Pinpointing Style

Mathematics is not just numbers and brute force calculation there
is considerable art and elegance to the subject. So it is natural
that mathematics is now being used to analyze artists. styles and
to help determine the identities of the creators of disputed works.
Attempts at measuring style began with literature based on
statistics of word use and have successfully identified disputed
works such as some of The Federalist Papers. But drawings and
paintings resisted quantification until very recently. In the case
of Jackson Pollock, his paintings have a demonstrated complexity to
them (corresponding to a fractal dimension between 1 and 2) that
distinguishes them from simple random drips. A team examining
digital photos of drawings used modern mathematical transforms
known as wavelets to quantify attributes of a collection of 16th
century master.s drawings. The analysis revealed measurable
differences between authentic drawings and imitations, clustering
the former away from the latter. This is an impressive feat for the
non-experts and their model, yet the team agrees that its work,
like mathematics itself, is not designed to replace humans, but to
assist them. For More Information: The Style of Numbers Behind a
Number of Styles, Dan Rockmore, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
June 9, 2006.