Machine Vision Reveals Previously Unknown Influences Between Great Artists 74
KentuckyFC writes Art experts look for influences between great masters by studying the artist's use of space, texture, form, shape, colour and so on. They may also consider the subject matter, brushstrokes, meaning, historical context and myriad other factors. So it's easy to imagine that today's primitive machine vision techniques have little to add. Not so. Using a new technique for classifying objects in images, a team of computer scientists and art experts have compared more than 1700 paintings from over 60 artists dating from the early 15th century to the late 20 the century. They've developed an algorithm that has used these classifications to find many well known influences between artists, such as the well known influence of Pablo Picasso and George Braque on the Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, the influence of the French romantic Delacroix on the French impressionist Bazille, the Norwegian painter Munch's influence on the German painter Beckmann and Degas' influence on Caillebotte. But the algorithm also discovered connections that art historians have never noticed (judge the comparisons for yourself). In particular, the algorithm points out that Norman Rockwell's Shuffleton's Barber Shop painted in 1950 is remarkably similar to Frederic Bazille's Studio 9 Rue de la Condamine painted 80 years before.
Copyright harassment (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Influence vs. similarity (Score:5, Interesting)
Exaclty...
when i used to do music reviews I'd interview artists and they'd talk about similarity of sound mostly as a function of the type of instrument or accoutrement they used...
Re:Influence vs. similarity (Score:5, Interesting)
The human can only do that if both pictures come to his attention. But there is so much out there that it's almost impossible for someone to be familiar with every piece to the extent they'd be able to recognize them. The computer has infinite patience, it can attend to vast quantities of the most minute details, it has a catalog that doesn't fade with time, and the ability to re-run increasingly sophisticated algorithms as new ideas are brought to bear.
For example, Rockwell's barber shop and Bazille's studio share a few subjects in a few common locations, but it's hard to look at them and say "there was an artistic influence." Rockwell was noted for realistic depictions of idyllic Americana, so any influence there would likely have been the architecture of the setting and the choices of overall composition and balance. Choosing to include a group of three people, an unoccupied chair, and a wood stove, does not seem to imply much more than coincidence. But if you weren't comparing every item in the catalog with every other item in the catalog, you might not have bothered to notice at all.
Which brings us to the real question: how would knowing the answer (or even asking the question) make a difference to the world?