Week 2 - Math and Art

The Mandelbrot Set
The Parthenon Temple

The ancient study of mathematics is generally regarded as the foundation of all natural sciences. However, the usage of mathematics goes much further beyond sciences, as its appearance can be seen from various artworks, from the ancient Parthenon Temple to modern fractal arts of Manderbrot sets.

The great artist Leonardo Da Vinci also uses mathematics profoundly in his paintings. Taken for example his famous artwork The Last Supper. Many argue that Da Vinci must had sketched the painting with precise geometric lines in advance to present the head of Jesus Christ just below the vanishing point of the entire vision of the painting.

As the famous physicist Galileo Galilei once said, “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.” On the one hand, the common aim of all sciences is to explain the reality of our world, and mathematics certainly is a very powerful tool to fulfill such purpose. On the other hand, any form of art must be deeply rooted in the reality of our world to have any aesthetic value, despite it being a sincere depiction, a deliberate distortion to or a mystical abstraction of the reality. Thus the way mathematics has its influence in art is exactly how it has affected the long history of natural sciences, for being a powerful tool of explanation to the reality of our world it is needed not only by science but also by art.


Sources:
"The Parthenon and Phi, the Golden Ratio" Gary Meisner, 2013. Web. 17 Apr. 2017. <https://www.goldennumber.net/parthenon-phi-golden-ratio>

"Mandelbrot Set" Wolfram Mathworld, n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2017. <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MandelbrotSet.html>
"The Last Supper: Da Vinci's Geometric Secrets of Composition" N. p., 2011. Web. 17 Apr. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XwXybr7Ddw>
Vesna, Victoria. “Math + Art.” Lecture 2.
Wikipedia contributors. “Galileo Galilei.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 Oct. 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.

Comments

  1. Na Hyun SongApril 19, 2017 at 8:45 PM

    I also talked about Leonardo Da Vinci and his work in my blog post. I did not know that mathematical tool is also used in "The Last Supper." Before week 2's lecture, I was not able to connect math and art together and was not able to explain art using math. However, now when I look at art piece, I try to find whether the artist used the golden ratio in his/her work or whether their is geometric lines used in the art piece. It was really nice reading your blog post!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 1 - Two Cultures

Image
                   Hi there! This is Wenhao Li, a fourth-year undergraduate student at UCLA double majoring in Mathematics and Philosophy. Many people at the first glance would be more or less intrigued when they first hear my majors: math and philosophy seem to be two fields across the entire academic universe! Indeed, the two fields of study require very different type of thinking, like what Snow presented in his essay "Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution".  Math makes massive use of deductive reasoning and is the “ language ”  of all natural sciences. Although the study of philosphy also has some focus on the logic behind arguments, much more effort should be put into the definition of concepts and their match to our daily standards and intuition.               My fascination of mathematics started when I was in primary school; at that time, there was nothing that could hold my concentration so persistently than the math brainteasers, and I spent most of my
Read more

Week 3 - Robotics and Art

Image
The terms “ industrialization ”  and “ art ”  often tend to conflict with each other. For a concept to be industrialized is to find the schematic application to the concept and to make the concept available for mass production. On the other hand, for a concept to be more artistic is to refine the concept itself and to emphasize as well as to enhance its unique aesthetic and social values. The industrial products are often lack of aesthetic and emotional values, while the more artistically accoladed works are often harder to massively produce because of their originality. However, industrialization does not necessarily contradict with artistry, and does not always annihilate originality. Steven Spielberg ’ s film, Artificial Intelligence (2001), can be served as an example to illustrate such complex relationships. The main character David, as a highly intelligent robot with emotions, is one of the mass-produced kid robots produced to substitute a human child in a family. With his emo
Read more