Lynn Gamwell

This marvelous book explores the co-evolution of art and science and how one has effected the other through the ages. The author discusses in particular the recent adaptation of the scientific worldview and avers: “The purpose of this book is to demonstrate its infiltration into the visual arts and the resulting emergence of abstract art as part of the first wave of modern art in the late nineteenth century.” She notes how new windows opened to previously invisible worlds, from atoms and x-rays and the wonders revealed by electron microscopes, to the stunning revelations of closer looks into outer space.

The book is organized around the history of modern science, beginning in the early 19th Century, but the emphasis is on the art it inspired.

While her insights about the relationship between art and science are fascinating, the best part of the book are the color plates. The range of art she includes goes far beyond the usual fare of coffee-table art books, including many amazingly artistic scientific illustrations.

Highly recommended!… (mere)

This is that rarest of things: A beautiful coffee table book that contains a text that is not only a pleasure to read but also covers intriguing new ground. Ostensibly about the history of the connection between mathematics and visual art, the book moves quickly from the influence of platonism in classical and Renaissance art to a sophisticated discussion of how mathematicians such as Cantor, Hilbert, Gödel, and Brouwer inspired artworks in the first half of the twentieth century. I was impressed with the author's ability to make connections as well as her clear prose when explaining obtuse topics.… (mere)

This is a large format book about dreaming and its repesentation in artwork. The use of dream imagery in painting and other forms of art (e.g. dance and film) is discussed. Lynn Gamwell was the editor of this book, the curator of the exhibit, Dreams 1900-2000 : science, art, and the unconscious mind, contributor of the esssay ("The Muse is Within: the psyche in the century of science") and is the director of the Art Museum at SUNY Binghampton. The exhibit was done to memorialize the entry of Freud into the world of psychology, taking a deep loook into human consciousness. There is a large gallery of 100 color reproductions of art from the twentieth century.

Ernest Hartmann contributed the essay on "The Psychology of Dreaming, a new synthesis"; and Donald Kuspit contributed "From Vision to Dream: the secularization of the imagination."

Some of the more striking images are:

Frida Kahlo's El Sueño (The Dream) Shows a woman sleeping on a lower bunk with a sort of skeleton or broken body on the upper bunk.

Olga Bulgakova's Dream about the Red Bird shows a red bird superimposed upon an all gray scene where an older man is stabbing a woman clutching her side whose head is is shared with another person having a headache, Outside of the window floats a triangle, one of whose points is painted red, and inside is a fuzzy floating orb near scissors, a crumpled curtain and an eye painted on paper.

Suzanne Scherer's Labyrinth shows a sleeping man in the center of the labyrinth with no exit to the outside. The surrounding text starts: I was walking down a dark tunnel....

Paul Klee's Starker Traum (A Vivid Dream) shows a man sleeping with a sort of winged vestment with visions of a red sun and a yellow quarter moon.

René Magritte's L'Art de la Conversation (The Art of the Conversation) shows the word, RÉVE (dream in French), constructed of Stonehenge-like building blocks in a desert-like landscape.

If this book and exhibition had occurred ten years later, perhaps illustrations from Carl Jung's "Red Book", might have been included.

A lot to ponder and experience in this book.… (mere)