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| Portrait of Zinoviev by Diego Rivera |
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| Girl With Artichokes Diego Rivera |
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| Number 5, By Jackson Pollock |
These articles have been some of my favorite thus far. While I knew of geometry’s base role in art I did not fully comprehend the visible presence of mathematics in art. One of my favorite quotes illustrating this topic is from the article The Fourth Dimension in Painting: Cubism and Futurism. Pavlopoulos writes the following “Painting has traditionally been the pathway from the 3D world we perceive to the 2D painting surface and, at least during the last century or so, it has also raised the question of other possible dimensions and the corresponding new perspective. Probably from different points of view, either rigorously or intuitively, Painting and Mathematics are both concerned about spaces and dimensions and as the Futurist and Cubist examples indicate, artistic expression has found the way, just like Mathematics, to probe into dimensions far from possible to imagine.” This quote fully illustrates the idea that both math and art attempt to define the world into a more tangible item.
What intrigued me the most was the part on the fourth dimension paintings. My grandparents had a cubism portrait in their living room. As a child could not appreciate it because I did not understand what it was trying to convey. It was not like the realist paintings around their house and I disliked how abstract it was. Most art tries to display one or two perspectives. Cubism adapts to try to show multiple perspectives at a single point and time. The fourth dimension tries to depict more than what meets the eye at one point and time.
The paintings “Portrait of Zinoviev” and “Girl With Artichokes” by Diego Rivera are two of my favorite Rivera paintings. They demonstrate the cubism style in a slightly less abstract way. The conventional points of perspective are no longer used in a more realist painting, meaning to say they are not quite as obscure portraits like those of Picasso and Metzinger.
After reading these articles I kept having a recurring question, how does more obscure art, like that of Jackson Pollock, relate to mathematics?
I also had no appreciation and did not see the beauty in cubist paintings when I was younger. I later learned about cubism and Picasso but had no idea that the cubist style of art was this complex. I had never known that it was an attempt to depict a 4D space onto a 2D canvas. This new perspective invoked a new respect in me for Picasso and other artists of the movement. I also found it interesting that this fourth dimension is connected to speed and movement and the artists were trying to capture this in their paintings. Artists of all disciplines working with various mediums attempt to capture motion and dimension in their pieces, Picasso and other cubist artists took this farther and incorporated it with a complex mathematical concept.
ReplyDeleteAttached are two links to my two favorite Picasso works that I have studied in my art courses (one I believe Dr. Crist mentioned in class). I can not figure out how to put the images directly in my post.
http://pablo-picasso.paintings.name/images/Les-Demoiselles-d-Avignon.jpg
http://www.art-books.com/artbooks/images/items/50-0020.jpg
I think this is fascinating. Like you and Rachel (who posted before me), I could never stand abstract art until I was at least in high school. But for me I thought (and still think) that the truth in the beauty of the abstract art was the artists emotion; that all art conveyed one single feeling that is simple in essence and yet indescribably complex all at once, which is why they could only express it through the great myriad of shapes and colors they project from their soul. And that gave me a nice appreciation for all art, as well as a basic generalization that that's pretty much entirely what it boils down to.
ReplyDeleteThese readings, however, made it a lot more clear than it's ever been that artists, rather than creating masterpieces that were meant to express a statement, perhaps instead the pieces were meant to probe the aspects of the universe in the same way all other disciplines of art and science do. Indeed, in seeing the cubists' and futurists' struggle to conceptualize a 2-dimensional representation of 3- and 4-dimensional worlds... it's almost like each work is another step in the dark (according to the analogy at the beginning of the movie we saw on Tuesday) and they are trying to "see" the whole.
Moreover, I cannot help but notice that the major theme of all these works of art (though particularly those of the futurist movement that display various temporal positions of a 3-dimensional object) are, more than anything else, statements of unity. Whether the artist intended to express it or not, it seems to me that all these differentiations of perspective and viewpoints and dimensions where they separate the subject more and more and more.....well it all just makes the unity of the subject that much more obvious.
Which brings me to the question you asked at the end. Normally, I would have been inclined to respond with something uselessly obvious about how mathematics, which can be applied to anything, is clearly present in every random stroke and every complementary color scheme... but learning what I have I would say that........hahah well actually I mean this kind of work is just so abstract it's like any interpretation can fit it pretty well; but based on this talk of artistic representations of 3rd and 4th dimensions as well as that "11 minute video describing 10 dimensions" posted by Jamison all in addition to the very title of the piece ["Number 5"].. well I believe that what Pollock tried to do here is represent the 5th dimension - which as I understand it is a collection of possible timelines; things that could have happened, things that might happen, etc. and from there he implemented themes like... well look how every color is present with fairly consistent constitution (the yellow are mostly straight lines, the gray is a thick series of points, etc) and how, well, to me at least the painting is screaming that even in the 5th dimension, everything is connected to everything else.
It's quite gorgeous, really.
This is the kind of stuff where it really inspires me to get good at my own craft, which is programming. Nothing makes me respect a person more than their dedication and passion to something. The fact that Picasso put so much love and dedication into his painting gives me so much inspiration.
ReplyDeleteI, like most people, had no idea that Picasso was trying to portray 4D into his paintings. There really is a difference between someone who loves their craft, and someone who just does it. The biggest difference I think, is "taste".
From musicians, painters, programmers, to mathematicians, anyone who loves their craft tends to have a good "taste", and can recognize when something is beautiful.
Even in the video we watched last class, they described the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem as beautiful. I, as a layperson, do not have the "taste" to see the beauty in such things.
People say that beauty is subjective and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I disagree. I think there is an absolute truth in what is beautiful and what is not, and the only way a person will appreciate the beauty of something is to love and perfect their craft.
The article “Reverse perspectives in Christian iconography” says that “visual perception from the two viewpoints, one for each eye, presents the observer with a simultaneous view of four faces of the cubic die, a paradoxical picture that could not be produced by conventional photography.” This statement about photography reminded me of the work of David Hockney. Hockney, in the 1980s, created collages using photographs of an object taken from various angles and distances, overlapping them to create an image that is reminiscent of cubism. The point of his work was to try to incorporate progression of time and definition of space into the composite image while telling an entire story, not just a moment in the story like is often the case with photography. These traits in Hockney’s work are very similar to some of the defining traits of cubism. I thought it was an interesting connection between painted works and photography.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hockneypictures.com/photos/photos_polaroids_01_large.php
http://www.hockneypictures.com/photos/photos_polaroids_04_large.php
http://www.hockneypictures.com/photos/photos_collages_01_large.php
Maybe it's just me, but I personally don't care for the 4D artwork. I think it's nicer than anything I could actually make, but I just feel like it's kind of blocky and boring. On the other hand, I love the article about Reverse perspective. This has always been my favorite artwork to look at because there is more than one way to see it. People always just stare at painting at one point of view, but this makes the people try to imagine the artwork in more than one point of view. My favorite part of the article (and what I never really thought of) was the Christian icons part. It talked about how complex the art was with all it's colors, geometric shapes, etc. in all the right spots. I always thought art was cool and quite difficult, but I never really thought of how complex it is. It is interesting to me to also think that Mathematics is in art. I mean if there are geometric shapes, then there are equations behind it. That means a great mathematician could also be a really good artist right? well in theory I mean!
ReplyDeleteLike everyone else, I used to have a hard time appreciating modern, abstract art. In fact, even today a lot of the time when I see modern art I feel jaded knowing that my four year old cousin could have painted something similar. However, cubism for me does not fall into this category. I had the opportunity last semester while studying abroad in Spain to see many of Picasso's works in person- and when you seem them up close you realize how amazing they actually are! What I used to think of as just another messed up, ugly Picasso face I now appreciate as a complex work of art that shows the face (or other object) from many different perspectives at once.
ReplyDeleteHaving been previously exposed to the video on 10 Dimensions that Jameson posted, I didn't care much for the 4-D artwork as 3-D plus one, when I feel the 4th dimension is best represented by time. The article on the Christian artwork was particularly interesting to me though. It says the following:
ReplyDelete"One could argue that though Cubism developed questioning the unique viewpoint principle, its advocates were absolutely aware of conventional linear perspective and deliberately chose to put it aside while the solid, geometric framework of linear perspective was unavailable to Christian iconographers and therefore the deliberate nature of any effect originating from their awkward, reverse perspective becomes dubious."
When I took Aesthetics here at Creighton, this is exactly what we were taught. The Christian iconographers were relatively ignorant to the idea of applying perspective using parallel lines, but the cubists manipulated perspective in order to find meaning. We weren't taught any alternative to this, so the idea that the iconographers were depicting the perspective of the heavens on earth was very interesting, especially when we consider that pre-Newtonian physics was separated between earthly and heavenly physics (at least I think that was said in class).
These articles were really fun to read, and it is interesting to see just how weird things can get when we try to boil down multiple dimensions onto a two-dimensional plane. This is a great example of how we can find math in every aspect of the real world, which as a future math teacher is really important to me. These articles really show the beauty of math, and how with some imagination you can really take things to levels that go beyond what anyone else has previously perceived.
ReplyDeletePrior to reading these articles, I too did not realize the presence of mathematics in art. Of course, when I think of mathematics, dimensions aren’t exactly the first thing that comes to my mind. When I first looked at the fourth dimension painting, I did not understand the significance of what it was trying to display. In fact, I thought that it was merely some type of abstract piece of art that take tons of critical thinking to determine what is being displayed. Despite the fact that, even now, I still have a hard time imagining what the fourth dimension might look like, I was impressed that by looking at the 4D painting, I was able to get a glimpse of what it might be like to live in the 4D world (though I think that looking at multiple perspectives at the same time distracts me, so living in the 3D world is defiantly more comfortable in my mind).
ReplyDeleteTeresa, there has been a debate over whether Jackson Pollock used fractal patterns in his paintings: http://discovermagazine.com/2001/nov/featpollock, challenged in http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/books/02frac.html. ---ETD
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