title: Large-scale quantitative analysis of painting arts.
abstract: Scientists have made efforts to understand the beauty of painting art in their own languages. As digital image acquisition of painting arts has made rapid progress, researchers have come to a point where it is possible to perform statistical analysis of a large-scale database of artistic paints to make a bridge between art and science. Using digital image processing techniques, we investigate three quantitative measures of images - the usage of individual colors, the variety of colors, and the roughness of the brightness. We found a difference in color usage between classical paintings and photographs, and a significantly low color variety of the medieval period. Interestingly, moreover, the increment of roughness exponent as painting techniques such as chiaroscuro and sfumato have advanced is consistent with historical circumstances.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701, Korea.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, Hanyang University, Ansan 426-791, Korea.
authors.forename: Seung-Woo
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Son
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Physics and Institute for the BioCentury, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701, Korea [2] Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, Pohang 790-784, Korea.
authors.forename: Hawoong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jeong