Week 2: Math and Art
From this week’s readings and lecture, I have learned that throughout history, math has always been a part of arts, and vice versa. These two topics have never really been separated. If you look at math itself, it is the study of numbers, combinations, shapes, and symbols, which all are the characteristics of arts (Vesna, 2012). Despite many people believing otherwise, arts is more than just drawing. According to the Dictionary, arts is an expression or application of human creativity and imagination. It is not defined or limited to anything specific.
 |
| The Last Supper |
Another proof that arts and math is interrelated can be found in the history of arts. Artists, dated all the way to ancient Egyptian, to the Renaissance era, possibly even to current day, have used math to either perfect their arts or illustrate their ideology (Henderson, 1984). For example, Leonardo da Vinci used mathematical concepts to produce a perspective, which created the impression of depth and reality in his painting, the Last Supper.
 |
| The Vitruvian Man |
Another example is the Vitruvian Man, which some people even considered it as the literal collaboration between an architect and artist. Da Vinci used specific shapes, like a circle and square, to illustrate his beliefs of a human proportion. Some people go as far as claiming that the painting has an underlying philosophy about the universe in relation to God (Miller, 2017).
Robert Fuller’s “de-geniusing theory” suggests that everyone has a genius side within them; however, it declines as they entered the education system (Hargadon, 2015). This example only strengthens our beliefs from last week’s topic that the separation of art and science is simply the byproduct of societal stereotypes and values (Snow, 1959).
The juxtaposition of mathematics, art, and science is meant to create a clearer image of how these concepts correlate. For artists, they can express themselves better or paint a more realistic drawing. For mathematicians, they can be more creative and inventive.
 |
| My personal experience with the perspective drawing in 7th Grade |
Works Cited
Hargadon, Steve. “All Children are born geniuses.” 2015. Retrieved from http://www.stevehargadon.com/2015/07/all-children-are-born-geniuses-and-we.html
Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. “The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art: Conclusion.” Leonardo. 17.3 (1984): 205-210. Print.
Miller, Luke. “The Secret Meaning Behind Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.” 2017. Retrieved from https://truththeory.com/2017/11/03/secret-meaning-behind-leonardo-da-vincis-vitruvian-man/
Vesna, Victoria. “Mathematics Part 1 — Zero, Perspective, Golden” Cole UC online. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. 12 Apr. 2018.
Snow, Charles. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Cambridge UP, 1959.
Your analysis of the Last Supper is quite interesting because I actually did not know mathematical concepts were used in the painting. After reading about the depth and reality that the perspective brought out in this painting I looked up on Google to see exactly how it did. Looking at images of how the lines in the painting bring out depth and perspective is crazy to me. How artists even in the past knew about these concepts that would bring their paintings to life is pretty cool to me. The Last Supper, which originally seemed like an ordinary, every-day picture to me at first is now one that displays mathematical concepts and artistic techniques that I had never imagined.
ReplyDeleteI wrote similarly about the Last Supper with regards to perspective but I found your analyses of the Vitruvian Man to be really interesting. I never even thought about the possibility that the painting revealed an underlying philosophy about the relationship between god and man. It's hard to imagine that De Vinci would be able to cause so many questions about a fairly simple image by utilizing mathematics and shapes within artwork. Plus, it is really interesting looking at these paintings nowadays especially because of how advanced present day technology has come. We can now analyze images like the ones above much more thoroughly and come to a more precise solution on what the artists actually meant in their works. Yet, despite this, we still question De Vinci's true meanings.
ReplyDeleteYou opened with the notion that math and arts have never really been separated, but always intertwined, a notion that is very evident from this week's studies. Only in relatively modern times has the population seemed to try to pull the two apart and section them off into distinctly separate entities, and such a pattern, as you noted is as a result of Robert Fuller's de-geniusing theory. The current education system puts less and less of an emphasis on arts and more on math and science and tries to completely severe the bind between them. I am curious how some of the geniuses of earlier times, like DaVinci, would have fared in today's world. He so masterfully combined the two topics and is renowned for doing so. Had the modern education system influenced Da Vinci the way it has so many minds, would he have been capable of producing such an impressive blend of art and science?
ReplyDelete