Visualizations: The Nature Book of Art and Science - Hardcover

Kemp, Mr Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520223527 ISBN 13: 9780520223523

Publisher: University of California Press, 2001

Synopsis

Martin Kemp's provocative essays on the interplay between art and science have been entertaining readers of "Nature", the world's leading journal for the announcement of scientific discoveries, since 1997. These short, illustrated, highly regarded essays generally focus on one visual image from art or science and provide an evocative and erudite investigation into shared motifs in the two disciplines. Gathered together here with a delightfully rich introduction by the author, the essays take our understanding to an exciting new level as they transgress the traditional boundaries between art and science. The images under consideration cover Western art from the Renaissance to the present day, and the science ranges from abstract mathematics to the illustrative modes of natural history and medicine. Kemp skillfully discusses the Mona Lisa as well as horror films, Galileo's moon drawings and diagrams in modern physics, Renaissance pottery and logos on trucks, the invention of perspective, and contemporary masterpieces. Rather than charting the mutual influence of art and science upon each other, these essays look to the deeper structures that find expression in art and science; they reveal the 'structural intuitions' shared by artists and scientists when confronting the world. This volume contains all the pieces published in "Nature" under the banners of "Art and Science" and "Science and Image", together with some from Kemp's recent "Science and Culture" series. The essays are presented thematically rather than chronologically, arranged to stimulate critical ideas about the nature of the image at the intersection of art and science, now and in the past.

About this title

About the Author

Martin Kemp was British Academy Wolfson Research Professor and is Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University. He is author ofBehind the Picture: Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance (1997), which won the American Association for Italian Studies Presidential Book Award for 1999,The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (1989), and other books.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520223527
• ISBN 13: 9780520223523
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216