tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102639
2018-09-11T03:39:26Z
2018-09-11T03:39:26Z
Blue poles 45 years on: asset or overvalued drip painting?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235145/original/file-20180906-190642-4i676c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Visitors look at Blue poles (1952) during its trip to London for an abstract expressionism exhibition in 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Rains/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Blue poles infinitely winding, as I write, as I write.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>– <a href="https://www.lyricsfreak.com/p/patti+smith/blue+poles_20105262.html">Patti Smith</a></p>
<p>Forty-five years ago, the National Gallery of Australia was still a gleam in the eye of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and the yet-to-be-built gallery’s acting director, James Mollison. But in 1973 Mollison’s former boss, Australian art dealer Max Hutchinson, wrote to him from New York, telling him Jackson Pollock’s <a href="https://nga.gov.au/international/Catalogue/Detail.cfm?IRN=36334">Blue poles</a> was for sale. New York property mogul Ben Heller ultimately sold the painting to the NGA for US$1.9 million (then A$1.3m). Unusually, the Australian government as buyer paid the dealer’s fee of A$100,000.</p>
<p>This was the highest price paid for an American art work at the time. Owning this abstract expressionist painting, <a href="https://medium.com/national-gallery-of-australia/painted-by-drunks-24c747844f73">Mollison and his political supporters</a> said, would put Australia on the international art map – and the NGA said it had almost completed its collection of Australian art. You could perhaps see this as the moment Australia transferred its cultural cringe from Britain to the US.</p>
<p>I asked the now 92-year-old Heller recently why he had sold the painting to Australia. “There’s never a simple answer,” he told me. “I was very close to Jackson and out of the blue I got an approach from Max Hutchinson for Blue poles. I was in possession of knowledge where other things might be going, where the major Pollocks were. This was different and would appeal to Jackson [who had died in 1956] because he had his daring side… This place [Australia] was new, different, not likely to have a Pollock.”</p>
<p>Indeed, the purchase, says Heller, was “a mark of Australia joining Western culture”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-looking-at-blue-poles-by-jackson-pollock-51655">Here's looking at: Blue poles by Jackson Pollock</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>An added attraction was that the purchasers were willing to leave the painting on Heller’s apartment wall in New York until the NGA was built (the building was officially opened in October 1982.) This later proved impossible for insurance reasons.</p>
<p>Another attraction may well have been that Heller’s asking price doubled during negotiations with the Australians.</p>
<p>Be that as it may, Blue poles has progressively increased in reputed monetary value over the past 45 years. It was recently reported to have an insurance value of <a href="https://www.afr.com/lifestyle/arts-and-entertainment/art/jackson-pollocks-blue-poles-now-worth-350m-20160928-grq3cj">A$350 million</a>. This figure is often cited to justify the purchase even if the aesthetics offend some and the painting’s provenance has been questioned from the outset. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235147/original/file-20180906-190656-1x9ay5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235147/original/file-20180906-190656-1x9ay5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235147/original/file-20180906-190656-1x9ay5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235147/original/file-20180906-190656-1x9ay5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235147/original/file-20180906-190656-1x9ay5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235147/original/file-20180906-190656-1x9ay5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235147/original/file-20180906-190656-1x9ay5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235147/original/file-20180906-190656-1x9ay5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A postage stamp depicting Pollock at work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1974, a meeting had been convened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington to explore whether Pollock’s mates Tony Smith and Barnett Newman had helped to squeeze paint onto the canvas that became Blue poles. Present were Pollock’s widow, Lee Krasner, and gallerist Bryan Robertson, who had given both Pollock and Krasner their first major showings in London. As the <a href="https://medium.com/national-gallery-of-australia/painted-by-drunks-24c747844f73">NGA website</a> carefully puts it: “The examination revealed that any marks made on the canvas” by those other than Pollock “played no part” in the painting that became Blue poles.</p>
<p>In 2016, Victorian Liberal Senator James Paterson suggested that if Blue poles was worth A$350 million it should be sold to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-07/governments-$350m-painting-should-be-sold-to-reduce-debt/7911882">reduce the national debt</a>. His idea was quickly quashed by many, including his party’s own Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/blue-poles-not-for-sale-mathias-cormann-says/news-story/8a99f6bc010c748f61283d5c8c423910">called Blue poles a “national art treasure”</a>. </p>
<p>(Mind you, as one accountant recently pointed out to me, insurance value of a work of art is often different from the price it might reach on the open market. And upping insurance valuations can markedly increase both premiums and security costs.) </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-looking-at-mike-parrs-jackson-pollock-the-female-65096">Here’s looking at: Mike Parr’s Jackson Pollock the Female</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Interestingly, as early as 1977 Mollison told Art News: “I’m sick of it [Blue poles]. It’s not the sort of painting I ordinarily respond to on a personal level anyway. That isn’t what a museum director’s job is necessarily about.” </p>
<p>He thought that when the NGA finally opened in 1982, “We’ll play it down. It’s just one painting – a picture made by a very ordinary person about which a lot of people showed interest at the time we bought it.”</p>
<p>Rather than playing down the controversial painting, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-30/daughter-of-art-collector-reunited-with-blue-poles-pollock/6900046">in 2015 the then director of the NGA, Gerard Vaughan, said</a> Blue poles was one of the greatest ever American abstract expressionist pictures and had proved to be an excellent purchase.</p>
<p>“It’s the best investment this country has made in anything in my view,” he said.</p>
<p>Still, if it wasn’t for the probably inflated price Australia paid for one of scores of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, it might never have become the crowd-drawer it is. </p>
<p>When I asked Heller what he thought of the sums now being talked about in relation to the painting he sold for US$1.9 million 45 years ago, he roared with laughter. “It’s so expensive I don’t want to discuss it!”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102639/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Rabbitt Roff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The 1973 purchase of Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist painting – at a record price for the time – was a controversial moment in Australian art. Was it worth it?
Sue Rabbitt Roff, Researcher, Social History/Tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/75355
2017-04-28T01:48:41Z
2017-04-28T01:48:41Z
Did artists lead the way in mathematics?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166566/original/file-20170424-12645-1us9bvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is there a geometry lesson hidden in 'The Last Supper'?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci_(1452-1519)_-_The_Last_Supper_(1495-1498).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mathematics and art are generally viewed as very different disciplines – one devoted to abstract thought, the other to feeling. But sometimes the parallels between the two are uncanny. </p>
<p>From Islamic tiling to the chaotic patterns of Jackson Pollock, we can see remarkable similarities between art and the mathematical research that follows it. The two modes of thinking are not exactly the same, but, in interesting ways, often one seems to foreshadow the other.</p>
<p>Does art sometimes spur mathematical discovery? There’s no simple answer to this question, but in some instances it seems very likely.</p>
<h2>Patterns in the Alhambra</h2>
<p>Consider Islamic ornament, such as that found in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Alhambra-fortress-Granada-Spain">the Alhambra</a> in Granada, Spain.</p>
<p>In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Alhambra served as the palace and harem of the Berber monarchs. For many visitors, it’s a setting as close to paradise as anything on earth: a series of open courtyards with fountains, surrounded by arcades that provide shelter and shade. The ceilings are molded in elaborate geometric patterns that resemble stalactites. The crowning glory is the ornament in colorful tile on the surrounding walls, which dazzles the eye in a hypnotic way that’s strangely blissful. In a fashion akin to music, the patterns lift the onlooker into an almost out-of-body state, a sort of heavenly rapture.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166561/original/file-20170424-12468-11uth6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166561/original/file-20170424-12468-11uth6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166561/original/file-20170424-12468-11uth6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166561/original/file-20170424-12468-11uth6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166561/original/file-20170424-12468-11uth6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166561/original/file-20170424-12468-11uth6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166561/original/file-20170424-12468-11uth6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tiles at the Alhambra.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tassellatura_alhambra.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s a triumph of art – and of mathematical reasoning. The ornament explores a branch of mathematics known as <a href="http://www.math.cornell.edu/%7Emec/2008-2009/KathrynLindsey/PROJECT/Page1.htm">tiling</a>, which seeks to fill a space completely with regular geometric patterns. Math shows that a flat surface can be regularly covered by symmetric shapes with three, four and six sides, but not with shapes of five sides. </p>
<p>It’s also possible to combine different shapes, using triangular, square and hexagonal tiles to fill a space completely. The Alhambra revels in elaborate combinations of this sort, which are hard to see as stable rather than in motion. They seem to spin before our eyes. They trigger our brain into action and, as we look, we arrange and rearrange their patterns in different configurations.</p>
<p>An emotional experience? Very much so. But what’s fascinating about such Islamic tilings is that the work of anonymous artists and craftsmen also displays a near-perfect mastery of mathematical logic. Mathematicians have identified <a href="http://www2.clarku.edu/%7Edjoyce/wallpaper/seventeen.html">17 types of symmetry</a>: bilateral symmetry, rotational symmetry and so forth. At least 16 appear in the tilework of the Alhambra, almost as if they were textbook diagrams. </p>
<p>The patterns are not merely beautiful, but mathematically rigorous as well. They explore the fundamental characteristics of symmetry in a surprisingly complete way. Mathematicians, however, did not come up with their analysis of the principles of symmetry until several centuries after the tiles of the Alhambra had been set in place.</p>
<h2>Quasicrystalline tiles</h2>
<p>Stunning as they are, the decorations of the Alhambra may have been surpassed by a masterpiece in Persia. There, in 1453, anonymous craftsmen at the Darbi-I Imam shrine in Isfahan discovered <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070219/full/news070219-9.html">quasicrystalline patterns</a>. These patterns have complex and mysterious mathematical properties that were not analyzed by mathematicians until the discovery of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-maths-behind-impossible-never-repeating-patterns-63801">Penrose tilings</a> in the 1970s. </p>
<p>Such patterns fill a space completely with regular shapes, but in a configuration which never repeats itself – indeed, is infinitely nonrepeated – although the mathematical constant known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-golden-mean-a-great-discovery-or-natural-phenomenon-20570">the Golden Section</a> occurs over and over again. </p>
<p>Daniel Schectman <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2011/shechtman-facts.html">won the 2001 Nobel Prize</a> for the discovery of quasicrystals, which obey this law of organization. This breakthrough forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165892/original/file-20170419-2410-1kdah63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165892/original/file-20170419-2410-1kdah63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165892/original/file-20170419-2410-1kdah63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165892/original/file-20170419-2410-1kdah63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165892/original/file-20170419-2410-1kdah63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165892/original/file-20170419-2410-1kdah63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165892/original/file-20170419-2410-1kdah63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Laser-cut Girih tiles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/38462165@N05/7947938374/in/photolist-d7kgbf-d7kgmS-d7kfMw-d7kfYm-ErSBxS">Cropped from 38462165@N05/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2005, Harvard physicist <a href="http://www.peterlu.org/">Peter James Lu</a> showed that it’s possible to generate such quasicrystalline patterns relatively easily <a href="http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/200905/the.tiles.of.infinity.htm">using girih tiles</a>. Girih tiles combine several pure geometric shapes into five patterns: a regular decagon, an irregular hexagon, a bow tie, a rhombus and a regular pentagon. </p>
<p>Whatever the method, it’s clear that the quasicrystalline patterns at Darbi-I Imam were created by craftsmen without advanced training in mathematics. It took several more centuries for mathematicians to analyze and articulate what they were doing. In other words, intuition preceded full understanding.</p>
<h2>Perspective and non-Euclidian mathematics</h2>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(geometry)">Geometric perspective</a> made it possible to portray the visible world with a new verisimilitude and accuracy, creating an artistic revolution in the Italian Renaissance. One could argue that perspective also led to a major reexamination of the fundamental laws of mathematics. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166562/original/file-20170424-27254-1kmz7kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166562/original/file-20170424-27254-1kmz7kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166562/original/file-20170424-27254-1kmz7kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166562/original/file-20170424-27254-1kmz7kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166562/original/file-20170424-27254-1kmz7kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166562/original/file-20170424-27254-1kmz7kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166562/original/file-20170424-27254-1kmz7kr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In reality, the two rails of the track never meet. But, as they approach the horizon, they seem to converge at a distant ‘vanishing point.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/royluck/6907270089/in/photolist-bwnyKB-pG6At9-5LztEk-Dqj7X-GDAFX-4ZTL23-SbENVy-ogaPpC-e1Dwjc-bo9gu9-5PzHLA-33gApu-pF9sDF-acSa44-5hK5in-qACtXB-9PKymD-qGx43a-bMXqhe-nyJJJb-spzJq-MtykS-QP79iu-pTut5d-pBdudH-bc9FxB-7LZvz-7YSN9X-qJgxd8-gHwBrG-pHk9v6-5am2Et-nzztoQ-pNews5-i6AaTM-8bp1pU-kjRuYs-nwgwVY-pDgiPf-7SgnAg-KmMwd-pvYwn1-6rch3G-5nqaHa-RN46qg-Rreaob-ozVXu3-S3B4av-6AdAJ7-RMjS1L">royluck/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to Euclidian mathematics, two parallel lines will remain parallel into infinity and never meet. In the world of Renaissance perspective, however, parallel lines eventually do meet in the far distance at the so-called “vanishing point.” In other words, Renaissance perspective present a geometry which follows regular mathematical laws, but is non-Euclidian.</p>
<p>When mathematicians first devised non-Euclidian mathematics in the early 19th century, they imagined a world in which parallel lines meet at infinity. The geometry they explored was, in many ways, similar to that of Renaissance perspective.</p>
<p>Non-Euclidian mathematics has since moved on to explore space which has 12 or 13 dimensions, far outside the world of Renaissance perspective. But it’s worth asking whether Renaissance art may have made easier to make that initial leap.</p>
<h2>Pollock’s chaotic paintings</h2>
<p>An interesting modern case of art that broke traditional boundaries – and that has suggestive parallels with recent developments in mathematics – is that of the paintings of Jackson Pollock. </p>
<p>To those who first encountered them, the paintings of Pollock seemed chaotic and senseless. With time, however, we’ve come to see that they have elements of order, though not a traditional sort. Their shapes are simultaneously predictable and unpredictable, in a fashion similar to the pattern of dripping water from a faucet. There’s no way to predict the exact effect of the next drip. But, if we chart the pattern of drips, we find that they fall within a zone that has a clear shape and boundaries. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166563/original/file-20170424-12468-169sst4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166563/original/file-20170424-12468-169sst4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166563/original/file-20170424-12468-169sst4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166563/original/file-20170424-12468-169sst4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166563/original/file-20170424-12468-169sst4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166563/original/file-20170424-12468-169sst4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166563/original/file-20170424-12468-169sst4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Greyed Rainbow’ by Jackson Pollock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ancientartpodcast/8978999917">ancientartpodcast/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such unpredictability was once out of bounds for mathematicians. But, in recent years, it has become one of the hottest areas of mathematical exploration. For example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-chaos-theory-10620">chaos theory</a> explores patterns that are not predictable but fall within a definable range of possibilities, while <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-fractals-10865">fractal analysis</a> studies shapes that are similar but not identical.</p>
<p>Pollock himself had no particular interest in mathematics, and little known talent in that arena. His fascination with these forms was intuitive and subjective. </p>
<p>Intriguingly, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/nature05398">mathematicians have not been able</a> to accurately describe what Pollock was doing in his paintings. For example, there have been attempts to use fractal analysis to create a numerical “signature” of his style, but so far the method has not worked – we can’t mathematically distinguish Pollock’s autograph work from bad imitations. Even the notion that Pollock employed fractal thoughts is probably incorrect.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Pollock’s simultaneously chaotic and orderly patterns have suggested a fruitful direction for mathematics. At some point, it may well be possible to describe what Pollock was doing with mathematical tools, and artists will have to move on and mark out a new frontier to explore.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Adams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Mathematics and art are generally viewed as very different. But a trip through history – from an Islamic palace to Pollock’s paintings – proves the parallels between the two can be uncanny.
Henry Adams, Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History, Case Western Reserve University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/73255
2017-03-31T02:03:41Z
2017-03-31T02:03:41Z
Fractal patterns in nature and art are aesthetically pleasing and stress-reducing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163337/original/image-20170330-4592-1n4ji0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A fern repeats its pattern at various scales.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/evilbu/4576466328">Michael </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Humans are visual creatures. Objects we call “beautiful” or “aesthetic” are a crucial part of our humanity. Even the oldest known examples of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Aesthetics-Rock-Art-Thomas-Heyd/dp/075463924X">rock and cave art served aesthetic</a> rather than utilitarian roles. Although aesthetics is often regarded as an ill-defined vague quality, <a href="https://blogs.uoregon.edu/richardtaylor/">research groups like mine</a> are using sophisticated techniques to quantify it – and its impact on the observer.</p>
<p>We’re finding that aesthetic images can induce staggering changes to the body, including <a href="http://doi.org/10.1162/leon.2006.39.3.245">radical reductions in the observer’s stress levels</a>. Job stress alone is estimated to cost American businesses <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2267-workplace-stress-health-epidemic-perventable-employee-assistance-programs.html">many billions of dollars annually</a>, so studying aesthetics holds a huge potential benefit to society.</p>
<p>Researchers are untangling just what makes particular works of art or natural scenes visually appealing and stress-relieving – and one crucial factor is the presence of the repetitive patterns called fractals.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163375/original/image-20170330-4592-167yg1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163375/original/image-20170330-4592-167yg1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163375/original/image-20170330-4592-167yg1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163375/original/image-20170330-4592-167yg1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163375/original/image-20170330-4592-167yg1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163375/original/image-20170330-4592-167yg1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163375/original/image-20170330-4592-167yg1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163375/original/image-20170330-4592-167yg1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are fractals the key to why Pollock’s work captivates?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Pollock-Black-Paintings/cfc2766621b444ca83c6eb44a7bf651e/1/0">AP Photo/LM Otero</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pleasing patterns, in art and in nature</h2>
<p>When it comes to aesthetics, who better to study than famous artists? They are, after all, the visual experts. My research group took this approach with <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/4675">Jackson Pollock</a>, who rose to the peak of modern art in the late 1940s by pouring paint directly from a can onto horizontal canvases laid across his studio floor. Although battles raged among Pollock scholars regarding the meaning of his splattered patterns, many agreed they had an organic, natural feel to them.</p>
<p>My scientific curiosity was stirred when I learned that <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/thefractalgeometryofnature/benoitbmandelbrot/9780716711865">many of nature’s objects are fractal</a>, 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.</p>
<p>In 1999, my group used computer pattern analysis techniques to show that <a href="https://blogs.uoregon.edu/richardtaylor/files/2015/12/PollockScientificAmerican-2ees1wh.pdf">Pollock’s paintings are as fractal</a> as patterns found in natural scenery. Since then, more than 10 <a href="https://blogs.uoregon.edu/richardtaylor/2016/02/08/fractal-analysis-of-jackson-pollocks-poured-paintings/">different groups</a> have performed <a href="https://blogs.uoregon.edu/richardtaylor/2017/01/04/the-facts-about-pollocks-fractals/">various forms of fractal analysis</a> on his paintings. Pollock’s ability to express nature’s fractal aesthetics helps explain the enduring popularity of his work.</p>
<p>The impact of nature’s aesthetics is surprisingly powerful. In the 1980s, architects found that patients recovered more quickly from surgery when given <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.6143402">hospital rooms with windows looking out on nature</a>. Other studies since then have demonstrated that just looking at pictures of natural scenes can change the way a person’s autonomic nervous system <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es305019p">responds to stress</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163339/original/image-20170330-4557-1tpeqb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163339/original/image-20170330-4557-1tpeqb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163339/original/image-20170330-4557-1tpeqb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163339/original/image-20170330-4557-1tpeqb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163339/original/image-20170330-4557-1tpeqb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163339/original/image-20170330-4557-1tpeqb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163339/original/image-20170330-4557-1tpeqb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163339/original/image-20170330-4557-1tpeqb6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are fractals the secret to some soothing natural scenes?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ronancantwell/5230867503">Ronan</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For me, this raises the same question I’d asked of Pollock: Are fractals responsible? Collaborating with psychologists and neuroscientists, <a href="https://blogs.uoregon.edu/richardtaylor/2016/02/03/human-physiological-responses-to-fractals-in-nature-and-art/">we measured people’s responses to fractals</a> found in nature (using photos of natural scenes), art (Pollock’s paintings) and mathematics (computer generated images) and discovered a universal effect we labeled “<a href="http://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3995-4_30">fractal fluency</a>.”</p>
<p>Through exposure to nature’s fractal scenery, people’s visual systems have adapted to efficiently process fractals with ease. We found that this adaptation occurs at many stages of the visual system, from the way our eyes move to which regions of the brain get activated. This fluency puts us in a comfort zone and so we enjoy looking at fractals. Crucially, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1068/p5918">we used EEG</a> to record the brain’s electrical activity and <a href="http://doi.org/10.1162/leon.2006.39.3.245">skin conductance techniques</a> to show that this aesthetic experience is accompanied by stress reduction of 60 percent – a surprisingly large effect for a nonmedicinal treatment. This physiological change even accelerates <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.6143402">post-surgical recovery rates</a>.</p>
<h2>Artists intuit the appeal of fractals</h2>
<p>It’s therefore not surprising to learn that, as visual experts, artists have been embedding fractal patterns in their works through the centuries and across many cultures. Fractals can be found, for example, in Roman, Egyptian, Aztec, Incan and Mayan works. My favorite examples of fractal art from more recent times include <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Etudes_turbulences_-_L%C3%A9onard_de_Vinci.jpg">da Vinci’s Turbulence</a> (1500), <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa2.jpg">Hokusai’s Great Wave</a> (1830), <a href="http://mathstat.slu.edu/escher/index.php/Escher's_Circle_Limit_Exploration">M.C. Escher’s Circle Series</a> (1950s) and, of course, <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488978?sortBy=Relevance&ft=Pollock&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=3">Pollock’s poured paintings</a>.</p>
<p>Although prevalent in art, the fractal repetition of patterns represents an artistic challenge. For instance, many people have attempted to fake Pollock’s fractals and failed. Indeed, our fractal analysis has <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/439648a">helped identify fake Pollocks</a> in high-profile cases. Recent studies by others show that fractal analysis can <a href="http://doi.org/10.1504/IJART.2015.067389">help distinguish real from fake Pollocks</a> with a 93 percent success rate.</p>
<p>How artists create their fractals fuels the nature-versus-nurture debate in art: To what extent is aesthetics determined by automatic unconscious mechanisms inherent in the artist’s biology, as opposed to their intellectual and cultural concerns? In Pollock’s case, his fractal aesthetics resulted from an intriguing mixture of both. His fractal patterns originated from his body motions (specifically an <a href="http://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-008-1521-7">automatic process related to balance</a> known to be fractal). But he spent 10 years consciously refining his pouring technique to increase the visual complexity of these fractal patterns.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163343/original/image-20170330-4557-1kk2sdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163343/original/image-20170330-4557-1kk2sdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163343/original/image-20170330-4557-1kk2sdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163343/original/image-20170330-4557-1kk2sdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163343/original/image-20170330-4557-1kk2sdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163343/original/image-20170330-4557-1kk2sdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163343/original/image-20170330-4557-1kk2sdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163343/original/image-20170330-4557-1kk2sdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Rorschach inkblot test relies on what you read in to the image.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rorschach_blot_04.jpg">Hermann Rorschach</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fractal complexity</h2>
<p>Pollock’s motivation for continually increasing the complexity of his fractal patterns became apparent recently when I studied the <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2017.21473">fractal properties of Rorschach inkblots</a>. These abstract blots are famous because people see imaginary forms (figures and animals) in them. I explained this process in terms of the fractal fluency effect, which enhances people’s pattern recognition processes. The low complexity fractal inkblots made this process trigger-happy, fooling observers into seeing images that aren’t there.</p>
<p>Pollock disliked the idea that viewers of his paintings were distracted by such imaginary figures, which he called “extra cargo.” He intuitively increased the complexity of his works to prevent this phenomenon.</p>
<p>Pollock’s abstract expressionist colleague, <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/3213">Willem De Kooning</a>, also painted fractals. When he was diagnosed with dementia, some art scholars called for his retirement amid concerns that that it would reduce the nurture component of his work. Yet, although they predicted a deterioration in his paintings, his <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/APEX-OR-DECLINE-The-great-painter-Willem-de-3022569.php">later works</a> <a href="http://www.dekooning.org/the-artist/biography">conveyed a peacefulness</a> missing from his earlier pieces. Recently, the fractal complexity of his paintings was shown to <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161229113520.htm">drop steadily as he slipped into dementia</a>. The study focused on seven artists with different neurological conditions and highlighted the potential of using art works as a new tool for studying these diseases. To me, the most inspiring message is that, when fighting these diseases, artists can still create beautiful artworks.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163377/original/image-20170330-4576-1gise5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163377/original/image-20170330-4576-1gise5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163377/original/image-20170330-4576-1gise5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163377/original/image-20170330-4576-1gise5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163377/original/image-20170330-4576-1gise5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163377/original/image-20170330-4576-1gise5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163377/original/image-20170330-4576-1gise5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163377/original/image-20170330-4576-1gise5y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Recognizing how looking at fractals reduces stress means it’s possible to create retinal implants that mimic the mechanism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/detailed-photo-halved-backlit-blue-shell-98024468">Nautilus image via www.shutterstock.com.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My main research focuses on <a href="https://around.uoregon.edu/content/uo-idea-bio-inspired-implant-wins-900000-grant">developing retinal implants to restore vision</a> to victims of retinal diseases. At first glance, this goal seems a long way from Pollock’s art. Yet, it was his work that gave me the first clue to fractal fluency and the role nature’s fractals can play in keeping people’s stress levels in check. To <a href="http://www.iop.org/news/11/april/page_50684.html">make sure my bio-inspired implants induce the same stress reduction</a> when looking at nature’s fractals as normal eyes do, they closely mimic the retina’s design.</p>
<p>When I started my Pollock research, I never imagined it would inform artificial eye designs. This, though, is the power of interdisciplinary endeavors – thinking “out of the box” leads to unexpected but potentially revolutionary ideas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Taylor receives funding from The Australian Research Council, The Research Council for Science Advancement, and The WM Keck Foundation.</span></em></p>
Fractals are patterns that repeat at increasingly fine magnifications. They turn up in the natural world and in artists’ work. Research suggests they contribute to making something aesthetically appealing.
Richard Taylor, Director of the Materials Science Institute and Professor of Physics, University of Oregon
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65820
2016-09-23T09:55:47Z
2016-09-23T09:55:47Z
Abstract Expressionism: how New York overtook Europe to become the epicentre of Western art
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138676/original/image-20160921-21689-h9bbl3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=764%2C15%2C3065%2C2209&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jackson Pollock, Blue poles, 1952.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new exhibition, <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/abstract-expressionism">Abstract Expressionism</a>, opens at London’s Royal Academy this weekend. It is the first major survey of the movement since 1959. Abstract expressionism is often considered the first artistic movement to shift the centre of Western art from Europe to the US, and more precisely New York. But what is it, and how did this happen?</p>
<p>Associated with a group of artists working in New York in the 1940s, abstract expressionism came to be known as the quintessential American and modern art movement. Heirs to the progressive abandonment of figurative and naturalist painting styles that had been taking place in Europe since the early 20th century, the painters associated with the movement came to be known for their innovative use of new synthetic industrial paints, large scale canvases, and the development of very individual abstract styles. </p>
<p>Some of the most easily identifiable include Franz Kline’s quick and simple brushstrokes, at times likened to Japanese calligraphy; the drips and rapid splatters of Jackson Pollock; Robert Motherwell’s large repeated ovals and rectangles; and Mark Rothko’s large blocks of colour. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138952/original/image-20160923-2584-17p0cj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138952/original/image-20160923-2584-17p0cj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138952/original/image-20160923-2584-17p0cj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138952/original/image-20160923-2584-17p0cj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138952/original/image-20160923-2584-17p0cj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138952/original/image-20160923-2584-17p0cj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138952/original/image-20160923-2584-17p0cj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Franz Kline, Vawdavitch, 1955.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© ARS, NY and DACS, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite often being seen as “childish” painting that “anyone could do”, abstract expressionism has a history that is more interesting than we might suspect at first. Because the emergence of the movement in the 1940s and its internationalisation in the 1950s wasn’t only due to the work of its artists. It was also due to both the art criticism and political environments of its time. So much so that we cannot think abstract expressionism without considering the work of critics such as <a href="http://www.theartstory.org/critic-greenberg-clement.htm">Clement Greenberg</a> and the role of art as a cultural weapon during the Cold War. </p>
<h2>A European story</h2>
<p>Writing at the same time as the abstract expressionists were developing their signature styles, Greenberg became the critic that most famously endorsed the movement. He <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VKEUvHQZVhUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">claimed</a> it represented the most “advanced” form of Western art. To justify this, Greenberg looked at the work of older European artists such as Manet, Monet, Cézanne and Picasso, arguing that European painting had been progressively moving away from representations of the three-dimensional world outside. According to him, this was also accompanied by a progressive flattening of the pictorial space. </p>
<p>Greenberg argued that this showed an increasing concern with investigating the potential and limitations of the elements that belonged exclusively to the medium of painting: a flat canvas with specific dimensions (length and width) upon which paint is applied. All historic examples of paintings that give the impression of three-dimensional space on canvas, all painting that tries to mimic the world outside of it, were, for Greenberg, paintings that tried to conceal their true nature. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138953/original/image-20160923-29882-1pg41lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138953/original/image-20160923-29882-1pg41lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138953/original/image-20160923-29882-1pg41lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138953/original/image-20160923-29882-1pg41lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138953/original/image-20160923-29882-1pg41lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138953/original/image-20160923-29882-1pg41lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138953/original/image-20160923-29882-1pg41lf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Rothko, No. 15, 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko ARS, NY and DACS, London</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is crucial here is that, by producing this narrative of European art, Greenberg was able to claim that, for the first time ever, the most “advanced” form of Western art was no longer being produced in Europe but instead in New York. For him, it was painters like Pollock, Motherwell, De Kooning, Rothko, Kline, and Newman that were now, thanks to the new abstract languages they were developing, carrying on the work that had begun with the European avant-gardes. European artists, he argued, had not been able to carry this to completion, due, in part, to the weight of tradition, something that America did not have to carry. </p>
<p>So it was in large part due to critics like Greenberg, but also collectors like Peggy Guggenheim, and curators like MoMA’s Alfred H Barr, that abstract expressionism eventually gained momentum among the art glitterati of New York in the 1950s, despite never being popular among the wider American public.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138955/original/image-20160923-29905-o5l53z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138955/original/image-20160923-29905-o5l53z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138955/original/image-20160923-29905-o5l53z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138955/original/image-20160923-29905-o5l53z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138955/original/image-20160923-29905-o5l53z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138955/original/image-20160923-29905-o5l53z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138955/original/image-20160923-29905-o5l53z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lee Krasner. The Eye is the First Circle, 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© ARS, NY and DACS, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cold War art</h2>
<p>But there is also politics to consider. Abstraction had been allowed to thrive in part due to the earlier sponsorship of Franklin Roosevelt’s <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/1934-the-art-of-the-new-deal-132242698/?no-ist">New Deal</a>, which saw an incredible amount of government funds being used to directly employ artists and commission new public artworks in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Most of the works funded by that programme were American regionalist paintings and large social realist murals. But some of the funds were also used to support the early work of some of the artists whose career would eventually progress towards what came to be known as abstract expressionism.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138954/original/image-20160923-29882-10p8yie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138954/original/image-20160923-29882-10p8yie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138954/original/image-20160923-29882-10p8yie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138954/original/image-20160923-29882-10p8yie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138954/original/image-20160923-29882-10p8yie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138954/original/image-20160923-29882-10p8yie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138954/original/image-20160923-29882-10p8yie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Willem De Kooning, Woman II, 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2016 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London 2016</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But perhaps one of the most iconic contributors to the dissemination of the movement as the culmination of Western art history was the Cold War. In the 1950s, at the peak of the ferocious anti-Communist sentiment of the McCarthy era in the US, the agendas of institutions like MoMA in New York and critics like Greenberg converged with the political interests of the CIA. Such convergence led to a series of exhibitions that would tour Europe during the Cold War years. The most famous of those was MoMA’s <a href="https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/2342/releases/MOMA_1958_0025.pdf?2010">The New American Painting</a>, which came to Europe in 1958-59. This show was responsible for bringing abstract expressionism to all major European capitals, including West Berlin. </p>
<p>Whether or not these exhibitions were funded or facilitated by the CIA, as some have <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html/">convincingly argued</a>, they were certainly responsible for cementing the perception of America as the legitimate heir of European aesthetic and political values. Against a USSR perceived as totalitarian and oppressive, with state-sanctioned socialist realism coming across as kitsch and formulaic propaganda, abstract expressionism, with its variety of individual voices and painterly styles, would eventually become a symbol of the autonomy, liberty and creative freedom allegedly enjoyed by all in the West. These were values that, from then on, became manifest in the generalised perception of the US as the ultimate beacon of Western culture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>João Florêncio receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is affiliated with the Labour Party.</span></em></p>
This quintessential modern art movement couldn’t have gained precedence without the work of critics – and the Cold War.
João Florêncio, Lecturer in History of Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, University of Exeter
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/51655
2015-12-09T19:11:09Z
2015-12-09T19:11:09Z
Here’s looking at: Blue poles by Jackson Pollock
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why is this seemingly unintelligible mess of house paint revered as a masterpiece? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Detail: Jackson Pollock. Blue poles. 1952. © Pollock-Krasner Foundation/ARS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>So, what is the story with Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles? </p>
<p>You know the painting – that big canvas, more than two metres high and almost five metres wide, spattered with paint like a decorator’s ground sheet. </p>
<p>It was painted in 1952 and now hangs proudly in the National Gallery of Australia, which bought it back in 1973. At the time, Sydney’s <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1574649">Daily Mirror</a> ran the front-page headline: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Barefoot drunks painted our $1m masterpiece. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gough Whitlam’s government had, in fact, paid <a href="http://www.webcitation.org/6Bqw47TKH">$A1.3 million for the painting</a>, or just under A$11.5m in today’s money. But why is this seemingly unintelligible mess of house paint revered as a masterpiece? </p>
<p>Have we all been duped? Or is there something more interesting happening? Maybe we just need to ask the right questions? </p>
<p>I recently wrote an article for The Conversation about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-questions-not-to-ask-about-art-and-four-to-ask-instead-29830">wrong questions to ask of art</a>, which are: </p>
<ol>
<li>Why is that art?</li>
<li>What is it meant to be?</li>
<li>A four-year-old could do that, couldn’t they?</li>
</ol>
<p>If ever there’s an artwork that that provokes such dead-end questions, it’s Pollock’s Blue poles. Those questions don’t lead us to anything new or open up our understanding of art. </p>
<p>Instead, I suggested <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-simple-steps-to-understand-art-look-see-think-33020">three different questions to ask</a> when we’re trying to understand art: </p>
<ol>
<li>Look: what is there in front of you, such as the material the artwork is made of?</li>
<li>See: what is being represented, if anything, in the work’s “iconography”?</li>
<li>Think: what are the contexts of the work, such as who created it, when, and what was happening in art and the world at the time?<br></li>
</ol>
<p>So, let’s apply those steps to Blue poles (click on the top-right of the image to get a larger view): </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105030/original/image-20151209-3285-1i1zkt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jackson Pollock. Blue poles. 1952. Oil, enamel, aluminium paint, glass on canvas. 212.1x488.9cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Purchased 1973.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Pollock-Krasner Foundation/ARS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Start with your eyes</h2>
<p>Look: </p>
<p>Literally, what is in front of you? Just say what you see. OK, it’s a painting. It’s made of paint, splashed on a canvas. How does it look? The paint has been thrown randomly onto the canvas, not applied carefully with a brush. </p>
<p>There’s dripped lines of light blue paint, red, green, silver and, in fact, there’s a bare footprint visible on the top right. And there are eight blue pole-like lines down the canvas, at different angles to each other. </p>
<p>See: </p>
<p>Usually for this second step I suggest then having a crack at interpreting what is there in front of us, unpacking the symbols we recognise – that is, the “iconography”. But hold on a minute – Blue poles is completely abstract. </p>
<p>There are some pole-like shapes, and that footprint, but the rest is just wild, crazy shapeless splats that don’t represent anything, right? OK, park this information for a second, and move onto the last step. </p>
<p>Think: </p>
<p>This step is where you, the viewer, have to plug in your brain and do some work. Don’t think of looking at art as like watching the TV. It’s more like doing a crossword puzzle or Sudoku – it is work, but it’s fun.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105014/original/image-20151209-3276-1qz299z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105014/original/image-20151209-3276-1qz299z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105014/original/image-20151209-3276-1qz299z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105014/original/image-20151209-3276-1qz299z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105014/original/image-20151209-3276-1qz299z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105014/original/image-20151209-3276-1qz299z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105014/original/image-20151209-3276-1qz299z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105014/original/image-20151209-3276-1qz299z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jackson Pollock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s about taking those clues that you’re presented when you “look” and “see”, and then applying some creative interpretive thinking to them. </p>
<p>Interpretation, of course, doesn’t mean that any explanation is right regardless of how wacky. It means you have to consider what is plausible. </p>
<p>We have to consider what was happening in the world in which the work came about, and in the artist’s life, to find the clues.</p>
<p>The first thing to ask is: who is the artist? What do we know about them? In this case, even if it’s just “Jackson Pollock was a drunk”, we have something to work from. </p>
<p>But hey, this isn’t a test – so cheat.</p>
<p>Skim-reading Wikipedia, we can see he was an “Abstract Expressionist”, he painted canvases flat on the floor, and he was a reclusive who underwent psychoanalysis to treat his alcoholism. Now you’ve got some context. </p>
<p>So, let’s put it all together. </p>
<h2>What was Pollock trying to do?</h2>
<p>Blue poles is a painting, but not a conventional “easel painting”. </p>
<p>The footprint and the paint not running down the canvas tell us it was painted flat on the floor. It was not made with brushes or intended to represent identifiable things in the world. </p>
<p>Clearly, Pollock rejected that historical idea of painting – the small canvas on the easel on which paint is arranged to look like a real thing, like a landscape or a bowl of flowers. </p>
<p>You’ll hear Pollock was an “Abstract Expressionist”, which might sound like art-speak, but often names of historical art movements – those “isms” – are pretty literal: Conceptualism – its about concepts; Impressionism – it’s about an impression of a scene; Futurism – it’s about modernity; Hard-Edge Abstraction – oh, come on. </p>
<p>Unpack the phrase “Abstract Expressionism”: “Abstract”, well, this is certainly abstract art; “Expressionist” surely means it’s about expressing something; that is, an outpouring of something internal, such as an emotional or psychological state. </p>
<p>So, the lack of recognisable symbolism in Blue poles is deliberate. Much of Pollock’s work was about externalising his seemingly troubled internal states. </p>
<p>He was interested in Jungian psychoanalysis, which is based on ideas of a “collective unconsciousness” that all humans share. </p>
<p>Pollock’s erratic splashes of paint are intended to communicate to us the way he was feeling and thinking at the time he made the painting. </p>
<p>Even the blue “poles” on the canvas, which are the only ordered part of the painting, are smashed onto the surface, vertical but at different angles. </p>
<p>If you investigate further, you’ll find that Blue poles has quite a story behind it. According to Stanley Friedman, writing in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2ViBTC5bIfYC&pg=PA48&dq=Loopholes+in+%27Blue+Poles%27&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjh7-Pj8s3JAhVFNJQKHfxNB5EQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=Loopholes%20in%20'Blue%20Poles'&f=false">New York magazine</a> in 1973, Pollock’s friend Tony Smith had arrived at Pollock’s studio and found him severely depressed, so Smith started the painting to distract the artist from his suicidal thoughts. </p>
<p>Both Pollock and Smith got extremely drunk during the painting session, and by the end of the evening they were smashing glass on the canvas and treading it in with their bare feet. </p>
<p>That’s where the footprint comes from. You can see shards of broken glass on the canvas if you see the actual painting. And no doubt there’s some blood in there somewhere. </p>
<p>(It’s worth noting that Smith takes no credit for Blue poles; he only claims to have started the painting process.)</p>
<p>Lindsay Barrett’s book, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/900602.The_Prime_Minister_s_Christmas_Card">The Prime Minister’s Christmas Card</a> (2001), discusses the controversy of when Blue poles was bought by the National Gallery of Australia. Barrett argues that in the early-1970s the painting came to symbolise for supporters the Whitlam Government’s progressive, politically modernist government, while detractors saw it as emblematic of the extravagant fiscal wastefulness of Whitlamism. </p>
<p>Whitlam himself defended the purchase, saying Blue poles was “a masterpiece”, and the Daily Mirror’s headline about drunks painting “our $1m masterpiece”, seemed to be mocking this endorsement by Whitlam. </p>
<p>The newspaper story accused Whitlam and other supporters of the purchase as creating an Emperor’s New Clothes scenario. </p>
<h2>Is it a masterpiece?</h2>
<p>From an art historian’s point of view, whether or not Blue poles is a “masterpiece” depends mostly on how you regard Pollock and Abstract Expressionism. Certainly Pollock was a legend in his own lifetime, and Blue poles was produced at the height of his career. </p>
<p>In August 1949, <a href="http://www.theslideprojector.com/pdffiles/art1/pollockarticle.pdf">LIFE</a> magazine asked, “is he the greatest living painter in the United States?”, and in 1951, the year before Blue poles was painted, Vogue magazine used his paintings as a <a href="http://www.marjoleinlammertsvanbueren.com/beaton-pollock-the-new-soft-look-1951/">hip and happening backdrop</a> to one of its fashion spreads. </p>
<p>The historical significance of Blue poles is indisputable; whether any artwork is “great” or a “masterpiece” is debatable.</p>
<p>Others have also considered different and interesting aspects of Blue poles. Richard Taylor, Director of the Materials Science Institute at The University of Oregon, has studied the painting as an example of <a href="http://materialscience.uoregon.edu/taylor/art/fractal_taylor.html">chaos theory and fractals</a>. </p>
<p>He argues that Blue poles is an example of a fractal pattern – that if we examine the drips closely, we see the basic form of the whole repeated. </p>
<p>In fact, Taylor actually claims that the aesthetic pleasure we might get from looking at Blue poles is a result of its chaotic forms, and the way that this resonates with a basic human preference for the chaos of nature over the order of culture. </p>
<p>It’s an interesting and, from an art theory point of view, potentially problematic argument – but it does illustrate how interesting interpreting art can be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kit Messham-Muir does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Gough Whitlam’s government paid $A1.3 million for Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles in 1973. But why exactly is this ‘seemingly unintelligible mess of house paint’ revered as a masterpiece?
Kit Messham-Muir, Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24723
2014-03-24T19:17:25Z
2014-03-24T19:17:25Z
Nature makes abstract visual art more captivating
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44541/original/nhz26cdm-1395635726.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Artist Ash Keating, like others, relinquishes final control to the laws of physics and nature.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Crosling/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s a two-storey <a href="http://www.blog.nodecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Ash-Keating-West-Park-Proposition-2012-photo-Greta-Costello-copyright-the-artist.-_photo-039.jpg">warehouse wall</a> in Melbourne’s western suburbs where man-made concrete uniformity has been transformed. On this enormous vertical surface is a complex, apparently natural scene that has no clear structure but nonetheless seems alive with meaning.</p>
<p>The Melbourne artist who created this, <a href="http://www.fehilycontemporary.com.au/pages/ash-keating/">Ash Keating</a>, flings, squirts, or otherwise projects paint to a given surface from a distance. It’s a method reminiscent of American painter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock">Jackson Pollock</a>, but bigger. Like Pollock, Keating relinquishes the final control of the medium to the laws of physics and nature. The outcome – created by both artists – is a complex texture that’s both abstract and representative at once.</p>
<p>The questions are, could textures like these be created as effectively without the help of the laws of nature, and why, when nature is involved, are they so captivating? </p>
<p>There is growing <a href="http://ecvp2014.org/vsac/">scientific interest</a> in the methodology of these artists. Their work offers great insight into how the brain works and contributes to our understanding of the brain as much as any other data.</p>
<h2>Your brain is a slave to sense</h2>
<p>In the footsteps of the great painters of the last 500 years – Vermeer, Turner, Picasso, Cezanne, Riley and Richter to name a very few – art and artists are with science and scientists on the brink of what we know and what we do not.</p>
<p>The brain is a slave to sense: its job is to decide whether what comes in from its sensory apparatus is useful or not, and combine that with its ongoing activity with a result that is adaptive and functional. The eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin act as translators from the external world into the internal – all external stimuli (or energies) become one, an electrochemical signal carried by neurones.</p>
<p>As far as vision is concerned, everything we see in daylight starts off as the output of <a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/colcon.html">three cone types</a> that vary over the two dimensions of space of each retina, and over time. That powerful sense of depth we experience, the third dimension of space, is constructed from many cues but never explicitly represented in the input. Renaissance artists understood this well as they started to play with perspective, long before science had an answer.</p>
<p>At the level of the retina, the visual world you experience is in its most fragmented form; from then on the process is one of (re)construction. Your reality is truly your own and no one else’s, and this is where the artist holds sway on insight.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44540/original/yzk9zywz-1395635622.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44540/original/yzk9zywz-1395635622.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44540/original/yzk9zywz-1395635622.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44540/original/yzk9zywz-1395635622.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44540/original/yzk9zywz-1395635622.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44540/original/yzk9zywz-1395635622.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44540/original/yzk9zywz-1395635622.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44540/original/yzk9zywz-1395635622.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A visitor looks at Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles through the new ‘Impressionism to Pop Art’ gallery at the National Gallery in Canberra, 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Porritt/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The kinds of textures created by Pollock and Keating have a great deal of similarity to those textures we see in nature; clouds, waves and forests. These are the stimuli the brain has evolved to deal with, to make sense of. So when presented with such a texture the extraction of some meaning seems to be so much easier. </p>
<p>How often do you see something in the clouds despite there being nothing there; or hear your name in the babble of a crowd? The slave to sense will create it.</p>
<p>The 20th-century German artist <a href="http://www.gerhard-richter.com/biography/">Gerhard Richter</a> approaches this slightly differently but the outcome is much the same; he blurs <a href="http://www.gerhard-richter.com/literature/detail.php?261">much of his work</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>to make everything equally important and equally unimportant – Richter, Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters, 1961-2007. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The effect of this is to make the texture not only come closer to that of nature but also to overcome the (over)importance of edges and borders; to make everything equal and allow the viewer’s brain to impose its own structure on the work.</p>
<h2>Your brain interprets music much like nature</h2>
<p>It is not just in vision that we appreciate this device. English composer <a href="http://brian-eno.net/lux/">Brian Eno</a> expressed in the liner notes of his 1978 album <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfKcu_ze-60">Ambient 1: Music for Airports</a> that while:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. – Eno, 1978.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The doubt and uncertainty is exactly what the brain thrives on to create the richness in meaning that is so captivating and so calming. “A space to think,” in Eno’s terms, “as ignorable as it is interesting”.</p>
<p>A particularly intriguing example of this approach is the contact microphone <a href="http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touch_radio_96.html">recording</a> of an Icelandic antenna in the sun and wind by London-based sound artist <a href="http://www.ainotytti.com/">Aino Tytti</a>. It is haunting and melodic. The song of weather on steel is utterly entrancing.</p>
<p>All of this suggests that we have, indeed we are, the product of a brain that is exquisitely sensitive to its inputs and finely tuned to extract meaning from the natural world. </p>
<p>Since it is, itself, part of that natural world both in its structure and its action, it even makes sense of its own pseudo-random activity which results in a dream; convincing and powerful, a reality until the moment we wake. </p>
<p>This dream is the hallucination we all have regularly and only a small step away from an hallucination some involuntarily have when awake. One of the side-effects of a slave to sense is that it will make sense when there is nothing there, and that for some can be very distressing.</p>
<p>So next time you experience something in the clouds, or a painting, or a dream, or a crowd, even when you’re sure it’s not there, know that it is just part of the experience that is you, a natural system responding to another natural system.</p>
<p>It is, as the late English author Douglas Adams put it in <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/365.Dirk_Gently_s_Holistic_Detective_Agency">Dirk Gently’s Holisitic Detective Agency</a> (1991):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. </p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24723/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Cropper has in the past received funding from The Australian Research Council and the Wellcome Trust (UK).</span></em></p>
There’s a two-storey warehouse wall in Melbourne’s western suburbs where man-made concrete uniformity has been transformed. On this enormous vertical surface is a complex, apparently natural scene that…
Simon Cropper, Academic neuroscientist, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.