Week 2 Math and Art

Before I take this class, I only knew that mathematics is intertwined with art. When I was a little child, I knew the famous painting “Mona Lisa” by Da Vinci. At that time, I did not have much mathematics background, so I did not realize there was mathematics principle in this famous painting, and I thought the reason the painting was famous was the excellent painting skills. However, when I was in middle school, I learned math, and I knew the golden ratio. When I took art class, I found that there were many places that used golden ratio in “Mona Lisa”. For example, Mona Lisa’s face is a golden rectangle. That was the first time that I realized mathematics and art cannot be separated. However, after this week’s lecture and reading, I leaned the progression of spaces. The article “The Fourth Dimension and Non – Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art” by Linda Dalrymple Henderson introduced the development of art techniques and their relation to science. The techniques in the portray allow the paintings being more realistic and believable.

Actually, different math principles are used in the arts. The concept of golden ratio in “Mona Lisa” I mentioned before is one of the examples. Not only in art, math is used in everywhere in nature. Honeycombs are symmetrical, and each little cell is a perfect hexagon. An ancient scholar named Marcus Terrentius Varro conjectured “the hexagon is the shape is the shape that most efficiently breaks flat space up into little units, which makes honeycombs that hold the most amount of honey while using the least amount of wax”. The assumption was proved by Thomas Hales. Therefore, we can see that mathematics are in everywhere in the nature.

https://mathmunch.org/2013/06/18/natural-geometry-hex-and-sacred-geometry/

The juxtaposition of mathematics, art and science becomes easier when both mathematics and arts development. The development of science give more principles that can be applied in art. Also the development of art can give people a new perspective to explore the mathematics. The concept of "Fourth Dimension" is an interesting topic which can illustrate this. The development of the fourth dimension also change the way that artist worked on the painting.

Reference:

"Natural Geometry, Hex, and Sacred Geometry." Math Munch. N.p., 18 June 2013. Web. 16 Apr. 2017.

"The Myth of Golden Ratio -." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2017.

"The Fourth Dimension and Non – Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art" Linda Dalrymple Henderson http://www.jstor.org/stable/1575193?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents