Computer Analysis of Pablo Picasso's Artistic Style

In the past few years, computational methods have been becoming increasingly more prevalent in art history. Such methods can reveal new knowledge about art, and provide a novel approach to the studying of art history based on quantitative evidence. Here we used computational analysis to study the artistic style of Pablo Picasso and its change throughout time. Experimental results show a strong correlation between the visual content and the time of painting, evidenced by the ability of the computer to estimate the time of creation by analyzing the visual content of the painting. It also showed that some of the paintings were estimated by the algorithm to be artistically related to a different time period than the time period in which they were painted. The most significant numerical image content descriptor for estimating the time of creation is the fractal structure of the painting, which changed during his career in a nearly linear fashion. The software used in the experiment is publicly available, as well as detailed instructions of using the software.