The Role of Math in the History and Production of Art
Math and art have been intertwined in thousands of years. Many artists use mathematics in the creation of their art, and mathematicians have likewise been inspired by art, be it painting, sculpture, digital art or the creation of textiles. While some may be familiar with the more well-known connections between the disciplines (such as the mathematical study of proportions made famous in Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man) there are other, lesser known links to be found, including tessellations, grid theory, and fractal dimensions!
Image: Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci retrieved from Wikimedia Commons
Exhibitions Catalogues
Explore how artists have incorporated a wide range of mathematical concepts in the artwork they produce! Exhibition catalogues provide a record of the artistic items displayed in a show at a museum or gallery. Below are a selection of exhibitions catalogues from artists inspired by mathematical concepts.
Siah Armajani: Follow This Line by
Armajani unites art and architecture, Persian calligraphy and abstract expressionism, American vernacular architecture and Russian constructivism In Tehran, children walking home from school would scrape their pencils against the walls, tracing their paths through the city and chanting "follow this line." Siah Armajani (born 1939) recounts that this simple gesture speaks to the desire to mark one's presence in space. Siah Armajani: Follow This Line asks visitors to follow the artist across a shifting terrain, first within the context of pre-revolution Iran, and later, postwar and present-day America. Though Armajani is best known today for his works of public art--bridges, gazebos, reading rooms--located across the United States and Europe, this groundbreaking exhibition argues for a thoughtful reexamination of his studio as the site of a rich and generative practice. His works engage a range of references: from Persian calligraphy to the manifesto, letter and talisman; from poetry to mathematical equations and computer programming; from the abstract expressionist canvas to American vernacular architecture, Bauhaus design and Russian constructivism. Published to accompany Armajani's first major US retrospective, this catalog is his most comprehensive publication to date. Developed in close collaboration with the artist, it offers new scholarship on his six-decade-long career and also includes previously unpublished texts. Contributions by Nazgol Ansarinia, Sam Durant, Barbad Golshiri and Slavs and Tatars speak to Armajani's influence on a younger generation of artists based in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
Call Number: N6537.A667 A4 2018ISBN: 9781935963196Publication Date: 2018
David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy by
This intriguing new look at the work of David Smith reveals how art and personal history shaped the work of one of America s foremost artists. Heralded as one of the greatest American sculptors of the twentieth century, David Smith nonetheless identified himself as a member of the working class. A contemporary of Gorky, de Kooning, and Pollock in the Germany art world, Smith worked as a welder before and during World War II and retained his union membership thereafter. How Smith meshed these two disparate worlds is the subject of this unique examination that focuses specifically on the geometric features of Smith's work, including his renowned Cubi series. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the book considers geometry in Smith's sculpture as both a formal and thematic construct. Essays by leading curators and scholars explore the relationship between Smith's lifelong interest in the utopian optimism of the avant-garde and his own artistic identity. The book includes illustrations of more than fifty sculptures, along with drawings, paintings, and vintage photographs by the artist.
Call Number: N6537.S616 A4 2011ISBN: 9783791351216Publication Date: 2011
Terry Winters: Knotted Graphs by
New York-based artist Terry Winters is known for paintings, drawings and prints that oscillate between figuration and abstraction. Rooted in Minimalism, Winters' work reflects his career-long investment in the historical and contemporary stakes of painting, and references ambiguous forms sourced from the sciences, mathematics and architecture. These forms subtly suggest any number of objects--maps, blueprints, seeds, spores, shells, fungi, spiderwebs, X-rays, molecular structures, balls of yarn, fishing nets, tree branches, magnified crystals or neurological circuits--without actually depicting any of them directly, leaving the viewer's eye to wander restlessly throughout the picture plane. Winters has described his strategy: "So much of the contemporary world is driven by abstract processes... The old Modernist oppositions between the retinal and the intellectual just really don't function anymore." Knotted Graphs presents a series of paintings and drawings made in 2007 and 2008 that further investigate the grid through mathematical principles such as knot theory.
Call Number: N6537.W5678 A4 2008ISBN: 9781880146507Publication Date: 2009
Tourist in a Fractal Space by
An exhibition catalogue from the Yukon Arts Centre. This exhibition includes Steins' fractal art, compositions of complex geometric shapes and patterns.
Call Number: N6549.S7357 A4 2004Publication Date: 2004
Jean-Luc Moulene by
Since the late 1980s, Jean-Luc Moulène (b. 1955) has developed a body of work informed by a critical investigation of artistic authorship, addressing such issues as autonomy, immanence, and anarchic politics. Although he is best known for his enigmatic and seductive large-format photographs, Moulène has maintained a parallel exploration of materials and objects--manufactured and found, industrial and organic, intimate and imposing--that he has collectively titled Opus. This book, the first critical study of Moulène's work, brings together leading scholars to examine the artist's diverse aesthetic strategies and interests in the relationships between social and political arenas and systems and orders, including geometry, mathematics, social sciences, and human behavior. Featured essays also examine Moulène's theoretical and playful inquiries into the plasticity of materials and the ways we see and understand both still and moving images.
Call Number: N6853.M6675 A4 2012ISBN: 9780300188820Publication Date: 2013
Gerhard Richter: Patterns by
Patterns represents a brilliant new adventure in image-making and book-making by Gerhard Richter, who in recent years has produced several fascinating explorations of the possibilities of the artist's book. For this latest project, Richter took an image of his work "Abstract Painting" (CR: 7244) and divided it vertically into strips: first 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, up to 4,096 strips. This process, involving twelve stages of division, results in 8,190 strips, each of which is reproduced here at the height of the original image. With each stage of division, the strips become progressively thinner (a strip of the 12th division is just 0.08 millimeters; further divisions would only become visible by enlargement). Each strip is then mirrored and repeated, producing an incredibly detailed patterning. The number of repetitions increases with each stage of division in order to make patterns of consistent size. The resulting 221 patterns are reproduced here on landscape spreads, making for a truly extraordinary reading-viewing book experience. Born in Dresden, East Germany, in 1932, Gerhard Richter migrated to West Germany in 1961, settling in D sseldorf, where he studied at the D sseldorf Academy, and where he held his first solo exhibition in 1963. Over the course of that decade, Richter helped to liberate painting from the legacy of Socialist Realism (in Eastern Germany) and Abstract Expressionism (in Western Germany and throughout Europe). He has exhibited internationally for the last five decades, with a major European touring retrospective in London, Berlin and Paris in 2012. He lives and works in Cologne.
Call Number: N6888.R49 A4 2012ISBN: 9781935202981Publication Date: 2012
Saloua Raouda Choucair by
Saloua Raouda Choucair, born in 1916 in Beirut, was the first abstract artist in Lebanon, and her exhibition in 1947 at the Arab Cultural Gallery in Beirut is considered to have been the Arab world's first abstract painting display. In 1948 she left Lebanon and went to Paris, where she studied at the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts and attended Fernand Leger's studio. In 1950, she was one of the first Arab artists to participate in the Salon des Realites Nouvelles in Paris. By 1962 she began to concentrate completely on sculpture, and by 1963, she was awarded the National Council of Tourism Prize for the execution of a stone sculpture for a public site in Beirut. Choucair's work has been considered as one of the best examples of the spirit of abstraction characteristic of Arabic visual and geometric art, apparently disconnected from the observation of nature
Call Number: N7276.8.C46 A4 2013ISBN: 9781849761246Publication Date: 2013
Robin Rhode: the Geometry of Colour by
Most famously shot against a ruined wall in Westbury, Johannesburg, Rhode's images cling nostalgically-yet-hopelessly to the particularity of a place in the very moment that longing is canceled out. Symptoms of exile, screeds for loss, they evoke a sentiment shared by the great Palestinian humanist, Edward Said, for whom 'A part of something is for the foreseeable future going to be better than all of it. Fragments over wholes. Restless nomadic activity over the settlements of held territory. Criticism over resignation ... limited independence over the status of clients. Attention, alertness, focus. To do as others do, but somehow stand apart. To tell a story in pieces, as it is.' In Geometry of Colour, however, Rhode presents us with an even greater challenge - the mystic search for wholeness in the very midst of its impossibility. For Rhode the glimmer of an answer resides in geometry - the necessary illusion of perfectibility. Moving between abstract speculation and visceral record, the book tracks productive years in the artist's life, between 2014 and 2018. More a wager in the present tense than an edifying catalogue, Geometry of Colour is a vital challenge to our current disaffection. It is a testimony, perhaps, that art can still save us.
Call Number: N7396.R46 A4 2018ISBN: 9788857236537Publication Date: 2019
According to a Given Mean by
This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition 'according to a given mean' by Antony Gormley at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels from 28 March to 4 May, 2013. Gormley explores explore the ways in which mathematical principles of spatial organization provoke responses from the viewer.
Call Number: NB497.G64 A4 2013ISBN: 9789491245060Publication Date: 2013- Full circle, 1964-2005 by
Catalog of an exhibition held at SolwayJones in Los Angeles. Horwitz's works are structured around linear progressions using the number eight.
Call Number: NC139.H67 A4 2005ISBN: 9780974940038Publication Date: 2005
Mathematical Impressions by
Anatolii Fomenko is a Soviet mathematician with a talent for expressing abstract mathematical concepts through artwork. Some of his works echo those of M. C. Escher in their meticulous rendering of shapes and patterns, while other pieces seem to be more visceral expressions of mathematical ideas. Stimulating to the imagination and to the eye, his rich and evocative work can be interpreted and appreciated in various ways - mathematical, aesthetic, or emotional. This book contains 84 reproductions of works by Fomenko, 23 of them in colour. In the accompanying captions, Fomenko explains the mathematical motivation behind the illustrations as well as the emotional, historical, or mythical subtexts that they evoke. The illustrations carry the viewer through a mathematical world consisting not of equations and dry logic, but of intuition and inspiration.
Call Number: NC267.F66 A43 1990ISBN: 0821801627Publication Date: 1990- Kazuo Nakamura by
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Nov. 1, 2001-Jan. 6, 2002 and 4 other Canadian venues through March 2003. Exhibition exemplifies an interest in the numerical patterns and progressions that give structure to the natural world.
Call Number: ND249.N3 A4 2001ISBN: 0921500505Publication Date: 2001
Kazuo Nakamura by
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Sept. 25, 2004-Jan. 2, 2005. Nakamura's interest in the relation between mathematical perfection and visual medium is evident in how Nakamura graphs out number-structure patterns and calculations on canvas and paper to be presented as art.
Call Number: ND249.N3 A4 2004ISBN: 1894243420Publication Date: 2004
The Infinite White Abyss by
The white, free abyss--infinity lies before us«, according to Kazimir Malevich in 1919 when describing his use of white as a monochrome ground in »Suprematist painting« and as a surface in front of which his geometric shapes seem to float weightlessly. For Wassily Kandinsky, the compositional white area in his expressive abstractions was the all-important opening of pictorial space through which the complexity of the world was to be reflected synaesthetically and thereby art simultaneously ranked alongside science. Piet Mondrian, for his part, tried to find universal harmonies through the depiction of mathematical problems behind visible phenomena. His exploration of »non-colour« in his grids of black lines and primary coloured surfaces forms a »neoplastic system« devoid of any representational function and is unique in the history of painting. On the occasion of the 2014 Quadrennial, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen will premiere an attractive synopsis the work of these three great artists, considered the most prominent pioneers of the avant-garde and of abstraction in the twentieth century. The show will focus upon selected major works and the complex issue of white surfaces, all which is meticulously recreated the catalogue. The discussion of materiality and immateriality of the colour white arising here is also reflected in the latest research results from the restoration process. This leads to some surprising answers that are treated separately. If the colour white provided an umbrella for art, science and parareligions, did it necessarily have to function as a symbol of a future world? Exhibition: K20 Kunsthalle Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 5/4-6/7/2014
Call Number: ND699.K3 A4 2014ISBN: 9783864420818Publication Date: 2014
Geometry in Art
Geometry, a field concerned with the study of distance, shape, lines and angles, has long been utilized by artists to create, problem-solve, and guide the production of art! Discover the parallels and connections between geometry and art, which can be found in the selection of materials below.
Islamic Art and Architecture by
Issam El-Said pinpoints the rules of composition that form the basis of the geometric concepts of Islamic art. He then shows how intricate patterns are based on these basic principles. Fully illustrated in three colors to show the development of the patterns, this book offers an insight into how craftsmen and designers in the Muslim world achieved monumental feats of artistic expression using the simplest of tools. Chapter I presents graphical analyses of numerous complex patterns, to reveal the numerical rationale behind them. In Chapter II, the author analyses the system of measure used in ancient Egypt, before the use of numbers for calculating measurements. He shows how measuring cords and a geometric method based on a grid-pattern originating from the circle were employed by master craftsmen in the design of Islamic art and architecture. The book offers an insight into how craftsmen and designers in the Muslim world have achieved monumental feats of artistic expression with harmony and precision, using the simplest of tools such as a ruler, a string and templates, together with a system of measure that is both simple and sophisticated.
Call Number: N6260 .I841 1993ISBN: 1873938454Publication Date: 1998
The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art by
The long-awaited new edition of a groundbreaking work on the impact of alternative concepts of space on modern art. In this groundbreaking study, first published in 1983 and unavailable for over a decade, Linda Dalrymple Henderson demonstrates that two concepts of space beyond immediate perception--the curved spaces of non-Euclidean geometry and, most important, a higher, fourth dimension of space--were central to the development of modern art. The possibility of a spatial fourth dimension suggested that our world might be merely a shadow or section of a higher dimensional existence. That iconoclastic idea encouraged radical innovation by a variety of early twentieth-century artists, ranging from French Cubists, Italian Futurists, and Marcel Duchamp, to Max Weber, Kazimir Malevich, and the artists of De Stijl and Surrealism. In an extensive new Reintroduction, Henderson surveys the impact of interest in higher dimensions of space in art and culture from the 1950s to 2000. Although largely eclipsed by relativity theory beginning in the 1920s, the spatial fourth dimension experienced a resurgence during the later 1950s and 1960s. In a remarkable turn of events, it has returned as an important theme in contemporary culture in the wake of the emergence in the 1980s of both string theory in physics (with its ten- or eleven-dimensional universes) and computer graphics. Henderson demonstrates the importance of this new conception of space for figures ranging from Buckminster Fuller, Robert Smithson, and the Park Place Gallery group in the 1960s to Tony Robbin and digital architect Marcos Novak.
Call Number: N6490 .H44 2013ISBN: 9780262582445Publication Date: 2013
The Cubist Cosmos by
Widely considered the most influential art movement of the twentieth century, cubism revolutionized European painting and sculpture, challenging Renaissance depictions of space by depicting figures as dynamic arrangements of volumes and planes. Tracing the growth of cubism between 1908 and 1919, The Cubist Cosmos reveals the movement's enormous stylistic range and its revolutionary potential for the art that would follow, as well as the way representatives of the avant-garde adopted and transformed its pictorial language. In chronologically and thematically devised chapters, The Cubist Cosmos demonstrates how the influence of folk art, archaic sculpture, and the works of Paul Cézanne became increasingly evident in the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. As the book shows, crystalline and geometric elements began to appear in 1908, followed by the domination of cubism's characteristic prismatically fragmented forms and an almost colorless austerity through 1911. The authors then follow this new pictorial language as it was taken up by artists like Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and Henri Le Fauconnier, who expanded and displayed it in large formats in the salon exhibitions of the Paris art world. Lavishly illustrated with more than three hundred color images, The Cubist Cosmos is sure to become one of the standard works on cubism.
Call Number: N6494.C8 C813 2019ISBN: 9783777432625Publication Date: 2019
Interplay by
The first in-depth study of a group of artists known for their irony, their theoretical impulses, and their market success in the 1980s. Emerging from New York's East Village art scene of the 1980s, the so-called neo-geo artists were a loosely associated group that included the painters Ashley Bickerton, Peter Halley, Sherrie Levine, Allan McCollum, Philip Taaffe, and Meyer Vaisman and the sculptors Jeff Koons and Haim Steinbach. Labeled neo-geo for the abstract geometric motifs that characterized only some of their work, the movement was also known variously as simulationism, neoconceptualism, neo-pop, neominimalism, and postabstraction. In this, the first in-depth study of the group, Amy Brandt argues that neoconceptualism is the most precise name for their work. Brandt sees it as an art about art history, characterized by ironic adaptations of past artistic movements and styles, a tendency toward visual interplay, and a theoretical impulse driven by postmodern concerns with intertextuality, deconstruction, and poststructuralism. Brandt investigates the East Village art scene of the 1980s and argues that the neoconceptualists' theoretical orientation distinguished them from other artists of the era. She traces the divergence in art critics' responses to the group's work and charts their market success. Brandt examines in detail the references to art history found in the work; she explores the group's formal connections to pop, minimalism, and conceptualism; and she investigates the relationships between the neoconceptual artists and another loosely connected group of artists, the Pictures generation.
Call Number: N6512.5.N35 B73 2014ISBN: 9780262027533Publication Date: 2014
The Cult of the Machine by
A fresh look at a bold and dynamic 20th-century American art style. Characterized by highly structured, geometric compositions with smooth surfaces, linear qualities, and lucid forms, Precisionism fully emerged after World War I and flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. This insightful publication, featuring more than 100 masterworks by artists such as Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Demuth, sheds new light on the Precisionist aesthetic and the intellectual concerns, excitement, tensions, and ambivalences about industrialization that helped develop this important strand of early American modernism. Essays explore the origins of the style--which reconciled realism with abstraction and adapted European art movements like Purism, Cubism, and Futurism to American subject matter--as well as its relationship to photography, and the ways in which it reflected the economic and social changes brought about by industrialization and technology in the post-World War I world. In addition to making a meaningful contribution to the resurging interest in Modernism and its revisionist narratives, this book offers copious connections between the past and our present day, poised on the verge of a fourth industrial revolution.
Call Number: N6512.5.P67 C85 2018ISBN: 9780300234022Publication Date: 2018
Radical Geometry by
Drawn from the world's leading collection of 20th-century Latin American art, Radical Geometry looks at how, from the 1930s through the 1970s, distinct artistic movements emerged in Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Caracas, innovative forms of expression that reflected the continent's new optimism. Focusing on the impact of such artists as Albers, Mondrian, Malevich, and Calder, all of whom influenced the Latin American Abstract Expressionists, the book explores the ways in which artists captured this positive spirit.
Call Number: N6620 .R33 2014ISBN: 9781907533693Publication Date: 2014
Magic of M. C. Escher by
M.C. Escher's artworks created a realm of enchantment and illusion. Interweaving well-known prints with numerous unpublished drawings, this fresh presentation, which includes 10 dynamic full-color gatefolds, reveals Escher's tireless quest for new visual concepts.
Call Number: N6953.E82 A4 2000ISBN: 0810967200Publication Date: 2000- Derivas de la geometría : razón y orden en la abstracción española, 1950-75 by
An exhibition catalogue of an exhibition held at the Museo Oteiza, May 19-Sept. 13, 2009. The exhibition was focused on the influence of geometry and mathematics on contemporary art.
Call Number: N7108.5.A2 N38 2009ISBN: 9788493658823Publication Date: 2009
Geometry of Design by
At last, a mathematical explanation of how art works presented in a manner we can all understand. Kimberly Elam takes the reader on a geometrical journey, lending insight and coherence to the design process by exploring the visual relationships that have foundations in mathematics as well as the essential qualities of life. Geometry of Design-the first book in our new Design Briefs Series-takes a close look at a broad range of twentieth-century examples of design, architecture, and illustration (from the Barcelona chair to the Musica Viva poster, from the Braun handblender to the Conico kettle), revealing underlying geometric structures in their compositions. Explanations and techniques of visual analysis make the inherent mathematical relationships evident and a must-have for anyone involved in graphic arts. The book focuses not only on the classic systems of proportioning, such as the golden section and root rectangles, but also on less well known proportioning systems such as the Fibonacci Series. Through detailed diagrams these geometric systems are brought to life giving an effective insight into the design process.
Call Number: N7431.5 .E44 2011ISBN: 9781568982496Publication Date: 2011
The Persistence of Geometry by
Geometry can be found all around us. The Persistence of Geometry is an exploration of the visualization of geometry and geometrical forms through history with a special emphasis on modern and contemporary art. It is a highly personal visual journey that records not only the commonalities of human perception throughout the ages and in different cultures, but also the continuing dialogue of vanguard art from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries with traditional and historical art. The Persistence of Geometry provides an opportunity to understand forms and shapes as carriers of meaning that are both specific to a particular cultural context and universal in their immediate appeal. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, ceramics, textiles, utensils and furniture from historic and contemporary cultures worldwide illustrate how geometric structures and abstract visual vocabularies have communicated meaning throughout history. I n the modern era, these geometric forms have served as vehicles for revolutionary distillations of form and narrative and as the foundations for conceptual and social models of new societal values. Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims, President of The Studio Museum in Harlem, has curated over 40 exhibitions, many reflecting an interest in African American and women artists; written extensively on African, Latino, Native and Asian American artists; and taught art history, curatorship, and art criticism at Bard College and Queens College, among others.
Call Number: N8217.G44 S56 2006ISBN: 9780940717862Publication Date: 2007
Ned Pratt by
The world in bold; Newfoundland in abstract."It is the landscape that endures, it is the landscape that remains in control." -- Ned Pratt. With Ned Pratt, there is no nostalgia, no romance, no theatre. His interest in the Newfoundland landscape forms the foundation for his photography. Pratt's approach to the act of looking transcends place. He distills the landscape into abstractions of form and colour. Disrupting depth with close architectural details and incisions of poles and wires, he undermines the traditional, romantic notion of "looking out" to sublime geometry. Ned Pratt: One Wave charts a decade of Pratt's breathtaking photography. Echoing Pratt's aesthetic, this beautifully designed book presents Pratt's works in formal conversation with each other. Stark imagery of buildings is juxtaposed with forays into abstraction and celebrations of the inherent geometry of natural forms -- whether a single wave crashing over a wall or stones cracked by freezing and thawing.
Call Number: TR647 .P728 2018ISBN: 9781773100869Publication Date: 2018-11-06
Origami Polyhedra Design by
This book unravels the mystery of Geometry in Origami with a unique approach: 64 Polyhedra designs, each made from a single square sheet of paper, no cuts, no glue; each polyhedron the largest possible from the starting size of square and each having an ingenious locking mechanism to hold its shape. The author covers the five Platonic solids (cube, tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron and dodecahedron). There are ample variations with different color patterns and sunken sides. Dipyramids and Dimpled Dipyramids, unexplored before this in Origami, are also covered. There are a total of 64 models in the book. All the designs have an interesting look and a pleasing folding sequence and are based on unique mathematical equations.
Call Number: TT870 .M567 2009ISBN: 9781568814582Publication Date: 2009
