Thursday, January 07, 2010

F for Fake


BBC News ran an article recently on computer analysis being used to spot "art fakes." In a method similar to the more well-known one of computer analysis of texts (through word frequency, sentence structure, etc.) that was used to pinpoint Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors, the program breaks down paintings into small abstract pieces, then analyzes them for consistency with the rest of the artist's work. But does it work on forgeries of known works, or can it only be applied to "new" works discovered by an artist? That's a question the article doesn't answer.

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