Week 2 / Math and Art / Alec Goodwin
April 6th, 2022
Relationship between Math & Art
Math plays as vital of a role in art as being creative. To better elaborate that claim, it is important to analyze the relationship between art and math. For centuries, artists have used math in a variety of different ways- viewer perspective, creation of shapes/dimensions, and creating new types of art. However, the relationship between art and math would forever change when Leonardo Da Vinchi introduced his most famous work of art- the "Vitruvian Man". The "Vitruvian Man" represents the ideal, "proportional man". A man with proportional limb length relative to his torso, head, privates, and other body parts. The man behind the image itself isn't necessarily important, but its' the importance of proportionality that would forever change the way artists, architects, and mathematicians do their work. From post-impressionist artists such as Mondrian to famous architects like Edouard, they all believed math played a vital role in the beauty of art expressionism.
A class reading that helps tie in the importance of numbers in relation to shapes and angles is "Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art". Non-Euclidean Geometry refers to geometries that are not Euclidean or "figures on the basis of axioms and theorums". In relation to this reading, I will analyze the work of Mondrian and how his art was influenced by math.
Born in 1872 to an heavily artistic Dutch family, Piet Mondrian co founded the De Stijl art movement with his colleague, Theo van Doesburg, to revolutionize the relationship between math and art. De Stijl art focuses on two things: clean lines and right angles. Additionally, De Stijl artists used primary colors, straight lines to divide colors, to prevent any type of blending. The importance of color blending is to showcase a minimalist approach to art while highlighting the human mind and its varying emotional waves. Although this style of art isn't everyones ideal style, it show cases the beauty of simplicity and structure in a complex world. His process is appears quite complex, but isn't so. He first divides his canvas up with different dimensions using the equation "n x n". Then he creates incongruent rectangle/square lengths with the differences between each shape as small as possible resulting in differing rectangle/square lengths that create to a total sum of 1.
Citations
Abott, Edwin. Flatland a Romance of Many Dimensions. https://www.math.ksu.edu/~cjbalm/570s14/flatland.pdf.
Editorial, Artsy, and Alexxa Gotthardt. “Piet Mondrian on How to Be an Artist.” Artsy, 12 Nov. 2019, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-piet-mondrian-artist.
Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. “The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art: Conclusion.” Leonardo, vol. 17, no. 3, 1984, p. 205., https://doi.org/10.2307/1575193.
Magazine, Smithsonian. “Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man May Not Have Been a Flawless Picture of Health.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 19 Feb. 2014, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vitruvian-man-may-have-had-hernia-180949806/.
Ventana al Conocimiento (Knowledge Window) Scientific journalism Estimated reading time Time 3 to read, et al. “The (Mathematical) Problem of Mondrian's Paintings.” OpenMind, 17 Oct. 2019, https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/mathematics/the-mathematical-problem-of-mondrians-paintings/#:~:text=Mondrian's%20Mathematical%20Problem%20consists%20of,subtraction%20will%20give%20the%20score.
Hi Alec, I really enjoyed your analysis of the role math plays in making art as we would traditionally call beautiful. I agree that proportion plays a crucial role in the development of artistic endeavors, but wonder its influence on creativity itself? Overall I thought your breakdown of non-euclidean geometries, was very insightful in understanding the general connection of math and art.
ReplyDeleteHey Alec, Great work this week! I really liked your in depth analysis of the "Vitruvian Man" and the non-Eclidean Geometries. I enjoyed how you explained the uses non-Eclidean geometry with Mondrian, it really showed how you understood the topic capturing the connection between art and math.
ReplyDeleteHello, I really enjoyed your blog and the layout of it. Starting from when the relationship between math and art changed with the creation of the "Vitruvian Man" by Leonardo Da Vinci to math becoming more prominent in art. YOur blog also subjective art is. Piet Mondrian’s art focused mostly on right angles and using equations to create his art, but it is still widely known and appreciated. In my mind, his art is a little more math than art, but it is still art and this art form was what made him one of the most popular artists of his time.
ReplyDelete