Art and Science. Eliane Strosberg

tasks. Whatever the nature of their skills, those who succeed in imposing an innovative vision of the world often enjoy particularly productive careers.

      Polyvalence

      Despite their commitment to their chosen field, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer were also gifted scientists. Conversely, scientists like Nikolaus Copernicus and Louis Pasteur were talented artists. Such relations are hardly limited to the visual arts. The number of mathematician-musicians (for example Euler, Schweitzer and Einstein) is even more striking.

      Numerous artists have been interested in science, and scientists in art, but most of them focus strongly on only one domain, while their interest in the other remains secondary. Time constraints and technical barriers explain such a choice. Moreover, one cannot underestimate the distinction between interest and real talent (interest alone by no means leads to significant performance).

      Can one easily switch from art to science and vice versa? For an artist to become a scientist is placing the stakes very high, but the reverse is no easier. What accounts for creativity and who is destined to excel in its pursuit? Such questions have long puzzled great minds. According to the Dutch chemist, Jacob van t’Hoff, the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry: “The most innovative scientists are almost always artists, musicians or poets.” Creativity might indeed depend on a capacity to integrate traditionally incompatible forms of experience. But this is not always the case: Darwin and Cézanne, to cite just two examples, were not particularly polyvalent.

      The Spiral Forms in Nature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1831

      The Romantic writer Goethe was also a biologist. He introduced the notion of “morphology,” which would be fundamental to the development of the theory of evolution of species. This drawing suggests the mutation of a leaf into a flower.

      Klassik Stiftung Weimar; Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv

      Still the question remains: what favors, in some of the most inventive minds, an aptitude and appetite for both science and art? Certain forms of art may exhibit affinities to scientific disciplines—and hence mental processes may link the architect to the astronomer, the stage director to the physicist, the psychologist to the painter. Perhaps a chemist thinks like a decorator, and a mathematician like a musician.

      Inspiration and visualization

      Centuries ago, creators were expected to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors, building along a prescribed tradition. Nowadays, with an increasingly demanding public, innovation has become the driving force in art. Yet novelty, too, whether in art or science, requires a base. (For example, examination of Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon reveals neo-classical sources [Delacroix and Ingres] as well as less familiar ones for African and Polynesian statuary.) The stylistic sources behind a work of art are often heterogeneous and more difficult to trace than are the origins of scientific theory; moreover, the artist is not required to explain them.

      Since creation can never be fundamentally new, there might be no such thing as a muse or a mystery of creativity, but various interpretations co-exist. The “unconscious” eventually replaced the role of the gods as the creative source. In the nineteenth century, Henri Poincaré, a mathematician and philosopher, advanced a theory according to which the creative process passes through various stages such as preparation, incubation, illumination, verification. In this way, numerous thought combinations would be tested by the “unconscious,” and only those meeting some sense of harmony would be selected.

      Encounters with an idea or an image are essential in art and science. In order to create, both need to be visualized either mentally or on paper, or through measurement. Quantification and visualization may be said to represent two sides of the same coin.

      The physicist Wolfgang Pauli studied the role of symbolism, using collective models that were applied to scientific concepts. Many artists and inventors linked their discoveries to epiphanic moments when their minds were “floating”—think of “eureka,” Archimedes’ cry in his bath—and they often describe these moments in poetic imagery. Because such moments are repeatedly mentioned, they deserve our attention.

      What should one think of Newton’s sudden revelation while watching an apple falling from a tree? Gutenberg reportedly said that his idea for the first printing press struck him like a ray of light while observing the operation of a wine press at a festival. Lumière said that he invented the moving picture system while watching his mother use a sewing machine. Einstein declared that latent mental images stimulated his imagination for years before he was able to draw any conclusions from them: “In my case (psychical entities) are of a visual and sometimes of a muscular type. Conventional words and other signs have to be searched for laboriously only in a second phase.”

      Some of the world’s greatest scientists—Aristotle, Alhazen, Bacon, Descartes, Einstein—were fascinated by optics and visualization. So, too, some of the greatest painters—Velázquez, Vermeer and Turner—methodically analyzed light, color and image formation. “What I did not draw, I did not see,” said Goethe.

      In the past, researchers were puzzled by the mysterious functioning of the eye. Today, they try to understand how the brain decodes the images it receives from the eye.

      Studies of twentieth-century geniuses—Picasso, Einstein, Freud and Stravinsky—conclude that no universal characteristic has yet been found to link their phenomenal creativity, other than the spirit of independence. What makes a genius remains a riddle worthy of the Sphinx.

      Research

      Some artists do not sketch: they let the painting reveal itself as they go along. Others proceed through trial and error, as do scientists. In this manner, Cézanne explored the effect of fracturing effects of light on his Mont Saint-Victoire, returning to the motif over and over again. Matisse’s letters about his own privileged theme, La Danse, reveal a similar concern: to solve a problem. Altering the placement of a single mark or slightly modifying a color in a painting can easily affect or even destroy the overall design.

      When analyzing Picasso’s preliminary drawings for major paintings or collages, the steps he took to construct a picture can be retraced. Calder, another creator who enjoyed a long career, allows us to trace his progressive approach in sculpture. Newton and Einstein reworked their equations and mental images during long years of continuous self-training. The excitement generated by enigmas (like jigsaw and crossword puzzles) seems to inspire creativity.

      

      The Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci, 1492

      During Antiquity human proportions were used to determine the dimensions of sculptures and monuments. This practice re-emerged in the Renaissance and is still in use. The circle and the square in which The Vitruvian Man is inscribed symbolize, respectively, the cosmos and the earth—analogies of the macro and micro cosmos, with man at the center of the universe.

      Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

      Fragments of an Archetype, Catherine Ikam, 1980

      This monumental sculpture was one of a series of installations. Composed of sixteen video monitors, it was placed inside a huge neon circle.

      Installation view at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1980

      

      The Anatomical Angel, Jacques Gautier d’Agoty, eighteenth century

      Artists, like scientists, use visualization methods. Inspired by Newton’s Optics, Jacob Christophe le Blon invented a technique (1710) for color engraving based on the combination of the three primary colors: yellow, red and blue. Through a purely mental exercise, these would be mixed to produce the range of colors being represented.

      Color