A perfectly straight line has fractal dimension equal to one, while a square region has fractal dimension equal to two. Now, imagine a shape where as you crank up the magnification, that sort of "misbehavior" is replicated: You've got yourself a true fractal. The crinklier a line is, the more space it occupies in a box that surrounds it. British mathematician and polymath, Lewis Fry Richardson, was Mandelbrot's inspiration for the quantification of this irregularity in terms of its "fractal dimension," a number that effectively measures the complexity of a shape in terms of the degree to which it fills space at a given scale. A famous example of a natural fractal is the irregular outline of the coast of England, which is, to a degree, replicated in any stretch of shore beneath the cliffs of Dover. This is a piece ofthe connection between chaos and fractal geometry-the chaos that we now know colloquially in the metaphor ofthe hurricane in Texas generated by the flapping wings of the butterfly over China is a phenomenon that when put into mathematical pictures (not unlike those that can be seen on The Weather Channel) give images that exhibit this sort of self-similarity. The crags of a mountain range are replicated in the nooks and crannies of the stones that comprise them, or the eddies of a turbulent river flow are themselves composed of eddies within eddies, within eddies. Mandelbrot noticed that the character of such natural phenomena was a similarity in scale-that at each increase in magnification, the structures of nature, complicated though they are ("fractal" is derived from the same root as fragment and fracture), repeat themselves, maybe not precisely, but to a degree that can be quantified. The perfect lines, planes, and spheres of Euclidean geometry are Platonic abstractions, good for a first approximation to things like coastlines, landscapes, and clouds, but clearly fall short at describing the variation ofthe natural world.
The word "fractal" was coined in 1967 by the IBM mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot to encompass the geometric character of natural objects. He brings a physicist's eye to the arts, and in the case of Pollock, it has been a perfect storm of art and science that has enabled Taylor to find his own research in the works of this abstract expressionist master-the "chaos" for which one critic famously denounced Pollock's work in the 1950s is something that Taylor saw quite literally as the mathematics of fractal geometry. He had taken a year's leave at one point in his career to devote himself to his own painting, but after a year decided that he was better off not quitting his day job. He is mainly interested in the work, as both a scientist and anartist. Taylor's investigation shave not been driven by questions of provenance (although due to the frequent requests for authentication he has set-up a non-profit company to manage this work as well as to protect himself in the case oflaw suits). Multiscale analysis is also at the heart of Richard Taylor's approach to Pollock. Also ubiquitous in a different way, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, the British model (and girlfriend of Jason Statham), was both the face of the new scent Burberry Body, and the star of the sequel to Transformers, which pushed her into big box office territory - she even scored power broker pr man Stephen Huvane to represent her (his other clients are Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore, Anne Hathaway). Her short bob, bushy eyebrows and heart shaped face set her apart. Muse, who hails from New Mexico and who is the mother of one, starred in the David Yurman jewelry campaign, the Louis Vuitton campaign, and walked almost every major runway. Kloss, who is American and 19 years old, was all over fashion shoots in Vogue, Bazaar and Elle, and recently did a major nude layout in Vogue Italia shot by star-making photographer Steven Meisel, that established her nickname as "The Body." She also walked the runway in many shows, and then, in November, the big Victoria's Secret show - not too many high fashion models crossover with Victoria Secret or lingerie models, Giselle Bundchen being the obvious exception. These are the newish faces - and bodies - that were most ubiquitous in magazines and ad campaigns and runways this year.
Karlie Kloss, Arizona Muse, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.
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