A Brief Study on the Relationship between Science and Art – Alexander Huntley
“One must study the Art of Science, and the Science of Art”
– Leonardo da Vinci
“To recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?”
– Oscar Wilde
The two academic realms of The Arts and The Sciences are perceived by many as polar opposites, the separate ends of the intellectual spectrum. The clinical laboratory that the scientist frequents seems to be so far removed from the painter’s studio, or the sculptor’s workshop, that it is difficult for many to feel that they are related in any way at all. This could be no further from the truth. It is my belief, and the belief of many others that Science and Art are linked in many different ways. Both can complement each other, and have done so through the centuries of human civilisation. Ever since mankind first started to use tools, the evolution of each area, and the cultural developments that each discovery brings directly affected the way people perceived reality. This essay will briefly explore how Scientific discovery has influenced the evolution of art, and also how the combination of Scientific theory and Artistic expression have both helped us contemplate about who we are, and the world we live in.
One of the most famous artists to directly involve scientific research in his work was Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519). Born within the enlightening times of the Italian Renascence, he is widely regarded as one of the most diversely talented persons ever to have lived, dedicating his life to the pursuits of painting, sculpture, architecture, engineering, and science. Although he is mostly famous for his paintings, such as the iconic Mona Lisa (c. 1503–1505/1507) and The Last Supper (1498), Da Vinci’s studies into science and anatomy are just as impressive, with thousands of pages of notes, diagrams and sketches dedicated to these pursuits. His methods of research, his detailed description and depiction of his subject matter were far in advance of the theoretical methods that preceded him, and his work, especially his anatomical drawings, are widely recognised as far ahead of his time.
His scientific knowledge of anatomy, through careful dissection and observation, gave his paintings a life-like quality that set him apart from other painters and sculptors at the time. First mastering topographical anatomy, he then went on to record and study the inner workings of the human body, through access to corpses at a local morgue. Leonardo carefully drew incredibly detailed diagrams of the human skeletal system, muscles and tendons, studying the functions of the joints and how they worked. As well as these, he dissected and drew internal organs and other body parts, including the first ever diagram of a human foetus within the womb. These studies formed the basis of anatomical knowledge amongst the art and science communities, and were included in many medical journals for many years after Da Vinci’s death.
Although Da Vinci never painted any of his anatomical studies, he was nevertheless skilled with a brush, using either self-mixed tempura or oil paint to create his masterpieces. These were the most common mediums right up until the 19th century, with many different pigments being mixed by the artist with to create any of the colours that they needed. This could be an expensive process, as some pigments were expensive, and therefore poorer artists were limited with their colour range. In the early 19th century however, French chemists invented a pre-mixed oil based paint made with synthetic pigments that could be mass produced, drastically reducing the cost of the materials for the artists who would buy them. As well as this, they were now packaged in portable tin tubes with caps that could be screwed back on to preserve the contents when not in use, reducing the amount of paint wasted. This new, cheap and portable medium revolutionised the way that artists painted, freeing them from their studios or colleges so that they could take their art wherever they wished. Now that they were able to take their paints with them, many artists worked outdoors, or “en plein air” as it was known at the time, and it was widely regarded that these scientific innovations granted them the artistic freedom that they couldn’t have feasibly had before. The famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919) once said, “Without tubes of paint, there would have been no impressionism. Thanks to the mobility that paint in tubes provided, artists could capture the light of a fleeting moment of the day, and the impressions that it provided.” It was because of these scientific breakthroughs and technical innovations that artists such as Georges Seurat (1859 – 1891) and Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) could create the masterpieces that made them some of the most acclaimed artists of the Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist movements, if not the latter 19th century.
It was in the 19th Century that the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786 –1889) made a scientific discovery that would heavily influence artists such as Seurat and Monet, and change the way that colour was perceived within contemporary art. He, as well as other scientists such as Ogden Nicholas Rood (1831–1902) and David Sutter (1843 – 1907) wrote scientific treatises on colour, optical effects and perception, presenting the works of Newton and other theoretical physicists in a format accessible to those without a scientific background. In these, Chevreul outlined the rules of complimentary colours and how they worked, due to retinal persistence and the way that light was perceived by the eye. It was through the insights that his research gave him that he invented the “colour wheel” that artists and designers still use to this day. Chevreul discovered that if two colours were to slightly overlap, or be very near each other, they would appear to blend together and become a different colour if seen from a distance. Though it is unlikely that Chevreul’s work was directly read and studied by the art community, it was ultimately this discovery that inspired and influenced painters such as Seurat and Monet, and techniques using complimentary colours are a common theme throughout the Impressionist and Neoimpressionist movements. Since the 19th century, probably the most common use of Chevreul’s colour theory is in modern day colour printing, as well as in television and computer monitors. The way that pixels construct an image on a screen or when printed is very similar to the Pointillist techniques that the Neo-Impressionists championed, and it is probable that Chevreul’s discoveries had their part to play in their design.
Colour and light have always been an important, often vital component of many artistic works, and in some cases the art is produced by the effect of the light itself. This is no more so the case than with another scientific innovation that has revolutionised the realm of art, and the development of human society – photography. Photography is the science and art of recording light, typically focussing it through a lens upon a photosensitive medium or electronic sensor, and photographs have been an increasingly powerful medium for communication and expression. Before the invention of the film or digital cameras we know today, the main method of recording light was through a device called a camera obscura. Although many versions of the camera obscura have been developed, each consists of a sealed room or a box with a pin-hole in the side or the window to let in a tiny amount of light. The light is then projected onto a flat surface, where the scene that the device is being pointed at appears, but upside-down. This effect was first mentioned by the ancient Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti in the 5th Century BCE, and its use was revived in the Renascence period, where it was used as an aid for drawing. In 1490, Leonardo da Vinci gave detailed descriptions of the device in his writings, though it is not known if he used the device himself. The design was constantly tinkered with and improved upon, and the addition of a lens in the 16th increased the clarity and sharpness of the image. In the 19th century, the parchment that most artists used to project the images onto was replaced with photosensitive paper, and conventional photography was born. From those early beginnings, the evolution of the camera has continued, progressing to film, and then to digital format, both of which made photography a more and more accessible art form. Fine art photography is becoming increasingly popular within the art community, and Rhine II by visual artist Andreas Gursky (1999) sold at Christie’s New York for $4.3 million in 2011.
It was this constant progression and improvement of technology that inspired another definitive group of artists, the Futurists. Futurism was an “avant-garde” art movement generated, and mainly contained within, early 20th century Italy, though it inspired the art of others throughout Europe, most notably Russia. It consisted mainly of young, male artists who were inspired by the dynamism and drive of the modern age, discarding the past and embracing the concepts of speed, progress and science. They glorified the invention of the automobile, using it as a metaphor for the speed and technical excellence they craved, and strove to apply these values to everything they did. To reflect these principles, they adopted and adapted the Cubist style, a fragmented reality where the movement of an object could be expressed and exalted. Painters such as Giacomo Balla (1871 – 1958) and Carlo Carrà (1881 – 1966) utilised bright colours, sweeping curves and blurred edges in their abstract pieces to depict the dynamism and movement that they sought, producing new and exciting paintings which exemplified their ideals. As well as painters, there were many prominent sculptors who were part of the Futurist movement; the most famous of these being Umberto Boccioni (1882 – 1916), and Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) is seen as one of the most iconic sculptures that Futurism produced.
Ironically, it was the advances in technology that the Futurists rejoiced in that caused the decline of their art movement, and the death of many of their members. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century, the development of Europe’s economies and technologies had been accelerating at an unprecedented rate. When the First World War was announced on 28th of July 1914, the next four years would be staged the largest and most horrific conflict that the world had ever seen, driven by the new technologies and weapons that had been produced by industrial Europe. Because of the sheer number of atrocities being committed by both sides during the conflict, and the horror it brought upon the citizens of those countries affected, it was bound to have an effect upon the art community. Artists such as Max Beckmann(1884 – 1950), Otto Dix (1891 – 1969) and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 – 1938) served during The Great War, and their later works are heavy with the grim influence of their experiences. One particularly poignant example I feel is Self Portrait of a Soldier by Ernst Ludwig Kircher (1915). The painting depicts the artist in uniform, and appears to have had his right hand removed. His pallid face is screwed up and angular, an unfinished painting in the background. My own interpretation of this is that he feels that his artistic ability has been diminished due to his traumatic experiences in the War, that he is angry and mourns for society, for those who have lost their lives, and for his lost creativity. It was because of inventions such as the aeroplane, the machine gun and the tank, as well as the scientific discoveries of mustard gas and other chemical weapons, that war had been industrialised to such an immense scale. It is estimated that, combined, the First and Second World wars saw the deaths of more than 100 million people, both military and civilian, and the world would be radically altered forever.
It was in the years between these two great conflicts, in the 1920s, that the theoretical physicist Niels Bohr was researching into the structure of matter. The classical model of the atom was a solar-system like structure, the nucleus with the electrons orbiting it like planets. However, due to his discoveries Bohr felt as if a new metaphor to explain this most inexplicable of sciences was needed. He once said “When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.”, and conventional methods of description used up until that time were defunct. This new, revolutionary research and theory was presented in a way that was unheard of– in a metaphor inspired by art. Bohr had been an avid collector of abstract paintings, and was particularly fascinated by cubism. According to historian Arthur G. Miller (1942- ), “he […] filled his study with abstract still lifes and enjoyed explaining his interpretation of the art to visitors.” He liked the way that the subject matter in a cubist painting was always ambiguous, and turned the “solidarity of matter into a surreal blur”. Bohr’s eventual description of his new discoveries was that “the invisible world of the electron was essentially a cubist world.” He likened it to a painting by Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973), and that its form essentially depended on how you observed it; a seemingly random assortment of lines and brushstrokes that only seemed to make sense once it had been scrutinised. In some ways you could argue that Fine Art directly influenced the progression of string theory and quantum mechanics, and therefore affected the history of science itself.
One other aspect of art that the scientific community, namely those in the field of psychology, find most interesting is the use of colour and its effect on human behaviour. Colour has been discovered to have a direct link with emotion, and such studies have been undertaken by psychologists for decades. In 1972, psychologists Bennett and Rey conducted the first recorded study into the effects of colour on behaviour. Their work sparked interest amongst the psychological community, and provided a stepping stone for others to expand their research into this field. They concluded that there are many intellectual assumptions we make in regards to colour and its applications. For example, according to Bennett and Rey, when a person sees the colour red they make a subconscious link with passion or aggression, and when they see blue the association is with calm and tranquillity. In ancient cultures, most notably those of the Egyptians and Chinese, colour was used to heal the injured or ill, and even today chromotherapy is used as an alternative or holistic treatment for various ailments.
This theory can be seen and explored in countless works of art across the centuries and colour is often an important visual language within a painting. In some cases, the colours that the artist has chosen to use can say more about a piece of work than the subject matter. In The Water Lilies by Monet (1906) , the predominant colours are soft blues and greens, and you may instantly think of the scene as calm and tranquil, even before you have really taken in the subject of the painting. Likewise, when I first saw Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucificition by Francis Bacon (1944), on a visit to the Tate Britain in London, the violent, foreboding and relentlessly physical feel of the painting was heightened by the excessive use of the colour red. Red is the colour of blood, and it is quite possibly because of this association that mankind has evolved to react to it in this way.
In modern times, the relationship between art and science has blurred, since both are now more accessible than ever, due to the media and the internet. There are many artists who believe there is something beautiful and true about the combination of the two areas, and produce fantastic and innovative pieces of art. One of these inspired individuals is Conrad Shawcross (1977- ), a British artist whose works are inspired by mathematical and scientific theory. He specialises in building machines or sculptures, with the help of scientists, which explore the theoretical concepts of science through the utilisation of practical measures. His works, often made on an epic scale, have been critically acclaimed by both the art and science communities across the world, and his art has been displayed in the most prestigious of art galleries, including the Saatchi Gallery, and is currently the Artist in Residence at the Science Museum, London.
His most famous works, such as Loop System Quintet (2011) utilise oak and steel machines that rotate a point of light around a geometrically determined path, to recreate effects and patterns that are usually resigned to theoretical physics and mathematics. The patterns that Loop System Quintet creates are, mathematically, visual transcriptions of harmonious notes, and the musical theory is another theme prevalent throughout Shawcross‘work. His technical skill and innovation, combined with his artistic flair and scientific knowhow has helped him become a rising star on the world stage of Fine Art, and hopefully we will see more of him in years to come.
Another modern artist who has made headlines for his use of science in art is Gunther von Hagens (1945- ), a German artist whose work with the human form has been highly controversial throughout his years in the public eye. Von Hagens, who trained to be a doctor, is an anatomist who specialises in the display of cadavers, both animal and human, that have undergone a process called “plastination”. Plastination is a technique where organic tissue is preserved indefinitely by replacing the water and fat within it with a specially designed acrylic polymer. The results of this process is that specimens can be touched and handled, without any smell and do not decay at all, essentially having been turned into plastic. Von Hagens invented and patented this process in 1977, and since then the technology has developed enough so that whole human bodies can be put through this process. Von Hagens, who receives the corpses through a specially devised donor program, then arranges and displays them, both as artistic pieces and scientific models. His work has received critical acclaim from both the art and science communities, but has received wide spread criticism, especially from the Church, that his pieces are not fit for public display. Von Hagens is no stranger to controversy however, having conducted the world’s first televised human autopsy in 2002, and his latest work, Crucifixion (2012) was to be his most controversial yet. It was created by injecting a cadaver with liquid plastic, so that all of the circulatory system was plastinated, and then dissolving the rest of the body in strong acid, the results being displayed nailed upon a cross. Von Hagens had planned to unveil the piece to the Pope in Rome, though this was later cancelled due to his failing health. Personally, i think it is a very powerful work of art, the way that only the “blood” has been left behind reminds us all of not only our mortality, but also of the wonderful intricacy of our own physical selves.
In conclusion, I am more confident than ever that science and art can work harmoniously to produce things that are both inspiring and beautiful. However, in the modern era, where more and more questions are being answered by scientific endeavours, I believe that art has an important part to play in the development of our society. With research into genetics answering long standing questions on what makes us human, but why we ask these questions is for the artists and philosophers to answer. I believe that it can be all too easy to immerse ourselves in numbers, and forget what cannot be measured or calculated. It is our deep seated need to understand ourselves and the world around us that truly makes us human, and it is through our art that we can explore those places that science can never reach, therefore it is only by the combination of the two that we can really understand ourselves.
– Alexander Huntley (3,336 words minus quotes
It’s not the same without the pictures… but I’ve basically put them on on here at some point anyway, plus it’s late and I want to go to dreamy Alex Land!
Goodnight!
– Alex
magnificentmoot 