Exploring the Invisible

Art, Science and the Spiritual
Exploring the Invisible
Art, Science and the Spiritual
By Lynn Gamwell
Princeton University Press, 2002
ISBN: 0 691 08972 8

This book looks at the impact of science on modern art. It focuses on how the way that science has opened up previously invisible worlds has inspired artists since the mid-nineteenth century.

This 345-page book is divided into chapters:
*    Art in Pursuit of the Absolute: Romanticism
*    Adopting a Scientific Worldview
*    The French Art of Observation: A Cool Rejection of Darwin
*    German and Russian Art of the Absolute: A Warm Embrace of Darwin
*    Loving and Loathing Science at the Fin De Siecle
*    Looking Inward: Art and the Human Mind
*    Wordless Music and Abstract Art
*    The Culmination of Newton’s Clockwork Universe
*    Einstein’s Space-time Universe
*    Abstract Art with a Cosmic Perspective
*    Surrealist Science
*    The Atomic Sublime
*    The Disunity of Nature: PostModern Art, Science, and the Spiritual

This is a thought-provoking book well illustrated with art and the concepts, diagrams and images that have inspired them. For those of us who straddle the worlds of art and science the connections have always been obvious. But for any others it can seem that the two are so separate and distinct that there is little or no connection. This book does a great job at showing those connections with clarity and interest, and also making it plain that you do not have to become a scientist to be an artist with an interest in science.

For the thoughtful artist/photographer, art historian, student and scientist with an interest in art, this is a great book.