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25th out of 137 books
—
101 voters
Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light
Art interprets the visible world, physics charts its unseen workings--making the two realms seem completely opposed. But in "Art & Physics, "Leonard Shlain tracks their breakthroughs side by side throughout history to reveal an astonishing correlation of visions.From the classical Greek sculptors to Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, and from Aristotle to Einstein, artists...more
Paperback, 480 pages
Published
January 28th 1993
by Harper Perennial
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May 24, 2010
Lisa
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2010-reading-list,
nonfiction
This book is apparently often used as a text in classes, and maybe I would have enjoyed it more if there had been people to discuss it with.
Honestly, it was just interesting enough that I kept reading, but not so much so that I looked forward to picking up the book.
This book probably would have fared better as art teaching physics, with a final chapter supporting the author's premise. As it was, it felt a little too forced and there was a lot of twisting going on to show how art influences perc...more
Honestly, it was just interesting enough that I kept reading, but not so much so that I looked forward to picking up the book.
This book probably would have fared better as art teaching physics, with a final chapter supporting the author's premise. As it was, it felt a little too forced and there was a lot of twisting going on to show how art influences perc...more
"Revolutionary art and visionary physics attempt to speak about matters that do not yet have words. That is why their languages are so poorly understood by people outside their fields. Because both speak of what is certainly to come, however, it is incumbent upon us to learn to understand them." (p.20)
"Magical thinking is the antithesis of reason....Van Gogh once wrote, "A child in the cradle has the infinite in its eye"....Every child is born with a desire to re-create the world in his or her o...more
"Magical thinking is the antithesis of reason....Van Gogh once wrote, "A child in the cradle has the infinite in its eye"....Every child is born with a desire to re-create the world in his or her o...more
This book is interesting but I can't help feeling like it's a little misguided. I do think there are a lot of connections between physics and art, but the way he talks about it makes it seem like artists are somehow intuiting the direction that physics will take and laying the groundwork for the scientific discoveries to come. It makes more sense to me to think of science and art as 2 separate things with separate purposes that are often caught up in the same bigger intellectual movements with e...more
wonderful survey of the history of movements in art and scientific discoveries, though I don't quite buy the author's belief that most scientific discoveries were predated and prefigured by the initiatives of revolutionary artists discovering new approaches to seeing that would entail paradigm shifts. For example, did Picasso and Braque's Cubism really chime with Einstein's thought experiments about what happened to objects as you approached the speed of light? If anything the book is an advocat...more
Both fascinating and infuriating. Shlain, probably because of his "outsider" status to both of the fields he is considering, manages to make remarkably thought provoking comparisons between the world of art and physics. Some struck while reading as brilliant. For example, the stable inertial frame so important for classical mechanics is compared to the transition to a dominant mode in classical music. And this in turn is compared to the development of perspective in art. Great stuff. His writing...more
The full title of this book is Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light and it was written by a surgeon. I point out this last detail because I think non-professional works of high intellectual ambition are pretty rare. And well-executed ones are even rarer. I believe outsiders to an established discipline can often see patterns, make connections or hazard hypotheses that a trained professional either could not or would not do. Professional academics, scientists, artists and so...more
A book that looks at my two favorite things. When I started reading about physics, all I could think about was its relation to the arts. This book takes the history of science and the history of art and shows the similarities in the various art and science movements. I love it.
This book has a high rating overall, so maybe it's just me, but I hated it. I read it for an honors class, and I was not impressed. I am more of a scientific person than an artist; physics is not my thing, though. While I enjoyed the art history in the novel and the descriptions of Einstein's theory, I was not convinced by the connections Shlain makes between the art and the physics world. I can see where the two parallel in some instances, but Shlain's tone and words often seem to be trying to...more
I am loving this book. Since I'm interested in art and never had physics, I was intrigued by the title. I figured I'd read the first two chapters, get the main idea give up. I'm still going. Using an artist's perception to understand how our scientific perception of the world has changed, and is changing, is right up my alley. I really has me questioning why I do my art the way I do. The author throws some really fascinating information in. For example, the use of lots of color in art, and in la...more
Leonard Shlain, a surgeon from California, began this project after visiting an art museum with his young daughter. He realized that in the cases of some modern works, he could not explain to her why they qualified as "art" at all! What, he wondered, was modern art trying to communicate, and why was so much of modern art difficult to comprehend?
Shlain concluded after extensive research that "the radical innovations of art embody the preverbal stages of new concepts" concerning the nature of real...more
Shlain concluded after extensive research that "the radical innovations of art embody the preverbal stages of new concepts" concerning the nature of real...more
Thesis
Years ago I heard neurosurgeon Leonard Shlain read from Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light at the Aspen Institute in a symposium called, “Unified Field Summit: Art, Science, and Spirituality.” My poetry professor had recently won a big prize for her book, “The Dream of the Unified Field.” I didn’t yet know about the unified field theory in physics.
We spontaneously drove the four hours to Aspen to see comic book writer Grant Morrison. Ralph Abraham, mathematician...more
Leonard Shlain is not a physicist or really an artist, he's a doctor. Like another wonderful book of his "The Goddess VS the Alphabet," Shlain is not coming at his subject as an expert but rather as a curious person. He asks a question, what if? and then dives in head first taking the reader along with him. I didn't always agree with the conclusions he makes but my curiosity was stoked by trying out his theories and coming up with some other what ifs? of my own. I also felt that Shlain's layman'...more
The author admits to being essentially a dilletante; despite this, the book serves as a fine introduction to certain ideas in physics and to the history and interpretation of art, especially twentieth-century art. As a scholar who has studied both the philosophy of physics and art aesthetics and history, it is my opinion that Shlain tends to overreach himself occasionally in order to make his argument. This often involves his "reading backwards," i.e., reading a piece of art after the fact as if...more
This book is full of amazing correlations, and is the most exciting and integrative book I've ever read about art history. Shlain explores the paradigm shifts in society that occurred through our understandings of light, time, and space in art and physics. He does a great job of balancing both the depth and simplicity of explaining concepts like Einstein's relativity theory or Minkowski's space-time continuum, paired brilliantly with interpretations of Manet's smeared horizon lines or Monet's ha...more
One of the author's reasons for undertaking this project was to come to appreciate modern art. I was in the same boat as him - what the hell is that two-tone painting anyway? you call that art? etc. etc. I loved this book! I love to read books on physics, and I also love art so I was thrilled to see this book sitting in the "new books" section at work. With or without being aware of it, artists have been depicting concepts in physics long before they were made public. Read it and see for yoursel...more
Read this purely by chance and I was HOOKED from page one. First time I every saw someone truly try to tie together two disparate themes. I go back to it again and again, it is so fascinating. why DO artists envision things that later become real scientific discoveries?
Ugh! This book beats you over the head with the not-so-revolutionary concept that art and physics have important things to say to each other. I learned some more about art and I learned some more about physics, but in the end I was not enriched.
I can't get enough of this book. Art and Science together...both are abstract. so many interesting connections. Leonard was brilliant. it had me looking at art from a whole new perspective. no pun intented.
Yay! My brain is back! I'm just so impressed that I was able to read this entire book and comprehend it! That homeopathic treatment sure is helping. And all those supplements I take, too.
Love art, never devled into physics. This book actually showed me the link and I enjoyed the link. Made me appreciate the left side of my brain....
I really like this book. It captures so many thoughts that I have on any random day and puts them into identifiable words and sentences. Does life imitate art? Does art imitate life? The question to always be searching for an answer to. I think whatever we think, we can achieve. I know the mind can achieve anything it sets out to do. Any dream, any wish, is there for the taking. That's what the basic premise of the book is. This is one of those books that sits by the nightstand. You can read onl...more
Sep 23, 2009
Diane
added it
I contemplated this book for years after I initially read it. Then read it again...contemplating the speed of light and the color green. Love this book!
Very interesting; definitely heady. It's one of those - have to be in the mood books. Best read when lounging at the cottage for days on end.
Feb 13, 2013
Nancy Werner
added it
LOVE this, it's dog-eared and read through many times!! Makes my visits to museums much more profound, and my own dabblings, too.
Liked this book a lot. Author's argument is that artists intuit changes in understanding of the universe in parallel with physicists.
I read this one from the artist point of view-- seeking insights in to physics (not my background) and found the book very instructive and interesting. I am wondering if a physicist who doesn't have background or much experience with art, would have a similar experience in the reverse? I really enjoyed this book and came away from it wishing that I could have taken this as a college course-- maybe one of those "team-teach" classes with professors from the art and physics departments. It would be...more
If one likes art and has some interest in science, the author ties the two togther to help one understand and better appreciate both.
Suggested by Scott Adams in "Science Nerds Only.
Shlain, a surgeon, is a wonderful and compelling writer. He has no professional background in either of the title's topics, but manages to convince you that both fields are intimately tied to each other. He postulates that breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe are heralded by new ways of seeing the world, i.e. art. He demonstrates his theory superbly by providing ample evidence through history. If you want a great book on art history (how humans conceive of their existence and try t...more
Jul 07, 2009
Kristin
is currently reading it
That the Greeks invented vowels and Museums were schools dedicated to the muses! Very cool tidbits of info.
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Leonard Shlain was an American surgeon and writer, the Chairman of Laparoscopic surgery at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and was an Associate Professor of Surgery at UCSF.
He was a speaker at such venues as the Smithsonian, Harvard University, Salk Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center and the European Union's Ministers of Culture. In 1999, he...more
More about Leonard Shlain...
He was a speaker at such venues as the Smithsonian, Harvard University, Salk Institute, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center and the European Union's Ministers of Culture. In 1999, he...more
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Jul 20, 2009 08:47am