Pollock: Artist and physicist?
At a glance, a painting by Jackson Pollock can look deceptively accidental: just a quick flick of color on a canvas. A quantitative analysis of Pollock’s streams, drips, and coils by Harvard mathematician L. Mahadevan and collaborators at Boston College reveals, however, that the artist had to be slow — he had to be deliberate — to exploit fluid dynamics in the way that he did. The finding, published in Physics Today, represents a rare collision involving mathematics, physics, and art history, providing new insight into the artist’s method and techniques, as well as his appreciation for the beauty of natural phenomena. “Our article is mainly an invitation to think about some aspects of art from a scientific perspective,” said Mahadevan, who is the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and of physics. Crossovers between...