"Where Math Meets Art" at the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian has works created by American Artist David Crockett Johnson. Although he was known for his  cartoons such as Barnaby, children books such as "Harold and The Purple Crayon" and book illustrations, he had time to create works based on mathematical theorems, mathematics, and mathematical physics.

He created over 100 pieces of art between 1965 and his death in 1975.  He is different from most artists creating art based on mathematics in that he connected geometric constructions to specific mathematicians.

He is reported to have told a friend in 1965 that he wanted to do a series of "romantic" tributes to the great geometric mathematicians beginning with Pythagoras.  He enjoyed doing Euclid, Archemedies, and so many others.

Furthermore, he based his early paintings on illustrations in the book "The World of Mathematics" published by James R. Newman in 1956.  But as time went on, Crockett began studying the mathematics in the book which caused him to begin creating his own constructions. Due to this study, Crockett published two papers on mathematics.  One dealt with estimating the value of pi geometrically, and the other focused on constructing a polygon with seven equal sides.

Crockett differed from most artists the time because he created small paintings on masonite rather than canvas.  He also used house paint he had mixed at the local hardware store but his painting was good enough to have showings at several galleries in New York City and Connecticut.  About 80 of the 100 paintings can be found at the National Museum of American History.

Although most of us are not in a position to head for the Smithsonian or the National Museum of American History, this site has interactive copies of these pictures. Each picture has the title of the math the artist used to create his painting, the drawing on sketch that inspired the drawing,  the name of the mathematician, and a description of the painting.

One painting celebrates the mobius strip while another creates a spiral based on the first 16 square roots based on Theodorus of Cyrene.  There is the great one on based on the proof of the Pythagorean theorem used by Euclid.  There is even one illustrating logarithms using both geometric and arithmetic progressions.

I really like that each piece has the piece itself,  the drawing it's based on and a wonderful description explaining the painting.  I can see using some of these paintings to show how artists might interpret the actual mathematics of the theorem.  I read somewhere that mathematicians use visuals more often than the actual equations and this is perfect for this.

There were hints in his work that he enjoyed mathematics before he began painting these works of art.  In his Barnaby cartoons, he had a character who spoke in complex algebraic equations.  Originally, the algebraic equations were nonsense but later on he took time to make sure his equations said something.  Mathematicians of the time loved it because they got the joke but his regular readers didn't. The mathematically based paintings made up the third phase of his artistic life.

He did not have a a degree in mathematics but he had a mind that could "see" it and he enjoyed working with it.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day and I hope you share some of these paintings with your students.