Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science, and the Spiritual

This sumptuous and stunningly illustrated book shows how directly, profoundly, and indisputably modem science has transformed modern art. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, a strange and exciting new world came into focus - a world of micro organisms in myriad shapes and colors, prehistoric fossils, bizarre undersea creatures, spectra of light and sound, and atomic parades. Exploring the Invisible reveals that the world beyond the naked eye - made visible by advances in science - has been a major inspiration for artists ever since, influencing the subjects they choose as well as their techniques and modes of representation. Lynn Gamwell traces the evolution of abstract art through several eras, beginning with Romanticism. She shows how new windows into telescopic and microscopic realms-combined with new definitions of beauty derived from science-broadly and profoundly influenced Western art. For example, a German physiologist's famous demonstration that color is not in the world but in the mind directly influenced Monet's revolutionary new approach to depicting light. As the first wave ofenthusiasm for science crested, abstract art emerged in Munich and Moscow. By 1914 it could be found from Paris to New York. Throughout this visually and intellectually stimulating book are beautiful images from both science and artsome well known, others rare-that reveal the scientific sources mined by Impressionist and Symbolist painters, Art Nouveau sculptors and architects, Cubists, and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists. Exploring the Invisible transforms our understanding of modem art.