Aligning Figurative Paintings With Their Sources for Semantic Interpretation

Abstract

This paper reports steps in probing the artistic methods of figurative painters through computational algorithms. We explore a comparative method that investigates the relation between the source of a painting, typically a photograph or an earlier painting, and the painting itself. A first crucial step in this process is to find the source and to crop, standardize and align it to the painting so that a comparison becomes possible. The next step is to apply different low-level algorithms to construct difference maps for color, edges, texture, brightness, etc. From this basis, various subsequent operations become possible to detect and compare features of the image, such as facial action units and the emotions they signify. This paper demonstrates a pipeline we have built and tested using paintings by a renowned contemporary painter Luc Tuymans. We focus in this paper particularly on the alignment process, on edge difference maps, and on the utility of the comparative method for bringing out the semantic significance of a painting.