THE PAINTINGS OF JACKSON POLLACK, famous for their seemingly random distribution of drips and streaks, are fractal in nature. Physicists at the University of New South Wales (Australia) subjected Pollack's handiwork to the kind of mathematical scrutiny usually given to fractures in crystals and distributions of galaxies. They found that the paintings bore similar features at each of many size scales, the hallmark of fractalness. The object's characteristic "fractal dimensionality" is roughly related to the indentedness of the object's texture. Apparently the dimensionality of Pollack's work increased through the years. (Nature, 3 June 1999.)