Postma discusses the technology and states how the new digital technology has not been completely accepted by many art experts, historians and connoisseurs. It is an interesting interview, and examines how advances in technology add additional tools against the fight of fakes and forgeries in the markeplace. Postam states there is still a long way to go, and additional artists need to be analyzed, and the algorithms need to be refined before further acceptance within the art community can be considered.
To read the full interview, click HERE.Q. The new techniques are based on computer technology. How can they help distinguish between a fake and the genuine article?
A. An important clue in identifying the artist’s style is the configuration of the brush strokes. Our software is able to break down these brush strokes to find a complex pattern unique to every artist. That is just one of many algorithms we use. We also look at pigment and canvas weave.
Working in cooperation with the Van Gogh Museum and the Kröller-Müller Museum, both located in the Netherlands, we have been able to demonstrate the accuracy of digital analysis. A painting depicting the sea at Saintes-Maries, a Van Gogh fake sold by the German art dealer Otto Wacker, fooled experts for years, but our software easily identified the work as suspect. It had too many prominent brush strokes.
Our methodology was also tested on a U.S. television show, “Nova Science,” where we were easily able to distinguish one fake Van Gogh painting from five genuine works by the artist.
Q. Will digital analysis work on all paintings?
A. We are currently analyzing the works of Rubens, Monet and Gauguin. Provided we have a large enough database of paintings to work from, I see no reason why we could not apply our methods to Old Masters and modern works of art alike.
I was recently asked if we could tell whether a “drip” painting by Jackson Pollock was authentic. Clearly there are no brush strokes to work from here, but Richard Taylor at the University of Oregon performed a fractal analysis of Pollock’s paintings using computer algorithms and succeeded in demonstrating how these algorithms could distinguish a true Pollock from a forgery.
A few artists present challenges. When we started our analysis in 2000, we had trouble authenticating the works of Rembrandt because his paintings are dark and the brush strokes difficult to identify. Technology has improved since then and the digital images that we work from are of a much higher quality.
Ultimately, we would like to come up with an algorithm that goes beyond brush strokes and captures the visual structure of a painting. One art historian refers to the “visual rhythm” of Van Gogh. If we could capture the visual rhythm and other artist-specific features in a software package, it would make the work of art historians much easier.
1 comment:
I think the art world should really embrace this kind of technology. It only stands to benefit the entire community but it cannot advance without more data and further participation.
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