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?
Is there a geometry lesson hidden in ‘The Last Supper’?
Wikimedia Commons
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.
A fern repeats its pattern at various scales.
Michael
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.
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?
Artist Ash Keating, like others, relinquishes final control to the laws of physics and nature.
David Crosling/AAP
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…