Working with the enemy:
The difference between the Visual Arts and the Sciences.
My name is Phil Lambert I am an artist based here in Cardiff. I studied human sciences at UCl prior to taking obtaining a distinction on MA in Fine Arts at Swansea Met. I have exhibited widely over the UK and Europe, I have works in public and private collections and I have won the student prize at the welsh artist of the year competition. I was also recently selected as the cover artist for Artist Newsletter. My work is inspired by my interest in science and my colour blindness. Particular areas of scientific interest include perception, consciousness and evolutionary theory.
A presentation describing science in 40minutes would be ambitious, so firstly I must stress that, in attempting to unravel the interactions between these two disciplines, this presentation can only ever provide a brief glimpse at what is a fascinating portrayal of the two key components of human creativity.
I hope though, that this talk may dispel some of the myths and encourage a new perception of art and science, which may lead to more collaboration between these disciplines.
We have in our culture a loose generalisation of what we expect of the arts and sciences. The arts are typically bohemian, exciting, irrational, emotional, useless, damaged and even dangerous. The sciences on the other hand, are straight, repressed, coldly rational, unsexy and functional. Yet both disciplines share notions of creativity (whatever that is?), genius (a term that does more damage than good in my mind) and even concepts of beauty and truth (philosophers are still trying to define these).
How fair are these stereotypes, are the two disciplines really so different, and what does the future hold?
Whenever I think of art and science I am reminded of the sociobiological theory proposed by Geoffrey Miller that I came across whilst studying at UCL in the 1990’s. Miller examined the museum holdings of artworks and recordings of Jazz musicians. He discovered that the majority of the artworks were produced by men in their 30’s. This data was then used to support a theory that claimed that despite the elaborate reasoning and bleating about truth, beauty and all sorts, the arts are in fact a symptom of sexual selection. A variant on Natural selection, mentioned briefly by Darwin, which emphasises features that signify good survival and reproductive health through display and behaviour. So in essence, similar to the peacocks tail, the decorated nests of bower birds or perhaps the inflated arses of Baboons.
I have to say that in my experience of art students and gallery opening nights there may well be a degree of truth to this.
But seriously… its hard not see this as a direct attack on everything that artists and for that matter the public, hold dear about the arts.
But on thinking about this theory further it begs the question… what do scientists think that they are doing? Can their work be reduced to sexual competition and display too?
Again in my experience of higher education there may well be some truth in this?
But lets not get distracted by reductionist accounts of culture. There are many of them from a variety of disciplines. If we are to understand the difference between the arts and sciences then we must start at the beginning. Which, for Western society and the notion of the fine arts, is with the Greeks.
It is interesting to note that when Plato devised his notion of the perfect state philosophers (and this includes scientists and mathematicians) were all welcomed in, but the visual artists were left outside with the barbarians. Why?
Plato argues that the visual artists simply imitate nature, and in doing so they cannot reach any pure truths. These pure truths were the abstract concepts, such as those in geometry, which seemed to suggest a universal order to the cosmos. An artist was simply someone who could make a picture that "looks just like the real thing". So was even one degree removed from real life, in terms of his relation to the truth.
Worse still, all the arts had the capacity to arouse and motivate people. So in an ideal society, they must be strictly controlled and censored. In some ways not much has really changed?
This idea of the arts being representational is still one of the most powerful ideas in aesthetics and was the dominant philosophy on the arts up until the 19th century and the origin of modernism. Yet even the most representational paintings are often founded on a series of choices made in the compositional arrangement, and are often saturated with other levels of meaning beyond representation. For an example look at the 17 Century still life works of Juan Sanchez Cotan, with their subtle religious symbolism and strong geometrical composition.
From our perspective this highlights the changing definitions of the arts, particularly in the last hundred years or so. This includes theories about art as expression, art as communication, art as pure form, art as therapy, art as whatever gets a reaction, and countless other theories.
In Plato’s time science was largely about investigating the pure forms. Those abstract qualities of Nature such as the circle, which are found in geometry, and which hinted at a universal theory of everything.
Clearly science has, like art, adapted and changed through the years to incorporate a similar variety of motives, from the therapeutic, industrial and social to the abstract and intellectual. If you read a bit of scientific philosophy such as Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, then it becomes clear that the sciences are as difficult to define as the arts, despite their apparent functionality.
The simplistic atomic models, based on Newtonian physics which we are still largely brought up on in our schools have given us a notion of science as a set of discrete systems reducible to a universal order of black and white simplicity, comparable to a clockwork mechanism, which one-day we can completely understand.
Yet as we look deeper into these mechanical workings we begin to face limitations. The act of measuring influences the system, or the abstraction of a biological mechanism from its context provides only a simplistic understanding of what’s happening. Or perhaps there is some truly bizarre uncertainty about time and space in the smallest particles, which we simply don’t have the capacity to visualise. I am thinking here of the current debate in quantum physics about the need for metaphors to describe what is happening as opposed to relying purely on the language of mathematics.
Our desire to neatly separate and classify the articles of nature and nurture keeps on distorting the very picture we are trying so hard to see.
And worse, even science itself cannot be separated from its context. As demonstrated by the effects of politics and funding biases. Where we begin to look for new knowledge and how it gets published are themselves part of our complex cultural make up.
The waters in the sciences are as muddied as they are in the arts and humanities and let no one doubt that.
So both disciplines are complicated we can probably accept that, but surely art is all about enjoyment and entertainment, whereas science exposes new knowledge and understanding?
Rightly or wrongly scientists are increasingly being persuaded to leave their labs and make some effort to talk to or ‘engage’ with the public. To some scientists this comes naturally and for others this is something of a challenge, but increasingly this is a condition in their funding. The result of this is that scientist have had to find ways to engage, or let us put it another way, ‘entertain’ the public. Some have become masters at this. Richard Dawkins with his sound-bite style, regular and easily digestible books and TV appearances is one good example of this. As is Steve Jones the UCL geneticist or more recently Brian Cox with his famous Cox effect on the sales of telescopes.
One particularly interesting example comes from the psychologist and neuroscientist Beau Lotto, who in creating the Lotto Lab at the British museum has taken Public engagement to whole new level.
Beau has taken his lab out of the science institution and placed it in the public realm. Inviting the public to observe them working and participate in the experiments. Cheeky as it means he doesn’t have to pay for his lab volunteers, but also this sets a new context around the experiments. This may have a significant benefit, as Beau takes the science to the subjects as opposed to trying to recreate real-life scenarios in the lab.
He even takes this to the point where he has a Thursday night club-night exploring sonics, visuals, behavioural studies and the effects of alcohol intake.
Surely a must see when you are next in London.
Apparantly, it has become quite the pick up spot for scientists,…
which brings me back to Geoffrey Miller and the baboons arse….
But of course this sort of ease with the public does not suit all scientists and all scientific disciplines. So how are these scientists to negotiate the demand for public engagement? Well they must collaborate. And for some reason, probably to do with the influence of the Wellcome trusts Sci-Art program, they choose artists.
Of course this makes sense… art is about entertainment and public engagement isn’t it? We just get artists to reinterpret what we are doing and the public will understand it? Well in some cases yes, but lets just stop and have a look at the perception of the contemporary visual arts…
“Who could mistake this rubbish bin for art? It must be the Turner Prize judges as winner is announced”
“The Turner Prize 2008: who cares who wins.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact I challenge you to find a single positive article on the visual arts, let alone the contemporary visual arts.
Now who has the public engagement problem?
You see the arts are equally obscure and face the same challenges as the sciences do. If interpretation for public engagement is what the scientist is looking for then there are huge industries involved in design, media and new media that can devise interesting ways of reaching the public. They would serve very well for this. Although, they might charge a normal professional rate, and many artists will do it cheaper out of desperation.
That’s not to say, however, that the arts can’t unite with the sciences to help solve both their public engagement problems. And certainly in my view it is when this happens and the exhibition event is seen as a public engagement vehicule for both disciplines that some of the most interesting work happens. In this situation the artists is not given a brief and treated like a designer, but is free to make comment on the work in question in a range of ways which draw on a multitude of different aspects, from ethical issues to the humorous and many more. This situation enables the artist and scientist to collaborate together and influence each other whilst not limiting the possibilities of either approach.
So we understand that contemporary science influences the arts, but can this happen the other way around? Can artists influence scientists?
If I am honest this is not an easy claim to make. The influences are not as direct or measurable, but there are some examples and hopefully as more scientists and artists work together there will be more.
Jonah Lehrer has written extensively on artists preempting scientific discoveries. He points to Niels Bohr the physicist studying electrons in the 1920’s who needed to re-imagining a model for atomic structure. Bohr has stated that he was inspired by Cubism and in particular the way in which it viewed an object from multiple perspectives simultaneously. From that point onwards he used references to Cubism to explain his model and kept Cubist paintings in his office.
Semir Zeki, another prominent neuroscientist, describes visual artists, particularly those with a modernist perspective, as actually being neuroscientists. Exploring visual perception by focusing on the effects and truths of discrete aspects of the visual processing system. For example, the limited palettes and dynamic patterns of movement in Calder’s mobiles seem to anticipate discoveries regarding Kinetic perception in the V5 Cortical area of the brain. He suggests the paired down forms of Malevich and Mondrian’s modernist paintings trigger linear, rectangular and colour centers, whilst eliminating form recognition centres in the brain. This pre-empts discoveries about early visual processing in the visual cortex. He even compares Monet’s impressionist technique, using colour at a point, to the condition of dyschromatopsia. In this condition sufferers are unable to discount the illuminating light factor and create colour constancy across different environmental conditions. From this can we assume that part of the enjoyment of viewing a Monet painting is derived from completing the picture and harmonising the colours to producing a conception of the precise qualities of the illuminating light?
It does seem reasonable to suggest that specific perceptual models in the brain are significant in determining both our ability to see and our enjoyment of seeing, and therefore that artists might have a valuable perspective on this.
On a much more basic note it is hard to imagine their being any value in extending life expectancy or replacing heart valves if we were forced to live a life without any involvement in human culture. We are conscious and cultural animals, this aspect of our lives is just as important as our physiology and no true understanding of humanity can come from separating the two.
So how about the way in which scientists and artists work, are there any differences here?
Once upon a time there was an age of the great men and woman of science, famous for their individual, mercurial, and often eccentric, talents. They were known as geniuses. Now we still cling onto these ideas, but we know that more often than not the discoveries are born from labs with teams of scientists and technicians, or they are based on decades of prior research. We have moved into an age of ‘Big Science’.
Even here the arts are echoing the sciences. As Andy Warhol’s Factory or more recently Damian Hirst’s many spot painters or the research lab of Olafur Eliasson lay testament. Could we be moving into an age of ‘Big Art’ too? Certainly it is now more common to see an artist in a suit carrying a laptop than it is to see them in paint-splattered overalls.
Perhaps this is in part due to the decline of the independent arts patrons, large and small, and the rise of public funding for the arts under the rational of the instrumental arguments. This project-based approach demands a degree of validation and clear intention to justify the use of public funds. This has led to a culture of funding proposals and applications, which through the use of language and administration has perhaps tipped artistic practice further towards the sciences.
Despite our fairly constant stereotypes of the artist and scientist there seems to have been a fluctuating relationship between the arts and sciences. Starting as opposites in the age of the Greeks, but by the Renaissance material, anatomical and optical studies had brought the two fields back together as typified by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Then the two fields largely part again through the Baroque and Romantic periods, but as the Enlightenment takes hold the two fields come back into alignment through Newton and in opposition Goethe and their influence on artists like Turner. (Goethe must surely rank as one of the best examples of artists pre-empting the sciences with his phenomenological scientific method and perception based approach to colour).
This interest continues on into the Impressionists, with Monet’s studious approach to perception and atmospherics and artists such as Seurat. Then through into Modernism proper where the promise of science inspired many developments ranging from Futurism through to De Stijl and Bauhaus. Only to eventually part again as artists became more concerned with their relationship to pop culture in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
In the late 50’s and early 60’s the English essayist C.P. Snow’s lamented the divide between the cultures and the general ignorance that existed on both sides of that divide. Blaming British education in a series of publications and calling for a third culture designed to fill the gap.
This call was echoed in the 90’s by E. O. Wilson, the somewhat controversial American scientist and essayist. He believed in the need for an interdisciplinary approach to solve the greatest problems, an approach that he called ‘Consilience’.
I am not sure what has happened, has science been forced to become part of popular culture, or have the arts become more scientific, or are both disciplines threatened by mass culture?
But could it be that we are once again in a position to combine the two great pillars of human achievement for the greater good of mankind?
Whatever the case, it is becoming increasingly different to tell the difference between a scientist and an artist.
Postscript
On reflection one other area that was not included in the original talk is what happens when the two disciplines trade places. How, for example, are Gunther Von Hagens plastination displays to be judged from an arts perspective? (Incidently, has he borrowed Joseph Beuys’ hat???) How do these relate to the Painting by Rembrandt of Dr Tulps Anatomy Lesson and what role does entertainment have in both these works?
Is there perhaps an ontological divide between the two disciplines that means that any hybrid is infertile? There was an excellent exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, ‘Spectacular Bodies’ that explored this issue some time ago now (2001 at a guess). What mechanism have artists used to bridge this?
The difference between the Visual Arts and the Sciences.
My name is Phil Lambert I am an artist based here in Cardiff. I studied human sciences at UCl prior to taking obtaining a distinction on MA in Fine Arts at Swansea Met. I have exhibited widely over the UK and Europe, I have works in public and private collections and I have won the student prize at the welsh artist of the year competition. I was also recently selected as the cover artist for Artist Newsletter. My work is inspired by my interest in science and my colour blindness. Particular areas of scientific interest include perception, consciousness and evolutionary theory.
A presentation describing science in 40minutes would be ambitious, so firstly I must stress that, in attempting to unravel the interactions between these two disciplines, this presentation can only ever provide a brief glimpse at what is a fascinating portrayal of the two key components of human creativity.
I hope though, that this talk may dispel some of the myths and encourage a new perception of art and science, which may lead to more collaboration between these disciplines.
We have in our culture a loose generalisation of what we expect of the arts and sciences. The arts are typically bohemian, exciting, irrational, emotional, useless, damaged and even dangerous. The sciences on the other hand, are straight, repressed, coldly rational, unsexy and functional. Yet both disciplines share notions of creativity (whatever that is?), genius (a term that does more damage than good in my mind) and even concepts of beauty and truth (philosophers are still trying to define these).
How fair are these stereotypes, are the two disciplines really so different, and what does the future hold?
Whenever I think of art and science I am reminded of the sociobiological theory proposed by Geoffrey Miller that I came across whilst studying at UCL in the 1990’s. Miller examined the museum holdings of artworks and recordings of Jazz musicians. He discovered that the majority of the artworks were produced by men in their 30’s. This data was then used to support a theory that claimed that despite the elaborate reasoning and bleating about truth, beauty and all sorts, the arts are in fact a symptom of sexual selection. A variant on Natural selection, mentioned briefly by Darwin, which emphasises features that signify good survival and reproductive health through display and behaviour. So in essence, similar to the peacocks tail, the decorated nests of bower birds or perhaps the inflated arses of Baboons.
I have to say that in my experience of art students and gallery opening nights there may well be a degree of truth to this.
But seriously… its hard not see this as a direct attack on everything that artists and for that matter the public, hold dear about the arts.
But on thinking about this theory further it begs the question… what do scientists think that they are doing? Can their work be reduced to sexual competition and display too?
Again in my experience of higher education there may well be some truth in this?
But lets not get distracted by reductionist accounts of culture. There are many of them from a variety of disciplines. If we are to understand the difference between the arts and sciences then we must start at the beginning. Which, for Western society and the notion of the fine arts, is with the Greeks.
It is interesting to note that when Plato devised his notion of the perfect state philosophers (and this includes scientists and mathematicians) were all welcomed in, but the visual artists were left outside with the barbarians. Why?
Plato argues that the visual artists simply imitate nature, and in doing so they cannot reach any pure truths. These pure truths were the abstract concepts, such as those in geometry, which seemed to suggest a universal order to the cosmos. An artist was simply someone who could make a picture that "looks just like the real thing". So was even one degree removed from real life, in terms of his relation to the truth.
Worse still, all the arts had the capacity to arouse and motivate people. So in an ideal society, they must be strictly controlled and censored. In some ways not much has really changed?
This idea of the arts being representational is still one of the most powerful ideas in aesthetics and was the dominant philosophy on the arts up until the 19th century and the origin of modernism. Yet even the most representational paintings are often founded on a series of choices made in the compositional arrangement, and are often saturated with other levels of meaning beyond representation. For an example look at the 17 Century still life works of Juan Sanchez Cotan, with their subtle religious symbolism and strong geometrical composition.
From our perspective this highlights the changing definitions of the arts, particularly in the last hundred years or so. This includes theories about art as expression, art as communication, art as pure form, art as therapy, art as whatever gets a reaction, and countless other theories.
In Plato’s time science was largely about investigating the pure forms. Those abstract qualities of Nature such as the circle, which are found in geometry, and which hinted at a universal theory of everything.
Clearly science has, like art, adapted and changed through the years to incorporate a similar variety of motives, from the therapeutic, industrial and social to the abstract and intellectual. If you read a bit of scientific philosophy such as Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, then it becomes clear that the sciences are as difficult to define as the arts, despite their apparent functionality.
The simplistic atomic models, based on Newtonian physics which we are still largely brought up on in our schools have given us a notion of science as a set of discrete systems reducible to a universal order of black and white simplicity, comparable to a clockwork mechanism, which one-day we can completely understand.
Yet as we look deeper into these mechanical workings we begin to face limitations. The act of measuring influences the system, or the abstraction of a biological mechanism from its context provides only a simplistic understanding of what’s happening. Or perhaps there is some truly bizarre uncertainty about time and space in the smallest particles, which we simply don’t have the capacity to visualise. I am thinking here of the current debate in quantum physics about the need for metaphors to describe what is happening as opposed to relying purely on the language of mathematics.
Our desire to neatly separate and classify the articles of nature and nurture keeps on distorting the very picture we are trying so hard to see.
And worse, even science itself cannot be separated from its context. As demonstrated by the effects of politics and funding biases. Where we begin to look for new knowledge and how it gets published are themselves part of our complex cultural make up.
The waters in the sciences are as muddied as they are in the arts and humanities and let no one doubt that.
So both disciplines are complicated we can probably accept that, but surely art is all about enjoyment and entertainment, whereas science exposes new knowledge and understanding?
Rightly or wrongly scientists are increasingly being persuaded to leave their labs and make some effort to talk to or ‘engage’ with the public. To some scientists this comes naturally and for others this is something of a challenge, but increasingly this is a condition in their funding. The result of this is that scientist have had to find ways to engage, or let us put it another way, ‘entertain’ the public. Some have become masters at this. Richard Dawkins with his sound-bite style, regular and easily digestible books and TV appearances is one good example of this. As is Steve Jones the UCL geneticist or more recently Brian Cox with his famous Cox effect on the sales of telescopes.
One particularly interesting example comes from the psychologist and neuroscientist Beau Lotto, who in creating the Lotto Lab at the British museum has taken Public engagement to whole new level.
Beau has taken his lab out of the science institution and placed it in the public realm. Inviting the public to observe them working and participate in the experiments. Cheeky as it means he doesn’t have to pay for his lab volunteers, but also this sets a new context around the experiments. This may have a significant benefit, as Beau takes the science to the subjects as opposed to trying to recreate real-life scenarios in the lab.
He even takes this to the point where he has a Thursday night club-night exploring sonics, visuals, behavioural studies and the effects of alcohol intake.
Surely a must see when you are next in London.
Apparantly, it has become quite the pick up spot for scientists,…
which brings me back to Geoffrey Miller and the baboons arse….
But of course this sort of ease with the public does not suit all scientists and all scientific disciplines. So how are these scientists to negotiate the demand for public engagement? Well they must collaborate. And for some reason, probably to do with the influence of the Wellcome trusts Sci-Art program, they choose artists.
Of course this makes sense… art is about entertainment and public engagement isn’t it? We just get artists to reinterpret what we are doing and the public will understand it? Well in some cases yes, but lets just stop and have a look at the perception of the contemporary visual arts…
“Who could mistake this rubbish bin for art? It must be the Turner Prize judges as winner is announced”
“The Turner Prize 2008: who cares who wins.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact I challenge you to find a single positive article on the visual arts, let alone the contemporary visual arts.
Now who has the public engagement problem?
You see the arts are equally obscure and face the same challenges as the sciences do. If interpretation for public engagement is what the scientist is looking for then there are huge industries involved in design, media and new media that can devise interesting ways of reaching the public. They would serve very well for this. Although, they might charge a normal professional rate, and many artists will do it cheaper out of desperation.
That’s not to say, however, that the arts can’t unite with the sciences to help solve both their public engagement problems. And certainly in my view it is when this happens and the exhibition event is seen as a public engagement vehicule for both disciplines that some of the most interesting work happens. In this situation the artists is not given a brief and treated like a designer, but is free to make comment on the work in question in a range of ways which draw on a multitude of different aspects, from ethical issues to the humorous and many more. This situation enables the artist and scientist to collaborate together and influence each other whilst not limiting the possibilities of either approach.
So we understand that contemporary science influences the arts, but can this happen the other way around? Can artists influence scientists?
If I am honest this is not an easy claim to make. The influences are not as direct or measurable, but there are some examples and hopefully as more scientists and artists work together there will be more.
Jonah Lehrer has written extensively on artists preempting scientific discoveries. He points to Niels Bohr the physicist studying electrons in the 1920’s who needed to re-imagining a model for atomic structure. Bohr has stated that he was inspired by Cubism and in particular the way in which it viewed an object from multiple perspectives simultaneously. From that point onwards he used references to Cubism to explain his model and kept Cubist paintings in his office.
Semir Zeki, another prominent neuroscientist, describes visual artists, particularly those with a modernist perspective, as actually being neuroscientists. Exploring visual perception by focusing on the effects and truths of discrete aspects of the visual processing system. For example, the limited palettes and dynamic patterns of movement in Calder’s mobiles seem to anticipate discoveries regarding Kinetic perception in the V5 Cortical area of the brain. He suggests the paired down forms of Malevich and Mondrian’s modernist paintings trigger linear, rectangular and colour centers, whilst eliminating form recognition centres in the brain. This pre-empts discoveries about early visual processing in the visual cortex. He even compares Monet’s impressionist technique, using colour at a point, to the condition of dyschromatopsia. In this condition sufferers are unable to discount the illuminating light factor and create colour constancy across different environmental conditions. From this can we assume that part of the enjoyment of viewing a Monet painting is derived from completing the picture and harmonising the colours to producing a conception of the precise qualities of the illuminating light?
It does seem reasonable to suggest that specific perceptual models in the brain are significant in determining both our ability to see and our enjoyment of seeing, and therefore that artists might have a valuable perspective on this.
On a much more basic note it is hard to imagine their being any value in extending life expectancy or replacing heart valves if we were forced to live a life without any involvement in human culture. We are conscious and cultural animals, this aspect of our lives is just as important as our physiology and no true understanding of humanity can come from separating the two.
So how about the way in which scientists and artists work, are there any differences here?
Once upon a time there was an age of the great men and woman of science, famous for their individual, mercurial, and often eccentric, talents. They were known as geniuses. Now we still cling onto these ideas, but we know that more often than not the discoveries are born from labs with teams of scientists and technicians, or they are based on decades of prior research. We have moved into an age of ‘Big Science’.
Even here the arts are echoing the sciences. As Andy Warhol’s Factory or more recently Damian Hirst’s many spot painters or the research lab of Olafur Eliasson lay testament. Could we be moving into an age of ‘Big Art’ too? Certainly it is now more common to see an artist in a suit carrying a laptop than it is to see them in paint-splattered overalls.
Perhaps this is in part due to the decline of the independent arts patrons, large and small, and the rise of public funding for the arts under the rational of the instrumental arguments. This project-based approach demands a degree of validation and clear intention to justify the use of public funds. This has led to a culture of funding proposals and applications, which through the use of language and administration has perhaps tipped artistic practice further towards the sciences.
Despite our fairly constant stereotypes of the artist and scientist there seems to have been a fluctuating relationship between the arts and sciences. Starting as opposites in the age of the Greeks, but by the Renaissance material, anatomical and optical studies had brought the two fields back together as typified by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Then the two fields largely part again through the Baroque and Romantic periods, but as the Enlightenment takes hold the two fields come back into alignment through Newton and in opposition Goethe and their influence on artists like Turner. (Goethe must surely rank as one of the best examples of artists pre-empting the sciences with his phenomenological scientific method and perception based approach to colour).
This interest continues on into the Impressionists, with Monet’s studious approach to perception and atmospherics and artists such as Seurat. Then through into Modernism proper where the promise of science inspired many developments ranging from Futurism through to De Stijl and Bauhaus. Only to eventually part again as artists became more concerned with their relationship to pop culture in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
In the late 50’s and early 60’s the English essayist C.P. Snow’s lamented the divide between the cultures and the general ignorance that existed on both sides of that divide. Blaming British education in a series of publications and calling for a third culture designed to fill the gap.
This call was echoed in the 90’s by E. O. Wilson, the somewhat controversial American scientist and essayist. He believed in the need for an interdisciplinary approach to solve the greatest problems, an approach that he called ‘Consilience’.
I am not sure what has happened, has science been forced to become part of popular culture, or have the arts become more scientific, or are both disciplines threatened by mass culture?
But could it be that we are once again in a position to combine the two great pillars of human achievement for the greater good of mankind?
Whatever the case, it is becoming increasingly different to tell the difference between a scientist and an artist.
Postscript
On reflection one other area that was not included in the original talk is what happens when the two disciplines trade places. How, for example, are Gunther Von Hagens plastination displays to be judged from an arts perspective? (Incidently, has he borrowed Joseph Beuys’ hat???) How do these relate to the Painting by Rembrandt of Dr Tulps Anatomy Lesson and what role does entertainment have in both these works?
Is there perhaps an ontological divide between the two disciplines that means that any hybrid is infertile? There was an excellent exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, ‘Spectacular Bodies’ that explored this issue some time ago now (2001 at a guess). What mechanism have artists used to bridge this?