Order-Fractal transition in abstract paintings

Abstract

We report the degree of order of twenty-two Jackson Pollock's paintings using \emph{Hausdorff-Besicovitch fractal dimension}. Through the maximum value of each multi-fractal spectrum, the artworks are classify by the year in which they were painted. It has been reported that Pollock's paintings are fractal and it increased on his latest works. However our results show that fractal dimension of the paintings are on a range of fractal dimension with values close to two. We identify this behavior as a fractal-order transition. Based on the study of disorder-order transition in physical systems, we interpreted the fractal-order transition through its dark paint strokes in Pollocks' paintings, as structured lines following a power law measured by fractal dimension. We obtain self-similarity in some specific Pollock's paintings, that reveal an important dependence on the scale of observation. We also characterize by its fractal spectrum, the called \emph{Teri's Find}. We obtained similar spectrums between \emph{Teri's Find} and \emph{Number 5} from Pollock, suggesting that fractal dimension cannot be completely rejected as a quantitative parameter to authenticate this kind of artworks.