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Volume
II
Issue 11 March 2000 |
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Art and Technology [Part Three] Which Came First...? by Kristin Redpath ...the visual arts are always the cultural bellwether.
"What inflicted [the greatest] damage and loss was the fervent enthusiasm of the new Christian religion...it ruined and demolished all the marvelous statues, besides the other sculptures, the pictures, mosaics and ornaments representing the false pagan gods.... These things were done...not out of hatred for the arts but in order to humiliate and overthrow the pagan gods. Nevertheless, their tremendous zeal was responsible for inflicting severe damage on the practice of the arts, which then fell into total confusion.... In the end there was left not the slightest trace of good art." According to Vaspari, the Western world then plunged into a darkness, not lifted until the beginning of the Renaissance. The implication is that Greek and Roman art was good art and Renaissance art was good art but art stagnated during the centuries between. Of course, we know today that the richness and beauty of art from the so-called "Dark Ages" brought the arts of manuscript illumination, mosaic, and stained glass, in particular, to great heights. Our art history would be far poorer without them. However, suppose the "Dark Ages" had not happened. Suppose we could snip about 1,000 years out of history and move from the Greco-Roman Classical period to the Renaissance without a detour through the thousand years in between. To do that, we need to examine briefly what the Greeks - and the Romans, who adopted the knowledge of the Greeks without advancing it much - knew about the world. The development of the concepts of reality - of space and time - in any culture are the centers around which both art and technology revolve and evolve. The Greeks, at the height of the Classical Age, believed in a heliocentric solar system. They also knew the world wasn't flat. How did they know? Through observation; study; individualism; freedom of expression and of argument (for free males); and the combination of Euclidean mathematics, Aristotelian philosophy, and a linear means of communication - the alphabet. Their scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and artists observed the world around them. They focused on reason and logic and, in doing so, developed a worldview that included the scientific method. Greek philosophy, although humanistic, included the search for the ideal in every aspect of life. The requirement that every work of art seek perfection underlay the Greek development of geometric forms in architecture based on the circle, the square, and the rectangle of perfect proportions - flawless forms, in the Greek view. The search for perfection, however, assumed that the universe was made of perfect forms, and resulted in some pretty basic mistakes: the rejection of the ellipse as an imperfect form, and the apparent non-existence of the vanishing point in perspective are two examples. We can only assume the latter, since use of the vanishing point is absent in all (known) Greek art. We could be wrong - so much of Classical Greco-Roman art has been destroyed that we cannot know for sure if there were artists who used vanishing-point perspective. However, since Euclidean mathematics does not recognize the concept (Euclid: "Parallel lines do not meet each other in either direction.") and we have no empirical evidence to the contrary, we can only assume artists hadn't figured it out. The art that remains, however, shows us the symmetry and beauty of Classical Greco-Roman architecture and sculpture. Existing statues, friezes, and vases depicting humans and animals show dimension, action, and scenes from "real life." The few examples of painting were preserved through the tragedy of Pompeii. The image below shows a wall mural of the marriage of Zeus and Hera, from which perspective could be inferred from the simple landscape in the background. However, we also see tiny figures in the foreground - perhaps mortals or children. These small figures are in opposition to the modern viewer's idea of "correct" perspective. 
Euclid pictured space as a grid of straight lines that, when applied to reality, begot perspective (although not in Euclid's day). He developed this theory despite the fact that straight lines are seldom observable in nature, with the exception of the most important straight line of all - the horizon. (We know the horizon curves with the curvature of the earth, but to one observer standing at a single point it appears straight.) Existing Classical Greek art does, however, employ conventions not seen in earlier works of art. Illustrating the Greek concept of linear time, paintings on vases appear to move in a single direction; likewise, Greek friezes show linear events. We can contrast this concept with, for example, early Egyptian painting, which might show the same person in several locations in the painting, or a god in several of its aspects within the same work. Somewhat oversimplified: To the Egyptians, time was cyclic; to the Greeks, time was linear. 
Team
of carriage horses from the older Grecian period, from a black
figured vase
What allowed the Renaissance to be? There are many possible answers, but, since I'm writing this, I get to say what I think and I think LITERACY! The author of Art and Physics, Leonard Shlain, says: "Words, once again, became the tools of thought rather than objects of worship." (It would appear that Dr. Shlain agrees with me.) When I think of Renaissance art, like many of us, I think first of Leonardo da Vinci as the quintessential Renaissance man. Before discussing Leonardo, though, it would be proper to mention his predecessor, Giotto (1276-1337 CE). Born at the height of the Middle Ages, he was a man ahead of his time. Through observation, Giotto was able to give painting a third dimension - depth. He placed the viewer outside the scene at a fixed point and represented the figures and the landscape of his painting from the point of view of that outside observer. In very, very simplified terms, Giotto picked up where Euclid left off, and, by extension, where the Greeks and Romans were when Rome was inconsiderate enough to fall. Giotto, also adhering to the convention that a painting was a pictorial moment in time, did not show more than one event in a painting. Examples of Medieval works, such as the Bayeux Tapestry, and of pre-Grecian works, like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, depict in the same piece of work many events that could not have happened at the same time, often with the same person taking part in different events. If I had to write a "compare and contrast" paper right now, I'd write a comparison between the Egyptian and the Early Christian cyclical worldviews as they related to art. In one of those coincidences that must occur, it was not long after Giotto reintroduced perspective that the concept of the two-dimensional graph was added to mathematical knowledge. Without the graph to visualize abstract concepts, scientists would not be able to make discoveries and artists would not be able to paint in perspective. It took a full century after Giotto's death before Alberti first mentioned the mathematical concept of a vanishing point Subsequently, Renaissance painters were able to make use of the observations of both mathematicians and artists. Using the graph and the vanishing point, artists were able to paint a three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional surface. At that moment, art and science/mathematics were confluent. Suddenly, the modern worldview appeared! Today we say, without thinking of the foundation of the phrase, that a person who has lost touch with reality has lost perspective. Shlain says, "...perspective was a surprising and delightful technical advance, embraced as enthusiastically as computer technology is today." (Wow, that popular?) There followed, both successively and concurrently, scientific, mathematical, and technological discoveries that profoundly influenced art and artistic observations, in turn, mirroring and further predicting science and technology. We take these discoveries for granted today, but should remember that the Renaissance began only about 600 years ago, while the Dark Ages lasted nearly 1,000 years. For example: The idea of a single light source, casting shadows all in the same direction (Medieval objects did not cast shadows) is a relatively new one. Others include: modeling objects in light and shade giving them dimension of their own (chiaroscuro); using light and shadow to depict time of day and season of year (humans long before knew how to measure time using the angle of the sun, but didn't paint it); and realizing that objects in the distance appear hazier than those close at hand (sfumato). The latter can be attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the ideal man of the Renaissance, according to the philosophy of that time. It is unfortunate that the Renaissance ideal of the whole man was lost in the Industrial Revolution. Today, someone like Leonardo would be considered a dilettante, fascinated as he was with both art and science. Today, our culture forces us to focus or fail; Leonardo's culture allowed him to dabble. The theory has been proposed by more than one historian that Leonardo was dyslexic, given his ambidextrousness, his fascination with mirror writing, and his propensity for reversing certain letters of the alphabet. Today, Leonardo's distraught parents might be told their son was learning disabled, perhaps suffering from both dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. I would like to see a modern-day school room with Leonardo in it, never able to fix his attention on the lesson, day-dreaming, mind-wandering, unfocused, seldom finishing his classwork or his homework, gifted, talented, troublemaking, having absolutely no idea what he wants to be when he grows up. How fortunate he was born in the right place at the right time. Sometimes history allows its geniuses to flourish, but most of the time, it does not. I have a theory: Evolution must progress slowly or we will blow ourselves and our world to smithereens. The vast majority of humankind is average. There are, of course, people at both ends of the mental scale - those who are born without the ability to function alone on society's harsh terms and those who are so gifted they, too, are somewhat outcast. Einstein, for example, was thought to be retarded in his early years. Leonardo, despite his magnificent mind, was hampered by the unusual nature of his brain - probably no dominant brain hemisphere, an enormous propensity for procrastination, the fact that he did not finish many of the projects he started (all evidence of the modern description of an "abnormal" brain). Perhaps nature and the process of evolution will not let geniuses be "normal" for fear that they will move too far ahead of the rest of us. Perhaps huge minds like Leonardo's and Einstein's had to be hampered by obstacles (similar to the theory that girls are usually shorter than their fathers and boys are usually taller than their mothers, thus keeping us from evolving into a race of midgets and giants). Overcoming obstacles is part of the human condition; maybe nature doesn't want us to make giant leaps. Whatever the reason, our society does not want us to be "whole" brained. We are supposed to pick a life's work - art, science, music, education, law, medicine - and stick to it. Such a deluge of knowledge pours upon us that if we do not specialize, we cannot excel in anything. In a way, this focus is necessary, if sometimes boring. But, wonderfully, Leonardo didn't have to specialize. Somehow, serendipity allowed him to be born at a time (1452-1519) and in a place where he could indulge in his wild creativity. He was also given the gift of a relatively long life (67 years) in which to realize his work. The Renaissance allowed the Protagorean adage, "Man is the measure of all things..." to be, for a while, true. The juxtaposition of art and science in the Renaissance is symbolized in Leonardo's well-known drawing of a man within a circle and a square: the marriage of Euclidian geometry and Renaissance Humanism. However, the artist of the Renaissance did refute one of Euclid's theories: Parallel lines do meet, but only on canvas. 
Leonardo
da Vinci: Diagram of human proportions 1485-90
There are several recent articles and books predicting the coming end of history or science. About the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama, a State Department official, wrote a controversial article entitled The End of History in which he postulated that, with the fall of Communism, Liberal Democracy was the final form of human social development and government. Therefore, man had no place to go with the development of governments and, thus, history ends. Mr. Fukuyama has since revised his theories. In The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, author John Horgan, a respected science writer, makes much the same prediction about science. He says, "With earth-shattering concepts such as evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics behind us, the Age of Scientific Discovery may give way to the Age of Diminishing Returns." I, for one, would not want either of these premises to be true. To believe we have already discovered everything, or soon will, thereafter for the rest of human existence only to apply our existing knowledge, is a very depressing notion and an extremely haughty one. Humans keep changing their view of the universe and reality; what makes us think ours is the final, right one? As we have seen, it appears this kind of we've-already-discovered- everything, there-isn't-anything-new proclamation crops up repeatedly over the centuries. Maybe if scientists run out of things to invent or politicians lack new kinds of governments to, er...govern, they should look at the work of contemporary artists so they can figure out what to do next!
Resources: The books mentioned in this article are: Megatrends, by John Naisbitt (Warner Books, New York, 1982). The epigraph is from page 267. The Twilight of Science, by John Horgan. John Horgan is a senior writer at Scientific American who has won major awards for his work. This article, which can be found on the web at http://www.techreview.com/articles/july96/horgan.html, is adapted from his book, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, published by Helix Books, a division of Addison-Wesley. Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light, by Leonard Shlain (William Morrow & Company, New York). The epigraph came from the 1990 edition, at page 432; the quotation used later in the text came from the 1991 edition, at page 47. Lives of the Artists, by Giorgio Vaspari, translated by George Bull (Penguin, 1965). The End of History and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama (Avon Books, 1993).
[n.b. Many of the sites listed here are particularly appropriate for children. See details below. AMC]
http://www.kent.pvt.k12.ct.us/Departments/General_Studies/2000/artproj.htm A pretty good site for kids, containing links to single photos, and simply explained artifacts. http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Collections/greekframedoc1.html A tour of the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Greek Exhibit. http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/resrcs/lessons/2greece.htm A lesson plan for elementary school teachers. http://www.thegrid.net/bpb/ancient.htm A site for finding children's activity books on ancient cultures. http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/LEES/Art.html
A source of good links to lesson plans for teachers. Greek vase
painting: http://classics.holycross.edu/Courses/ICA/F99/problems/iconography.html http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Secondary/Painter_Essays/Achilles_1.html http://www.clas.canterbury.ac.nz/nzact/gvp1.html http://www.museum.cornell.edu/HFJ/handbook/hb97.html
http://www.famsf.org/legion/exhibitions/pergamon/publications.html http://www.uk.digiserve.com/mentor/marbles/ Murals: http://mati.eas.asu.edu:8421/ChicanArte/html_pages/Protest.L8.html
Printmaking and murals across cultures, including ancient Greek -
primarily for teachers. http://www.hughesacad.state.sc.us/CWeb/mtveswq.html A good kid's educational site with interesting links http://www.eliki.com/ancient/civilizations/pompeii/people/ Good for older kids, and younger ones with an adult. http://www.imss.fi.it/pompei/index.html Euclid's
Theories: http://www.unesco.org/phiweb/uk/raphael/fresque/f3.html The painting of Euclid by Rafael.
http://www.lands.ab.ca/users/smacaulay/ldavinci1.htm
http://www.leonet.it/comuni/vinci/ A nice virtual tour of Vinci, Leonardo's home town. http://library.thinkquest.org/13681/data/davin2.shtml This is a site by high school students for high school students, with some projects for younger kids, too. http://www.mos.org/leonardo/ An art and science site at the Museum of Science, Boston, MA.
http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/bio/g/giotto/biograph.html Pictures and biography. http://www.televisual.it/uffizi/giotto_b.html A biography with links to paintings
http://www.saumag.edu/art/studio/chalkboard/s-chiaro.html
Ask Dr. Universe: http://www.wsu.edu/DrUniverse/FeaturedQuestion.html Drawings by children during Spanish Civil War: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/tsdp/index.html Kid's drawings for peace: http://www.kids-drawings.com/ Online art and games: http://www.kids-drawings.com/ 3D drawing lessons: http://www.draw3d.com/mainframe.html (Follow the link to lessons) Perspective drawing lesson: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/farp/perspective/perspctv.html Interior perspective: http://www.saumag.edu/art/studio/chalkboard/lp-in1.html A site for older kids or adults. Perspective instruction: http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/ExploringLinearPerspective.html
Kristin Redpath is Professor Emeritus of Computer Technology, Massasoit Community College, Brockton, Massachusetts, with a Master's Degree in Theater Education, as well as additional graduate study in theater, education and computer science. She combined her love of teaching, computers, and the arts with business skills in 1984 as an adjunct, then full time, professor of Computer Information Systems at Massasoit Community College. She served as Chair of the Computer Information Systems Department from 1988 through 1994, received tenure in 1990 and the rank of full Professor in 1991. Before retiring (early) in August, 1999, she also served as President of Massasoit's Academic Senate. She is currently at work on a textbook on introductory computer graphics and is investigating the feasibility of making her own technical training CD's. Also a watercolorist and singer, she views retirement as a new beginning. Married, with a grown son, she lives in the picturesque (Wheaton) college town of Norton, Massachusetts, and never wants to live permanently anywhere but in a small, New England college town.
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