Tuesday Open Thread
Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. Many of you, if you’re like me, are nursing your post-holiday food comas. Good holiday though, right?
This story will make you smile. I promise. Just click on the link.
Yes, science is cool. Physicists have studied Jackson Pollock’s paintings and found something interesting.
But first, the newest scientific take on Pollock: Physics Today recently described research by Harvard physicist L. Mahadevan and colleagues who used fluid physics to study Pollock’s style. The researchers wanted to understand how Pollock employed gravity and paint of varying viscosities to make coils, splashes and spots on the canvas.
Among other things, Mahadevan’s team “demonstrated mathematically that the only way Pollock could create such tiny looping, meandering oscillations was to hold his brush or trowel high up off the canvas and let out a flow of paint that narrowed and sped up as it fell. To create tiny loops rather than waves, he likely moved his hand slowly, allowing physics to coauthor his art.”
What’s interesting to me is that the fluid physics used to study Pollock’s art was only developed after Pollock was already finished making his masterpieces. Pollock started doing his trademark paintings in the 1940s. Physicists started working out fluid dynamics in the 1950s and 60s. In other words, Pollock’s use of fluid dynamics to make art predates the ability of physicists to mathematically model the same processes.
Science and art go together well. Museums now employ chemists to determine pigments to help restore paintings. Scientists also use imaging to see behind the paint, and can see how paintings have changed and if there’s another masterpiece behind the paint.
Tags: Open Thread
If you do nothing else, just skim through this article and note the well-selected blockquotes:
GOP Has Been Openly Scamming Dems for 30 Years Now
Presto in Wilmington stood still as the Casey Anthony acquittal was read. Cooks came out of the kitchen, orders stopped.
“Science and art go together well.”
A good example would be UD’s art conservation program.
Not guilty! Nancy Grace is now on a suicide watch.
There were crowds of people at the airport hanging at TVs and lots of gate attendants screaming for people to board. I’d bet that a decent number of people missed flights for being caught up in that stuff.
Thanks for breaking that story to Delawareans–geez–do you think TNJ could mention it in a top story? You have to scroll down to “Moms like Me” to see anything. I guess if it doesn’t break betwwen 2-3am the press is set….for the next 24 hrs. Good work DL!!!
And wow..Baez is now up there I guess w/ Cochran and Kardashian. She better not lose that name in her Rolodex–next to a great plumber.
Sure jason–nancy grace may be on suicide watch, but those parents better be on homicide watch.
Great post from Matt Denn. Worth it for the first paragraph alone – but also for the inside look at government getting good things done.
Thanks, Puck. Denn really is one of Delaware’s most valuable public officials. And that’s a real cool story of something really valuable moving from inception to reality in a brief period of time.
Great article!! Someday, when I’m hopelessly bored, wheelchair bound, or contemplating suicide, I’ll read it.
“Science and art go together well. Museums now employ chemists to determine pigments to help restore paintings…”
Indeed they do. As you pointed out, scientists have been invaluable in the restoration, imaging, and pigment analysis. But that’s about where it ends. To have a team of Harvard scientists try to “understand how Pollock employed gravity and paint of varying viscosities to make coils, splashes and spots on the canvas”, is about a big a waste of time as them trying to analyze that Spin-Art shit that was so popular down on the boardwalk in the 60’s.
Pollock literally threw, brushed, smeared with a spatula, and drizzled random colors of paint in what-the-fuck-ever viscosity it happened to be at the time, with the pattern (should there be one) determined by how much alcohol he swilled the night before, on a horizontal canvas. The images his Oldsmobile (in which he died drunk) left on the asphalt, probably made more sense than his *art*.
The likes of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, etc. perpetrated the biggest fraud on the art world in history. Most of their paintings barely equal that shit you buy in a furniture store to match the drapes and ottoman in your living room. Somewhere, in that great art studio in the sky, those guys are laughing their asses off at the pretentious douche-bags who claim to understand their work.
I can’t wait for the next pack of attention starved scientists to piss away valuable resources, while trying to justify their existence, by researching the fluid dynamics of finger painting, or the gravitational effect on the patterns of a seagull shitting down your sleeve as you try to feed it a french fry on the beach.
And, yes, I’m a fucking art critic, too.
And not an especially cogent one, either.
But then, I guess that what we know here is that you know about as much about art as you do about science, so maybe there was something in this demonstration of ignorance.
But why should you do anything differently?
obBook: The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes
“To have a team of Harvard scientists try to “understand how Pollock employed gravity and paint of varying viscosities to make coils, splashes and spots on the canvas”, is about a big a waste of time as them trying to analyze that Spin-Art shit that was so popular down on the boardwalk in the 60’s.”
The team is most likely grad students, and the lesson isn’t as useless as you might think. It’s a practical problem in fluid physics, one that just happens to be capable of generating publicity.
“Pollock literally threw, brushed, smeared with a spatula, and drizzled random colors of paint in what-the-fuck-ever viscosity it happened to be at the time”
Which makes no difference at all to the canvases as a problem in fluid physics.
The study was done in a way to capture the attention of the public and communicate with them. Fluid dynamics of a pigment-filled latex system makes people’s eyes glaze over with boredom, but studying how Jackson Pollock did his work makes it interesting to a wider audience. It’s really nice when scientists can do something to make their work more accessible to the public. Isn’t it usually a complaint that scientists are too ivory tower?
You should read the article. It isn’t long, but it’s interesting.
You guys actually took that shit serious? Actually, before my brilliant and productive career in public service and law enforcement, I majored in art in college and studied the paintings of some of these scoundrels. I much prefer the realistic work of Edward Hopper, Salvador Dali, Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, most of the Ashcan School group, even some of the French Impressionist like Manet, Monet, Cassatt, Degas, etc. The works of Maxfield Parrish is my favorite. If scientist want to learn something, they should study his painting techniques like his use of light and luminous colors by glazingMy specialty was clay sculpture.
I don’t know jack about science.
You guys actually took that shit serious? Actually, before my brilliant and productive career in public service and law enforcement, I majored in art in college and studied the paintings of some of these scoundrels. I much prefer the realistic work of Edward Hopper, Salvador Dali, Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, most of the Ashcan School group, even some of the French Impressionist like Manet, Monet, Cassatt, Degas, etc. The works of Maxfield Parrish is my favorite. If scientist want to do something worthwile in the world of art, they should study his painting techniques like his use of light and luminous colors by glazing. My specialty was clay sculpture.
I don’t know jack about science.
Sorry about the double post. I hit the send button before I was finished.
I think almost everyone prefers the artists you cited, Mis. But I think it’s fascinating that an art major went into law enforcement. I hope you’re working on an autobiography.