Potentially spelling trouble for art forgerers, scientists are developing computer programs to detect the artistic fingerprints of painters. The so-called "digital stylometry" could uncover whether artworks are legitimate.
According to Dartmouth College's Daniel Rockmore, who spoke to journalists today at the AAAS meeting, the technology will be tested at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Scientists will see if software can detect tell the difference between real and fake Van Gogh paintings.
This made me wonder: Could such software find similarities between artists who suffer from mental disorders?
Might painters with, say, schizophrenia reveal a pattern in their paintings that had otherwise been overlooked?
Art historians, of course, have long been interested in the question of illness. They've wondered, for instance, if Van Gogh had epilepsy because of the halos around some of people in his portraits.
The answer: Maybe. Rockmore told me that the technology may be able to detect similarities in any class of works that share something in common. But don't get your hopes up. "If we wanted answers, it would require funding that doesn't exist," said art historian Ellen Handy of City College of New York.
(The painting, by the way, is "Skull with Cigarette" by Van Gogh himself.)
