The works of 20th century abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock have graced museums across the globe, history textbooks, and movie screens; they’ve even prompted artists to create copies of his famous drip paintings, insisting that they’re real. Though a household name and highly regarded in the art world, many have wondered: “Is Pollock’s technique random?” “Can’t a child do that?”
Loyola Marymount University Professor Jonas Mureika has spent years studying the mathematics of pour paintings to see what they reveal about the artists who created them. He uses fractal and lacunarity analysis, measuring clusters and the gaps between them, methods that have been used to answer questions in biology, agriculture, and geophysics. Mureika, professor and chair of the Physics Department in LMU Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering, also used these techniques to study galaxy clustering for his dissertation.
“The fractal patterns consistent throughout Pollock’s paintings capture nature itself,” Mureika said. “Nature is inherently fractal.” Pollock’s repertoire connects nature and art, where seemingly random structures can be quantified, telling the observer about the physics that made them and how the structure will evolve over time.
In the most recent iteration of this study, Mureika, colleague Richard Taylor – a professor of physics at the University of Oregon – and a group of physicists and psychologists studied the paintings of children ages 4 to 6 and adults to distinguish whether artistic style is defined by age and how to distinguish paintings made by the two age groups. “We’re asking whether each artist has a unique fractal dimension, or whether the dimension itself defines a style. The answer could help us understand not just Pollock, but how we distinguish between any artists’ work at a mathematical level,” said Mureika.
The scientists invited participants through their “Dripfest” event to paint in Pollock’s distinctive Action Painting style, providing a controlled environment to study the artists’ motions and outcomes on the canvas.
The group found that age and biomechanics create distinct artistic signatures, with factors such as balance, height, and vision producing statistically different patterns. Children produce smaller fractal dimensions – less clustering of fine structures, and larger lacunarity – more gaps between clusters, while adults demonstrate the opposite.
As part of the study, Mureika and his collaborators analyzed Pollock’s “Number 14” alongside the Dripfest paintings. Interestingly, they found that the lacunarity and fractal measurement resembled those in the children’s paintings more closely.
The study also found that the behavioral approaches to making art may differ between children and adults. While the adults in the study may have interpreted the instructions more literally, focusing on completion, children may have aligned with the actual process of Action Painting, rather than just the final result, a hallmark of Pollock as an artist.
While these mechanisms certainly help us understand more about artists, can they be used to authenticate artwork? Mureika emphasizes that while fractal and lacunarity analysis certainly add value to authentication, they should be used to supplement rather than as the only source.
For decades, people have questioned Pollock’s legitimacy, yet his paintings are more complex than they appear when examined mathematically. “Pollock’s genius lies in the way his body, with its particular history, created patterns that consistently captured the mathematics of nature itself,” Mureika said. “Age, balance, how you move through space all leave traces that physics can interpret.”
