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Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light

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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Being that my day to day occupation involves no thinking about physics in any complex way, or composition of music, literature, sculpting or painting, I feel in some ways disqualified from making certain kinds of assessments about Shlain's book.

I cannot find fault with his understanding of the Theory of Relativity because, quite frankly, I am a physics neophyte. Similarly, I cannot fault his understanding of certain works of art or periods in art history because I am not a specialist in that field either. Some discontents will point out that this makes it possible for me to be hoodwinked into believing something because of my lack of expertise and, more importantly, given that Shlain is also a novice in either field, should automatically disqualify him from talking about something he knows very little about.

If that was all there was to the story, I would agree and I would lambast the book, but this is not the only thing that is at play here.

Many people take umbrage with Shlain for trying to make connections where they seemingly don't exist. Why should anyone believe that H.G. Welles stumbled upon the theory of relativity before Einstein? Why should anyone concede that the rediscovery of perspective in art would bring about revolutionary scientific and social movements? Why on earth should we buy into the idea that Duchamp's famous "Nude Descending Down a Staircase" presaged the advancements made by Feynman? Making connections of this sort is unconscionable, cries the critic, but is it really?

The book is a work of fancy and curiosity. Right off the bat Shlain professes his lack of expertise. You know you're dealing with one man's inquiry into what interest him. Simply put, Shlain is open to wonder. "Is there a connection?" he asks and then he goes on to try to find one. Instead of complaining about him playing a questionable game of connect the dots, why not stop and consider what he is asking instead of what he knows?

Is it not possible at all that the curious and gifted human artist wonders about the things that surround him in the world? Does the curious and gifted artist not question his own place in the universe? And what makes the universe work as it does? Is it really that hard to believe that the rediscovery of perspective (if not brought about) at least presaged the coming of the renaissance? Can we find no proof at all in the world that the rediscovery of perspective in Europe influenced and changed the makeup of the continent? When Shakespeare wonders about the "orbs from whom we are and cease to be" he is not giving a kind of consideration that will also interest other philosophers, scientists and artists? Is it not at all possible that the discovery of the number 0 came directly as a result of a need to represent nothingness or void by writers and artists?

It said that the great books of mankind often talk to one another. This is very true. Every important book talks to Plato's books. All of Shakespeare's works talk to Dostoyevsky's. And every person who's ever wondered about anything at all will find their way into the conversation and discover this vast river of knowledge. Are we so proud as to say that man is nothing but an island? Is one field of inquiry so abstract and one so precise that they are mutually exclusive and therefore one could not have influenced the other? I find that very hard to believe.

And even if Shlain is wrong to conclude that developments in art presaged those in science what he has done here is important for a number of reasons. For one, Shlain makes his arguments gently and the reader is never bullied into believing something he does not want to believe. Secondly, he has written a book for the masses and in this day and age, when most intellectuals write books for each other, that is an important achievement. And lastly, it is a book that raises questions every person should give consideration to.

I, for one, enjoyed the book tremendously and have used it as a springboard or a torch light that is leading me to other artists, scientists and ideas. I hope that you give it a chance and should you find yourself in disagreement with it, be thankful that it at least dares to wonder and challenge.

I've read a lot of books in my life. This is probably the best. The juxtaposition of generally exclusive topics - physics and art - is enough to put this work near the top on anyone's list. That it does it so well, and so meticulously, sends it to the head of the list.

Schlain's exploration of the parallels between mankind's expanding understanding of the physical world and the concurrent changes in styles of physical art is gripping. I'm sure there are some flaws in his facts, but these pale in comparison to his monumental achievement in this work.

I had a fair understanding of physics before starting the book and finished it better informed. At the same time, my admittedly weak knowledge of art history was more than supplemented. His explanation for the congruence he recounts is compelling, but he doesn't force it down the reader's throat. Rather, in a manner that is all too rare these days, Schlain presents the evidence, draws his conclusions and modestly leaves the reader to decide if the two match up. That I already subscribed to the explanation before I read the book may bias my opinion somewhat, but I must say that the conclusion is not the book's justification. Too many books are the opposite: They depend completely on the validity of thin insights and, so, end up padded with reams of extra pages drawing spurious connections to weak facts (apparently in the mistaken belief that repetition will bolster weak associations). By contrast, Schlain's conclusion appears as more of an afterthought.

Here, the central insight is in the parallels recounted, not the conclusions to be draw therefrom. And the book makes a solid case for the existence of these parallels, notwithstanding the odd factual error.

Read this book. You'll learn a lot, even if you're already familiar with one subject or the other, and your thinking about the world will be shaken up a bit.

If you're looking for a hardcore physics textbook, go elsewhere. If you're looking for a hardcore art textbook, go elsewhere. Mr. Shlain is not trying to impress you with infinite depth of knowledge in the field of physics nor art. Instead, he suggests that from often unrelated fields there exists an emergence of similar conceptual breakthroughs throughout history. This book is an attempt at making the sociological bridge between art and physics, and provides examples to further this suggestion.

It seems from a few better-read reviewers that Shlain's views on history are less than objective. I won't stick up for him as an author by pretending to know what they know. But I will stick up for this book as a whole. When I first read this, I was an ignorant reader and thinker. This book opened my eyes to a world I glimpsed from the periphery but could not fully recognize. It made me very interested in art, science, philosophy and mathematics (and reading also, as it happens). In essence, it provided that first drop of water that started my brain to becoming the presently insatiable sponge it is.

Shlain writes in a very accessible manner, not only in syntax, but also in how he presents information. Though his presentation of theories may be 'shallow', he covers a broad subject in a small amount of space on the page. This enables someone unfamiliar with the concept to grasp it easily. Relativity is much easier to grasp over a span of three pages in plain words with numerous illustrations than it is by reading Einstein's original writings. And Einstein's writings are always out there if further, in-depth, analysis is desired.

Though there is a thesis here, this book is better as an introduction to ideas of perception than it is a piece of scientific genius. If you believe that there is more to the world than what you see, but can't quite grasp the concept, this book is for you. Inherent in that statement is the suggestion that you are not an art historian or an actual physicist. If you already have a strong idea of how the world physically works, this will probably be little more than a review.

That said, there is a connection between art and science, and Shlain does a good job of providing a compare/contrast presentation of the dichotomy.

Leonard Shlain is a surgeon, not an art historian neither a physicist. His culture is impressively broad, but unfortunately shallow. His main thesis in this book is that basically all scientific discoveries were anticipated by artists. I find the interwoven relationship between art and science absolutely fascinating, but this book is not a reference that I would recommand on the topic.

The main problem is that this book abuses of the juxtaposition of unrelated facts, and presents them with such virtuosity that a magical causality seem to appear. Shlain presents ancient thoughts with the enlightenment of modern frameworks, subtly rewriting them, emphasizing concept and translating them such that they seem to fit with forthcoming theories.

This kind of pitfall has been described by Kuhn (the structure of scientific revolution). For example, if Newtonian mechanics can be expressed in the framework of relativity, relativity is NOT and extension of Newtonian physics, there is a fundamental revolution between them. It is only because Newtonian physics has been rewritten that it becomes more compatible with Einstein's new insights.

Moreover, Shlain's understanding of relativity is weak at best. For example, he often makes the confusion between the effect of the finite speed of light (which can be expressed in a Newtonian context) and relativity.

I was all the more disappointed that some of the issues are actually relevant and fascinating: relativity, non Euclidean, surrealism and cubism for example do share a common revolution of the notion of space (and thus of the place of humans in the world). Unfortunately, Shlain's caricatural statements are irrelevant: Manet had absolutely no idea of the concepts involved in relativity, and Einstein himself pointed out that cubism had nothing to deal with relativity (as opposed to Picasso's claims).

If you want a good introduction to art history, read Gombrich, if you want to learn about physics in a broad context, read Zajong (Catching the light).

I can't believe the editors of this book let it get out the door. The physics is almost completely and in all ways wrong. Given that the author is neither an art historian nor a physicist, I can understand the attempt to use metaphor and generalisation in describing some of the very complicated matters of physics, but there is a difference between simplification and being completely, utterly, and in all ways wrong about the subject.

For example, in the attempt to compare the advent of Modernism, with its pictures built on greys and browns, to the development of Relativity, he gives a simplified vision of what a person moving near the speed of light would see. The problem is that he says a person moving at that speed would see all the colors start to muddle together into a grey/brown morass.

WRONG! And for at least three reasons. First, he is confusing the subtractive color model with the additive color model. When you pour paint together, you get a grey/brown mess because of impurities in the pigment. But that's because it's pigment. When you add all the colors of *light* together, you get WHITE. So, the man doesn't understand how color works.

Second, moving near the speed of light does not change the way light behaves. You will still see all the colors of the rainbow...they will have just shifted along the electromagnetic spectrum. Think of it this way: You have a window that's, say, 2 feet wide. You can only see things if they are directly outside the window (light in the visible spectra). The light that comes in on the far-left side is colored red. Next to it is orange, etc. to violet on the right.

But, there is more outside the window than what you can see through that limit (infrared, ultraviolet, radio, gamma, X, etc.) When you move, the position of the window shifts a bit. Move near the speed of light and it shifts a lot. You still see red, orange, yellow,...violet, but what is triggering those colors are wavelengths you couldn't see before. If you shift this window far into the radio wavelengths, you still have the light coming in on the far-left side appearing as red light...it's because you are moving that makes it appear as red.

Third, moving near the speed of light causes an extension of the color spectra seen. That's because you are moving so fast that small differences in wavelength become very apparent. Light that is coming directly toward you is compressed while light that is glancing off the side is extended.

So, the answer is not that you see a grey/brown mess that somehow artists were able to figure out and paint before the codification of Relativity. The answer is that you see a rainbow of colors.

And this doesn't even begin to point out his flawed presumption that scientific information is only known when it gets published. Einstein published his treatise on Special Relativity in 1905, but the work started back in the 1800s, and that's only Einstein's contribution. The foundations of relativity and motion affecting observation go all the way back to Galileo.

There is simply no excuse for the scientific errors in this book. If his physics is this poor, one wonders just how bad his art criticism is.

I was prepared to like "Art and Physics: Parallel Visions" by Leonard Shlain. After all I have noted through my reading some parallels between the two in the development of perspective, use of space and other innovations in art. The art of the Renaissance and into the Classic periods can be shown to have acquired (and in some cases predated) physical knowledge. Indeed, Shlain does present some very interesting material and certainly offers some food for thought. However I think he fails to make a really cogent connection between modern art (from Impressionism to the most modern art, except perhaps for Surrealism) and modern physics. In fact many of his connections seem to me tenuous at best and in some cases a very big stretch. As one reviewer said, I'm not sure how much the author really understands of either relativity or quantum theory. How physics plays into the revolutions of Impressionism, Neo-impressionism, Fauvism or Cubism is a little hard to see, although obviously there are parallels in surrealism (especially with Relativity Theory.) A more skilled and knowledgeable writer may have constructed a better argument, but I suspect it would also have been a much shorter book.

I had serious difficulties in following some of the comparisons and many side trips seemed to lead nowhere, as in his discourse on Manet's paintings and physics. I also do not know how seriously the reader can take the right brain/left brain dichotomies he discusses, as I believe the concept is way too simplistic. Brain functions are more complex and difficult to separate than that and the right brain/left brain separation is more a pop culture myth than a scientific idea.

If you wish you can read this book as a source of interesting ideas about art and physics, but do not take it too seriously in regard to absolute relationships between the two.

I was hoping this book would be at the level of Louis Menand's "The Metaphysical Club." It's not. The core ideas grab the reader, but the writing is fuzzy and sometimes plain wrong. For example, on page 180-81 what begins as a fascinating insight into the "primitive" color words, black / white / red, quickly bogs down in error. Shlain claims that "only in the most mature languages... does a separate word for the color blue make an appearance..." Possibly technically correct, but conceptually wrong. "Indigo" has been around since at least Herodotus (450 BC.) I suspect Dr. Shlain is a delightful generalist who has written a book far beyond his knowledge.

Art and Physics intrigues from the beginning when the three concepts of space, time and light are introduced - - obviously subjects basic to both art and physics. The common thread the author has identified in these disciplines may not be apparent to a reader devoted to one or the other. A humane observer discovers the commonality. He further breaks out beyond the concepts of cause and effect, beyond gravitational pull, beyond linear time/mind, beyond all the dualistic traps that still retain most of our mundane "realities." His insight into the message of artistic imagery is bold and reflective. C. G. Jung would have applauded this book for its synthesis of image and empiricism. Seeing what Monet did to dissolve time, what Manet did to free space, what Pollock did to crack open the void where inspiration enters - - these are lasting new views of the power and message of artistic image. Science has been our myth of meaning. From Plato to Euclid to Einstein and Bohr, the pull of discovery becomes clearly singular - - the "uni" in universe. The timeliness of Dr. Shlain's premise lies in the urgent search for balance by anyone skewed in the conflict of apparent opposites. It is restorative to read the examples of holistic, all-at-once knowing which is the healing balm for Western culture as our old dominant fades. The book reminds us of the dimension and direction to which we are called. How sensible to be oneself in the fullest as Leonardo was Leonardo and Dr. Shlain is Dr. Shlain. It is encouraging to see that this book is assigned in high schools and colleges where young minds will, no doubt, be quick to grasp its profound implication.

I found this book in the physics section of the bookstore and was completely psyched. I'm all over this stuff. I checked it out from the library and dove right in. His thesis, which is that all major innovations in the physics realm were preceded by those in art, excited and intrigued me.

After reading his first supportive example, which was weak and loosely-woven, I felt slightly disheartened, but I remained hopeful. After the second and the third, I began to feel very let down. Mr. Shlain's biggest problem is that he is approximate. He's a master of haziness and doesn't seem to really understand art or physics to any depth. He skims the surface of both topics and attempts to fuse them, hoping, I suppose, his readers will possess a similarly shallow grasp of the subjects. I learned nothing about art history, nothing about physics, and I had to doubt the couple of things I did learn because he was so off-base otherwise.

I stopped this book halfway through, which I hate doing. But I couldn't go on any longer without feeling I was wasting my time. He's sort of on the right track, but his shoes are untied.