Thinking about Aesthetics, the Oldest Bird Paintings, and Painting Nature
The linkage of science and art has historical
as well as contemporary origins in the pictorial
archive, which raises a question: Does linking
the two cast doubt on the often-cited “Two
Cultures” theme of C. P. Snow that modern scientists
and artists are members of opposing cultures
that do not exchange much information?[1] David Edwards, in Artscience (Harvard University
Press, 2008), finds the traditional line between
these two cultures still firmly drawn and
argues eloquently for a new intellectual milieu
that will be an interdisciplinary catalyst
for innovation and creativity. Others find the
boundary more porous...
[1] Snow, Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, 3–4, 17. In 1959, C. P. Snow proposed that scientists and artists are members of non-exchanging, opposing cultures. He blamed much of the split on a century long flood of scientific information—one that left a waterline so high it effectively blocked communication with anyone outside one’s scientific specialty, let alone across the science-art divide.
© 2008 Darryl Wheye and Donald Kennedy
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Thinking about Aesthetics
Repeatedly, those who have made their mark
in science
describe the work as part imagination,
part logic...
When artists capture our attention and draw us in, they
seem to take one or more of three approaches...
Thinking about the Oldest Paintings of Birds
When it comes to technical skill and style, what can
we conclude about the oldest wall art? To answer this
question the art historian Sir Ernst Gombrich (1909–
2001) wrote: "We now know that more than 30,000
years ago
ice age artists had acquired a complete
mastery
of their technical means, presumably based
on a tradition extending much further into the
past.
This tradition had equipped them with
serviceable
conventions in the rendering of
various species, but
it had not prevented them
from branching out on their own—witness the
unique portrayal of an owl..."
Thinking about Portraying Nature
Why can’t painters just sit down and paint nature,
recording what they see the best they can? We
return again to Gombrich, "The simple demand that
they should “paint what they see” is self-contradictory. . . ."
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