\u2018A child could have done that\u2019 is modern art\u2019s most banal criticism, but in the case of Jackson Pollock, the cynics are actually right. <\/p>\n
The US artist of the abstract expressionist movement was the master of the drip painting, where he dribbled, scattered and flung colours onto a canvas laid on the floor. <\/p>\n
A new study has found that Pollock\u2019s style is hard for adults to replicate, whereas children find it\u2026 child\u2019s play. <\/p>\n
Can you tell if a painting was made by a child or an adult?<\/p>\n
And when it comes to the artist, can we reliably tell if an artwork has been created by children or adults? This was the question researchers behind a new Frontiers in Physics study<\/a> wanted to test.<\/p>\n While sceptics saw talentless disorder in Pollock\u2019s paintings<\/a>, the real drive of the artist was to reflect on canvas the controlled mechanics and movements of his body as he painted. <\/p>\n Physicist and artist Richard Taylor and his team delved into this idea by asking 18 children aged four to six, as well as 34 adults aged 18 to 25, to create their own Pollock-inspired artworks<\/a> by splattering diluted paint onto sheets of paper placed on the floor.<\/p>\n These \u2018pour paintings\u2019, as the research team calls them, were then subject to careful mathematical analysis. <\/p>\n The scientists studied the pictures\u2019 fractals – patterns that repeat at different scale sizes such as in trees, clouds, and mountains – and lacunarity, which focuses on variations in the gaps between paint clusters.<\/p>\n Based on this, the paintings were scored for the complexity of their patterns and blank spaces. <\/p>\n The results showed that adults\u2019 paintings<\/a> had higher pattern densities and wider paint trajectories, with lines shooting off in many directions. <\/p>\n Children\u2019s paintings, on the other hand, were characterised by smaller fine-scale patterns and more gaps between paint clusters. They showed simpler, one-dimensional trajectories that changed direction less often, reflecting the differences in their bodies\u2019 movement compared to adults. <\/p>\n Children\u2019s artworks were more similar to Pollock\u2019s paintings<\/p>\n The researchers found that the paintings of the younger group bore more similarity to the artworks of the abstract expressionist school. <\/p>\n \u201cRemarkably, our findings suggest that children\u2019s paintings bear a closer resemblance to Pollock<\/a> paintings than those created by adults,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n The study posits that changes in an artist\u2019s biomechanical balance may be the reason why children can more accurately replicate their work. <\/p>\n Pollock\u2019s balance was impaired by an incident at birth, when he was almost strangled by his own umbilical cord. <\/p>\n This potentially made his body\u2019s movements simpler and more childlike when painting.<\/p>\n \u201cAlong with Claude Monet\u2019s cataracts, Vincent van Gogh\u2019s psychological challenges, and Willem de Kooning\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s condition, art historical discussions of Pollock\u2019s limited biomechanical balance serve as a reminder that conditions that present challenges in aspects of our daily lives can lead to magnificent achievements in art<\/a>,\u201d said Taylor.<\/p>\n Childlike pour paintings are more visually pleasing<\/p>\n The authors of the study also looked at how their adult volunteers\u2019 artworks were perceived by the public. <\/p>\n Viewers were asked what they thought about the paintings\u2019 complexity, visual interest, and pleasantness. The results showed that those paintings with more gaps and less complex fractal patterns were perceived as more pleasant. <\/p>\n