sciencetech-blog

comments

His abstract art has been criticised and praised in equal measure for its haphazard use of paint.

But new research has found Jackson Pollock's drip painting may have more in common with the stylised portraits from the Medieval period than first thought.

Researchers used advanced image analysis techniques to assess the colour use, brightness and contrast of nearly 8,800 paintings created between the 11th and 19th centuries.

Jackson Pollock's drip paintings (left) were found to have a lot in common with Medieval art (a painting by Taddeo Gaddi pictured right) due to his use of a limited pallet of colours and lack of blending of pigments

They found that the palette of colours used by artists in Europe has expanded through history, with painters in Medieval Europe producing some of the dullest artworks.

Through each period of history, the paintings showed explosions in the variety and complexity of the pigments and tints used, which coincided with the appearance of artist movements.

The scientists also discovered that artists in each period of history tended to favour a different colour that appears in the majority of work from that time.

It suggests that even great masters, who led many of the great art movements in Europe, were slaves to the fashions of the time.

However, while most art seems to have evolved since the Renaissance to use increasing levels of vibrancy and complex colour use, Jackson Pollock's modern abstract expressionist paintings are more like Medieval art - at least as far as the way they reflect light.

The researchers say that while Mr Pollock deliberately chose a limited palette for his drip paintings, Medieval artists were simply constrained by the materials available to them.

Jackson Pollock created his controversial art during the 1940s by dropping paint onto a canvas, but the stark images he created may actually have more in common with Medieval art than may be apparent at first

The analysis used by the scientists was able to detect the sfumato technique used by Leonardo di Vinci to fade between objects and background in his Virgin and Child (left), along with the chiaroscuro technique to create strong light and dark contrasts, as used in by Rembrandt van Rijin in Minerva In Her Study (right)

The scientists assessed the colour brightness of each painting, like in this example St John the Evangelist Drinking from the Poisoned Cup by Taddeo Gaddi. Brighter colours have a greater height on the Y-axis

Professor Hawoong Jeong, a statistical physicist who led the study at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, Korea, said: 'There is a strong preference in a small number of selected colors in the medieval age.

'The medieval period is close to that of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings where he used limited colors intentionally.

'We find that these mathematical measurements quantitatively describe the birth of new painting techniques and their increasing use. 

'Applying them, it is possible to deduce that the Jackson Pollock's drip paintings are not typical art work, and of course, these are still controversial in the art world.'

The researchers examined digital images of 8,798 western paintings dating from the 11th century to the mid-19th century. 

They divided the paintings into 10 historical periods - Medieval, Early Renaissance, Northern Renaissance, High Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Realism.

They used techniques including chromo-spectroscopy, which treats colours like words and ranks them according to their level of use, and fractal pattern analysis, which looks at the detail contained within the colour.

The study, which is published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that the colour palette among European painters expanded greatly after the Medieval period as new oil paints and pigments were introduced.

Colour brightness and contrast also changed with different styles through the Renaissance, such as sfumato - the gradual fading between object and background used by Leonardo da Vinci - and chiaroscuro - strong contrasts between light and dark used in the 17th century by Rembrandt van Rijin.

Paintings by Pollock Jackson (bottom) used far duller colours than many of the images that were analysed

The scientists used image analysis techniques to study 8,798 European paintings from the 11th century

Among the images they examined were St John the Evangelist Drinking from the Poisoned Cup by medieval Italian painter Taddeo Gaddi, Children's Games by Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by 19th century painter Georges-Pierre Seurat.

Professor Jeong said:  'Using digital image processing techniques, we investigate three quantitative measures of images - the usage of individual colors, the variety of colors, and the roughness of the brightness. 

'We found a difference in color usage between classical paintings and photographs, and a significantly low color variety of the medieval period.

'Rank-ordered color-usage distribution for all periods of paintings show quite universal distribution. However, the most commonly painted color is different for each period.

'One can find the reason why the box counting dimensions for the medieval age and Jackson Pollock are different from others in the historical facts.

'First, specific rare pigments were preferred for political purposes and religious reasons in the medieval age despite their expensive cost. 

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by George Seurat proved particularly challenging to analyse due to his style of building up pictures with dots of primary colour and the scientists showed that he used very few colours

Pollock's paintings used fewer colours than Medieval art and were similar to those of neoclassicism but he used his colours in similar ways to the Medieval painters in terms of the amount of detail and mixing

'Second, no technique of physical mixing between different pure colors was used in that period due to the tendency to emphasize the purity of colors and materials themselves. 

'Artists recoated on a colored canvas to represent various colors in the middle age. 

'The drip paintings of Jackson Pollock are also formed from recoating each single color dripping pattern on other layers, and the number of used colors is smaller than other western paintings before 20th century. 

'Furthermore, oil colors and color mixing techniques were not fully developed until the Renaissance age. 

'The introduction of new expression tools, like pastels and fingers, and painting techniques, such as chiaroscuro and sfumato, made much more colorful and natural expressions possible after the Renaissance period. 

'The difference of fractal dimensions between the medieval and other periods quantitatively may quantitatively reflect the historical facts and the painting technical difference in art history.'

However, Professor Jeong does concede that some of the analysis of the paintings will be affected by the fading of paints and pigments over time, meaning that the medieval pictures may have been more vibrant in the past.