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| Science unmasks Van Gogh fakes |
| August 21 2008 at 09:50AM |
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Vincent van Gogh has inspired young artists and prospective forgers alike to try to recreate his vivid landscapes and portraits. Talk of computer programmes and algorithms typically aren't the forte of artists more comfortable discussing brush strokes and light. Johnson has sought to bridge the divide. His background lends him credibility: he is a professor in electrical engineering and has a minor in art history. He became curious three years ago during a sabbatical about projects that might finally marry his two interests. He found other researchers around the world working on similar projects, then approached the Van Gogh Museum with a proposal: Would it allow them access to its digitised collection, so the scientists could experiment with ways to use technology to help art historians, conservators and connoisseurs? The museum agreed. Hendricks and other experts at the museum had only recently begun scanning its work and dabbling in digital techniques, which in recent years had gained popularity across the industry. A workshop in May 2007 on computer image processing at the Amsterdam museum yielded promising results, according to Johnson. Teams from Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University and Maastricht University in the Netherlands each took different approaches at the workshop. Scientists studied 101 high-resolution scans of Van Gogh paintings provided by the Van Gogh and Kroller - Muller museums in the Netherlands. Of the paintings, 23 had been identified by art historians as authentic works by Van Gogh. The 23 authentic paintings were used by a computer system as a training database for Van Gogh's brush stroke styles. Statistical models were created to capture the unique style, or "handwriting", that became the artist's signature in those scans. Detailed images could be blown up in size, allowing researchers to analyse the intricacies of brush strokes. The other 78 paintings, which were works by Van Gogh or his peers, or paintings at one time attributed to the master but later deemed inauthentic - were compared with the statistical models generated by the 23 authentic paintings. Pennsylvania State University's professor of information sciences, James Wang, and professor of statistics, Jia Li, compiled the findings into an online system that could be used to help sort out discrepancies between authentic and forged paintings. They found that copies tend to have more brush strokes. "Now I come along as a copyist," Johnson said. "I can't do (the original) in one motion because I'm not (Van Gogh), so I strike the brush multiple times to mimic the art." It's a painstaking process that could go unnoticed to the naked eye. But Johnson sees the project as an additional tool - rather than as a replacement - for art experts. "I guess the easiest way to think about it is as a detective at a murder scene," he said. "You have to collect a lot of evidence, but you don't really know which piece of evidence is the one that cracks it open for you. "That's the job, so to speak, of the conservators of the museum. They try to add a whole bunch of other evidence and to make a decision about authentication." Many experts in the field view the technology as more than just a tool for detecting forgeries. A second round of analysis involving more researchers is under way. It looks at techniques such as analysing the thread count on a painting's canvas. Dave Coddington, chief conservator for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, hopes that digital imaging analysis can assist conservation efforts and give students a better understanding of a painter's style. "We are trying to understand the kind of creative process that the artist engaged in," Coddington said. "We are in the early days of what I am expecting will be an important area for researchers." - Sapa-AP
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