Week 2: Math + Art

Among all the things that go against the art, math may always be the first that jumps out of people's minds. However, in this week's lectures, professor Vesna related art and math together by talking about how math help artists to produce stunningly beautiful arts. She introduced perspective, golden ratio and other math-related techniques that enable many artists to make their art more realistic.

A Song Dynasty watercolor painting of a mill in an oblique perspective, 12th century

As a person who deeply in love with drawing, though not very good at it, I always found those techniques useful. The Golden ratio is largely employed by architects and logo designers. The concept of perspective and vanishing point help artists to create realistic art better and easier. But instead of continuing the examples of the paintings in the old days, I want to introduce a relatively new art form to prove the importance of math to art in this blog.

The Flying Carpet by Kurt Wenner

Artists can actually do much more things than just depicting the reality with math. Nowadays, a new form of painting has gradually come in front of the stage - 3D sidewalk painting. Instead of creating realistic paintings on the canvas or paper like those artists mentioned in the lectures, as one of the top 3D sidewalk painter in the world, Edgar Müller produced false impressions of those impossibles to the audience on the street using the same math-related techniques mentioned before. He used lines, shapes, vanishing points and the concept of perspective to create those astounding paintings.

Oliver the Xu uploaded two videos on Youtube that explain the concept and the procedures of 3D sidewalk paintings a few years ago. These two videos clearly show that artists can not create those paintings without the help of mathematics.

                                   

As what professor Vesna indicated in the lectures, people are making math and art into one thing - they are not as separate as what people used to think. With math, art can evolve into higher levels - just like from realistic paintings to 3D sidewalk paintings. Although some of the mixtures of art and math may not be accepted easily by people by now, as indicated in the novel "Flatland", they do push art onto new roads. Math and science are not only the tools to create art but also part of it.



Sources:

Song Dynasty Hydraulic Mill for Grain. Wikipedia. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical)>.

The Flying Carpet by Kurt Wenner. Top 10 Inspiring and Creative 3D Painting Arts. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. <http://www.elist10.com/top-10-inspiring-creative-3d-painting-arts/>.

Mueller, Edgar. "The Crevasse - Making of 3D Street Art." YouTube. Edgar Mueller, 2009. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SNYtd0Ayt0>. 

Oliver the Xu. "3d Street Art Tutorial How to Part 1." YouTube. YouTube, 2010. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. 

Oliver the Xu. "3d Street Art Tutorial How to Part 2." YouTube. YouTube, 2010. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. 

Abbott, Edwin. “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.” Web. Apr 10, 2016. http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/eaa/FL.HTM