Art and Science. Eliane Strosberg

were detached from their original supports with deleterious effects. The contemporary approach emphasizes damage prevention rather than repair—in the manner of modern medical practices, and utilizing some of its tools: X-rays, lasers, electronic microscopes, echography.

      Art and science: an adventure

      Modern art history starts in the Renaissance, when patrons such as the Medici family began collecting Greco-Roman objects. It did not unfold chronologically, but rather like a puzzle—whose different pieces appeared at irregular intervals, in places without any apparent link.

      Another two centuries elapsed before scientists started to show interest in prehistory. When cave art was discovered, scholars were at a loss to determine its origin. Indeed, how could they have imagined that such astonishing works were made prior to biblical times? (The term “prehistory” was coined in 1867.)

      The history of art varied through time and from one culture to another. Sculpture, for instance, was considered a major art form in the Western world, whereas in Ancient China it was regarded as just another product of manual labor carried out by the lower classes. Conversely, in the West writing was viewed as a communication tool, while in China it was revered as the highest art.

      For a long time, the story of art was one of styles. New currents were received with scepticism. The Romanesque style was named for its resemblance to Roman art, which was considered unrefined. Gothic, from the word “Goth,” was brought into use by Renaissance humanists, with pejorative intent. Arrogance was expressed towards those whom critics dubbed “Impressionists” or “Fauves”! (In science, too, innovation can disturb; concepts such as “universal gravitation” or the Big Bang were long subject to scientists’ scornful laughter.)

      Initially developed by amateurs, art history has become a discipline using advanced technology: measurement of carbon-14 levels in organic material reveals the age of ancient objects (this technique was invented in 1946 by Willard Frank Libby, whose combined passion for chemistry and archaeology earned him the Nobel Prize). The genetic study of ancient populations, and of organic materials (parchment manuscripts, bone artefacts, etc.) have prompted a complete reinterpretation of many concepts. Revolutionary results sent historians of all kinds back to their books.

      

      The Beginnings of Art History, Serge Strosberg, 1998

      Destroyed by Vesuvius’ eruption, the town of Pompeii was rediscovered in the eighteenth century. The information gathered about Ancient Roman culture had a considerable impact on the development of art history. The excavations were of such importance that the Bourbon rulers of Naples kept the operation secret. Even Johann Winckelmann, the father of “scientific” archaeology, was admitted with great difficulty to the site. Later, when European nobility flocked to Italy, “surprise excavations” with “guaranteed discoveries” were organized to that effect!

      Art history’s interpretation, or questions of conservation, are influenced by multiple factors: biography, stylistic analysis, iconography, psychology, socio-political analysis, feminism, structuralism, and so on.… Science now plays a key role, but many see herein yet another trendy sign. Moreover, science is not infallible—its history has fluctuated, like that of art.

      During Antiquity, science would go back to either its technical or spiritual roots: for example, in Greece c. 500 B.C., sophia meant “technical ability” before it became associated with the notion of wisdom.

      Several schools of thought functioned in parallel: there were the Materialists; Plato’s followers who took a conceptual approach; the observers of nature, who were influenced by Aristotle; and finally the pragmatic thinkers of Alexandria. Philosophers revised rival theories, establishing in this way what would much later be called “an intellectual tradition.”

      Scientia, in medieval Latin, referred to knowledge in general; reasoning, although based on different assumptions from ours, was nevertheless often elegant. The Arabs practiced, commented, taught and transmitted science.

      Curiosity Cabinet, Serge Strosberg, 1998

      During the Renaissance, collectors assembled coins, instruments, fossils, anatomical specimens, and miscellaneous objects. In 1657, Leopoldo de Medici founded the Academia del Cimento—the first organized research institute since the destruction of the museum of Alexandria in 641. Modern research started with basic activities of assembling, comparing and classifying.

      Through an approach which combined technical and intellectual exercises, research in the West was reactivated during the Renaissance, paving the way for new fields of investigation. A progressive thought pattern slowly emerged.

      Research methods varied from one discipline to another. Eighteenth-century physics was quantitative and deductive; nineteenth-century biology—for example, Darwin’s theory of evolution—was qualitative. Despite their common search for truth, the many domains of science proceeded at diverse paces, employing different methods and models.

      Scientific innovation is scarcely conceivable without the assimilation of prior knowledge; established facts need to be re-evaluated. There are no specific criteria defining a breakthrough, that is, before experimental proof. Research picks up speed when different groups tacitly adhere to a scheme, as happens in art. And changes often take place in the midst of competition, passion and anxiety!

      Science is no longer synonymous with a quest for the absolute truth, as recently developed theories of “chaos” and “uncertainty” suggest an inherent limit to knowledge itself. Scientific method divides reality into segments, which permits the examination of tiny cross-sections. This reduction is the great enabler of scientific success. All sciences, whether descriptive like botany, or structural like physics and mathematics, are contained within a “frame” which allows scientists to establish a logical order across a multitude of phenomena.

      Science does not always follow a linear path. Breaks occur, such as with Newton’s physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity. Alexandre Koyré, a modern historian, considered that: “history is not the reverse progress of science, that is the study of outdated steps whose modern truth would be the vanishing point. It should, on the contrary, be an effort to research and explain to what extent ancient attitudes surpass previous notions in their own day.”

      

      Relativity, Maurits Cornelis Escher, 1953

      This lithograph by the Dutch artist Escher presents a visual paradox, combining three distinct perspective views into a coherent whole. According to the writer Arthur Koestler: “Einstein’s space is no closer to reality than van Gogh’s sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist’s discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer’s frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude by Manet.”

      While developments in science can, by definition, quickly become obsolete, art at its best presumably never ages. Picasso said: “To me, there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present, it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.” In art, as in science, content might age, while the aesthetic dimension remains. Implicitly bound to the evolution of human thought, knowledge tends to develop in several areas simultaneously.

      Taking, for example, the “evolution” of the pictorial style from Manet to Cézanne, some might consider that Cubism, which followed, is situated in a “logical” perspective. Could it then have developed under the brush of artists other than Picasso or Braque? One might raise the same question about Darwin or Einstein. The fact that similar discoveries often happen simultaneously in