Artists and Mathematics

  I discovered another two or three ways art is connected to math but I'm not counting perspective, scales or anything like that.  I'm referring to art work which has a particular mathematical slant but may not be created by mathematicians.

If you ever studied art history in high school or college, you might remember the cubism movement from the early 1900's.

The two most famous artists of that movement were Pablo Picasso and George Braque who began the movement.  The name appears to have come from a comment on Braque who "reduced everything to geometric lines, cubes".

The artists broke everything down into planes so they could show different viewpoints at the same time in the same space using lines, angles, and shapes to create their distinctive style.

On the other hand, check out a more recent artist by the name of Frank Stella who created art through the use of irregular polygons that are bright and festive.  He is an American born artist who spent several years in the 1960's creating art made up of lines, circles, etc.

 His polygons not only have different length sides but they are also repeated patterns of broken circles or stripes that flow in geometric shapes.  One is a square divided into four isosceles triangles  using two diagonals.  In each quadrant, there are stripes of two alternating colors going to the center.

Another one is horizontal stripes broken by rhombus divided into four triangles with the lines going outwards in an x shape so the lines meet the horizontal lines.  Its in black and white and really really cool.  Within that three year period, he created some wonderful pictures that used only geometric shapes and are awesome.

Other artists to look at are Simon Beck who creates art like Koch snowflake or Sierpinski triangle on snow using nothing more than a compass and his snow shoes. This art is large and covers a huge area.  Its like he translates a small picture into a larger model.  His art is fantastic and quite realistic. Then there is Hamid Naderi Yeganeh who uses computer programs based on mathematical formulas to produce computer generated art work which is intricate and three dimensional in appearance.

Check out Tom Beddard who creates Faberge Fractals.  He generates them by using the output from one time as the input for the next run in a iterative formula.  The art is quite detailed and absolutely breathtaking.  Did you know there are different types of fractals?  Each fractal produces a different type of picture.  For instance, the L-systems produce a fern looking plant.  Check this site out for more information on this.

Think about sharing these artists and their art with students to show them how mathematics can produce beautiful work worthy of being shown in galleries.  I think its important to show students more than just the mathematics themselves.  Sometimes you have to venture outside the box to give students an appreciation of the whole topic.