This painting was one of the winners of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2007, a mathematical art contest.
I suppose nowadays, fractal art seems very, very 1990s. But still – there’s something fun and dreamlike about it.
As Dr. Mandelbrot himself says in his introduction to the gallery:
“What distinguishes fractal geometry within mathematics is an exceptional and uncanny characteristic. Its first steps are not tedious, hard, and unrewarding, but playful and extraordinarily easy, and provide rich reward in terms of stunning graphics. To the mathematician, they bring a bounty of very difficult conjectures that no one can solve. To the artist, they provide backbones around which imagination can play at will. To everyone, a few steps in about any direction bring extraordinary pleasure. Nothing is more serious than play. Let’s all play.”