Math + Art and Science

This week’s lesson focuses on the intersection between math, art, and science. The lecture starts off by stating that math is the study of relationships with numbers such as abstractions, measurements, transformations, etc. Math is also a system of symbols with rules of organizing them. Math has given artists and scientists perspective; it began with the idea of one point perspective which helped convey 3D space on 2D canvases. Then, there was the emergence of the vanishing point which is the relation between the length of an object and the plane of a picture on a canvas. Later on, della Francesca gave a description of how painting had 3 parts: drawing, proportion and colouring to which proportion was called perspective, The rest of the lecture focused a lot on perspective and the importance of the understanding of depth.

The Baptism of Christ - della Francesca

The first emergence of the golden ratio, the ultimate connection between math and art, was with the Egyptians and the pyramids. This was later passed on to the Greeks who used it in creating structures such as the Parthenon. It demonstrates the understanding of ratios of lines in proportion to one another: “This ratio governed the vertical and horizontal proportions of the temple as well as many other relationships of the building like the spacing between the columns and their height” (Ancient-Greece),

The Parthenon Structure

I found it interesting when she mentioned Le Corbusier, an architect from France whose modular system influenced contemporary architects with scale and proportion. He talked connected the human body in relation to geometry and spaces that we occupy such as, “support pillars that raise the house above the ground, a roof terrace, an open floor plan, an ornamentation-free facade and horizontal windows in strips for maximum natural light” (Le Corbusier Biography). He was a pioneer in this field that laid the foundation of modern architecture and city structures.

Citations

“The Baptism of Christ.” The National Gallery. London. Web. 11 April 2015.

“The Parthenon.” Ancient-Greeece. Web. 11 April 2015.

“Le Corbusier Biography”. Biography.com. Web. 11 April 2015.

"Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 09 April 2015.

“Piero della Francesca.” Italian Renaissance Art. Web. 11 April 2015.