How the Events in the Life of Painters Influence the Colors of their Paintings

Ada-Astrid Mocanu, Adrian Iftene

Abstract: Out of the desire to observe the interdisciplinary usefulness of Computer Science, we decided to begin a study about the surrounding world. Starting from the visual world, we outlined a basic question: Do events we experience in our lives influence our artistic capabilities? We begin by collecting all the necessary data about several painters and then extracting the predominant colors of their paintings. Using Machine Learning techniques, we compared the efficiency of different algorithms, measuring the efficiency score in the CIELAB Color Space. Then, based on Natural Language Processing elements and painters' biographical information, we built a timeline of the events from the painter's lives, enriched with the predominant colors used by them. Wanting to observe the human perspective about the feelings derived from the paintings, we build a small form-like application to extract this information from volunteers in the field. Correlating the algorithms' results with those extracted from human subjects, we showed that periods of happiness and unhappiness bounded with the colors used by painters. These results lead us to the conclusion that this topic deserves further study in order to obtain more accurate information and to be able to move on to its use in practical applications.