Lynn Gamwell

This is a cultural history of mathematics and art, from antiquity to the present. Mathematicians and artists have long been on a quest to understand the physical world they see before them and the abstract objects they know by thought alone. Taking readers on a tour of the practice of mathematics and the philosophical ideas that drive the discipline, Lynn Gamwell points out the important ways mathematical concepts have been expressed by artists. Sumptuous illustrations of artworks and cogent math diagrams are featured in Gamwell’s comprehensive exploration. Gamwell begins by describing mathematics from antiquity to the Enlightenment, including Greek, Islamic, and Asian mathematics. Then focusing on modern culture, Gamwell traces mathematicians’ search for the foundations of their science, such as David Hilbert’s conception of mathematics as an arrangement of meaning-free signs, as well as artists’ search for the essence of their craft, such as Aleksandr Rodchenko’s monochrome paintings. She shows that self-reflection is inherent to the practice of both modern mathematics and art, and that this introspection points to a deep resonance between the two fields: Kurt Gödel posed questions about the nature of mathematics in the language of mathematics and Jasper Johns asked “What is art?” in the vocabulary of art. Throughout, Gamwell describes the personalities and cultural environments of a multitude of mathematicians and artists, from Gottlob Frege and Benoît Mandelbrot to Max Bill and Xu Bing. Mathematics and Art demonstrates how mathematical ideas are embodied in the visual arts and will enlighten all who are interested in the complex intellectual pursuits, personalities, and cultural settings that connect these vast disciplines.

A Cultural History

Mathematics and Art

How science changed the way artists understand reality Exploring the Invisible shows how modern art expresses the first secular, scientific worldview in human history. Now fully revised and expanded, this richly illustrated book describes two hundred years of scientific discoveries that inspired French Impressionist painters and Art Nouveau architects, as well as Surrealists in Europe, Latin America, and Japan. Lynn Gamwell describes how the microscope and telescope expanded the artist's vision into realms unseen by the naked eye. In the nineteenth century, a strange and exciting world came into focus, one of microorganisms in a drop of water and spiral nebulas in the night sky. The world is also filled with forces that are truly unobservable, known only indirectly by their effects—radio waves, X-rays, and sound-waves. Gamwell shows how artists developed the pivotal style of modernism—abstract, non-objective art—to symbolize these unseen worlds. Starting in Germany with Romanticism and ending with international contemporary art, she traces the development of the visual arts as an expression of the scientific worldview in which humankind is part of a natural web of dynamic forces without predetermined purpose or meaning. Gamwell reveals how artists give nature meaning by portraying it as mysterious, dangerous, or beautiful. With a foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson and a wealth of stunning images, this expanded edition of Exploring the Invisible draws on the latest scholarship to provide a global perspective on the scientists and artists who explore life on Earth, human consciousness, and the space-time universe.

Art, Science, and the Spiritual – Revised and Expanded Edition

Exploring the Invisible

This sumptuous and stunningly illustrated book shows through words and images how directly, profoundly, and indisputably modern science has transformed modern art. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, a strange and exciting new world came into focus--a world of microorganisms in myriad shapes and colors, prehistoric fossils, bizarre undersea creatures, spectrums of light and sound, molecules of water, and atomic particles. Exploring the Invisible reveals that the world beyond the naked eye--made visible by advances in science--has been a major inspiration for artists ever since, influencing the subjects they choose as well as their techniques and modes of representation. Lynn Gamwell traces the evolution of abstract art through several waves, beginning with Romanticism. She shows how new windows into telescopic and microscopic realms--combined with the growing explanatory importance of mathematics and new definitions of beauty derived from science--broadly and profoundly influenced Western art. Art increasingly reflected our more complex understanding of reality through increasing abstraction. For example, a German physiologist's famous demonstration that color is not in the world but in the mind influenced Monet's revolutionary painting with light. As the first wave of enthusiasm for science crested, abstract art emerged in Brussels and Munich. By 1914, it could be found from Moscow to Paris. Throughout the book are beautiful images from both science and art--some well known, others rare--that reveal the scientific sources mined by Impressionist and Symbolist painters, Art Nouveau sculptors and architects, Cubists, and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists. With a foreword by astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, Exploring the Invisible appears in an age when both artists and scientists are exploring the deepest meanings of life, consciousness, and the universe.

Art, Science, and the Spiritual

Indiana University, Bloomington. Art Museum

The colorful geometric sculptures of Morton C. Bradley, Jr. (1912-2004), designed to be suspended from the ceiling, seem to float in the air like models of unknown, beautiful stars. As each sculpture slowly revolves, its intricate structure is transformed by a progression of colors that illuminate new aspects of its character. Bradley's creations embody the mathematical structure of nature and the beauty of pure mathematics. In this lavishly illustrated first publication of Bradley's remarkable body of work, bequeathed to Indiana University with which he had close ties, Lynn Gamwell explores the Harvard University milieu that gave rise to his artistic vision in the 1930s, his work as a painting conservator at the Fogg Museum, his study of music and mathematical patterning, and his founding of a workshop that fabricated these intricate handmade pieces, timelessly integrating pure color and form.

The Geometric Sculptures of Morton C. Bradley Jr

Color and Form

Cubist Criticism

Nancy Tomes

"In this book, Lynn Gamwell and Nancy Tomes explore the historical roots of Americans' understanding of madness today. Drawing on a rich array of sources, the authors interweave the perceptions of medical practitioners, the mentally ill and their families, and journalists, poets, novelists, and artists. As they trace successive ways of explaining madness and treating those judged insane, Gamwell and Tomes vividly depict the political and cultural dimensions of American attitudes toward mental illness." "Gamwell and Tomes observe telling differences in the ways in which patients of different genders, races, and classes have been diagnosed and treated. The authors demonstrate how definitions of madness figured in national debates over abolitionism, women's rights, and alternative medicine. Madness in America also considers how the boundaries between sanity and insanity have been repeatedly redrawn in such areas as sexual behavior and criminality."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness Before 1914

Madness in America

"Examines the shifting roles that dreams have played in twentieth-century art and science ... [and] features 100 color and 50 black-and-white illustrations depicting works by a broad range of artists in painting, photography, sculpture, artists' books, video, film, performance, and dance."--Jacket.

Dreams Nineteen Hundred to Two Thousand

Donald Burton Kuspit

State University of New York at Binghamton. Art Museum

This book presents a refreshing new approach to avant-garde art by demonstrating that a genuine core of modernism manifests a positive, life-affirming attitude. Donald Kuspit and Lynn Gamwell challenge the assumption that disintegration and negativity provide the most authentic artistic responses to this century's gloomy zeitgeist. Lavishly illustrated, their book includes colorful images of paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts, as well as photographs of spectacular gardens.

Lynn Gamwell

Books

Your next favorite book is out there