NPR on Rockmore’s Math for Art Attribution

Probably not. But NPR does a good job (click on the player above to listen to the entire story) introducing the concept of Dartmouth math professor David Rockmore’s ideas about using computers to validate attributions.

Rockmore reports in a recent edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the program has been further improved through the use of a different kind of statistical sampling technique. The program determines whether a particular drawing is consistent with an artist’s style. Until now, Rockmore has only tested his program on Bruegel drawings, but he says there is no reason it could not be used for other artists.

While it can identify suspicious works, it cannot definitively prove that they are fake. […] In the end, Rockmore doesn’t see his work as leading to a way to track down forgers but rather as a tool to deconstruct art — a way of describing what it means to be Picasso-like or Bruegel-like. “You get deeper questions about the creation of art, and our experience of art,” he says. “But it’s probably more fun to report on whether or not that’s a fake Bruegel.”

Math Professor Helps Uncover Art Fakes (National Public Radio)