For our deluded Artangel

On 11 Feb 2006 23:29:02 -0800, "artangel"
<cityofimagination@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/weekinreview/12kimmel.html

But for die-hard skeptics, Jackson Pollock is still Jack the Dripper,
American art's first media celebrity painting glorified doodles that
anybody's kid could do.

And for blowhard Kimmelman he's still the cat's ass.

"Last week, in Nature, the British science journal, a
physicist reported he had tested fractal patterns in six paintings
from 24 supposed Pollocks discovered in 2003 by Alex Matter, son of
the artists Herbert and Mercedes Matter, who were Pollock's friends.
The physicist found "significant differences" with known Pollocks. It
turns out anybody could have painted these six pictures - except maybe
Pollock. "

The physicist who claims Pollock's paintings are fractals is a phoney.
They aren't fractals. they aren't self similar. And even if they were
fractals its still a load of drips which if they bore a different
signature would be worthless.

"Such would-be Pollocks aren't necessarily fakes. Many artists
in the 1940's and 50's experimented with drips as private exercises.
With the passage of time, some of the pictures may be innocently
mistaken for originals. "

No kidding! So Pollock isn't original after all! Now at last you heard
it from the NYTimes chief gasbag himself.

"We evaluate artists by how much they are able to rid themselves of
convention, to change history," he said. "Well, I don't know of anyone
since Pollock who has altered the form or the language of painting as
much as he did.
That doesn't matter to grumpy naysayers, for whom 1950's abstraction
remains acceptable only in the form of those asteroid shapes and
squiggly blobs on Formica kitchen countertops."

and the magnified results of bullemia in the toilet!

"--it is nearly impossible to replicate the overall effect of the
great big classic work: the full-scale complex rhythms and overlapping
patterns, the all-over, depthless, balletic and irregular space he
created. "

Sure!

"The more you attempt a full-blown Pollock, the less it will end up
looking like one. Now >fractal science helps prove the point."

For anyone who doesn't know anything about fractals.

Scientific American had a long article on this matter. I found the
article unconvincing.
.