Exploring the Invisible by Lynn Gamwell

Exploring the Invisible by Lynn Gamwell

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.

This beautifully illustrated volume is a surprising synthesis of two seemingly disparate cultures.. scientific knowledge and abstract art. Publishers Weekly With 364 illustrations and an unusual linkage of art and science, [Gamwell's] book stimulates both the eye and the mind. Scientific American Rich in detail, and sumptuously illustrated and produced; it displays a lifetime of knowledge. -- Philip J. Davis SIAM News Exceptionally well written, eminently readable, and lavishly illustrated with color and black-and-white plates. Choice The phrase 'lavishly illustrated' is bandied around too freely, but here it is more than justified. -- Tom Cobbe The Art Newspaper

Lynn Gamwell is Director of the Art Museum at Binghamton University; Curator of the Gallery of Art and Science at the New York Academy of Sciences; and Adjunct Professor of Science at the School of Visual Arts, New York. She is the coauthor of "Dreams 1900-2000: Art, Science, and the Unconscious Mind" and "Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness Before 1914". Neil deGrasse Tyson is Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. His books include "The Sky Is Not the Limit" and "One Universe".

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780691089720
ISBN 10	0691089728
Titel	Exploring the Invisible
Autor	Lynn Gamwell
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Hardback
Verlag	Princeton University Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2002-10-20
Seitenanzahl	344
Preise	Runner-up for Choice Magazine Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award 2003
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar