Sunday, October 27, 2019

The Puzzle of Art

Newly arrived in a classroom near you:
(Puzzle assembled by Irene and Isabelle Rideout)

Detail from The Persistence of Memory (1931), A surrealist painting by Salvador Dalí

"The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order" - Dawn Adès

However, according to Dalí, the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.

Young Ken would have thought "Oh No, I'm not suppose to enjoy the relativistic (general, not special - for the record) implication of the art as it was not the artist's intention."

Older, slightly wiser Ken thinks the art and his experience of it is its own thing and anyways, as discussed in the book Art & Physics (Shlain, 1991), often new ways of looking at things in the art world is mirrored in the scientific world.  As mankind is ready for a more sophisticated grasp of the universe, why wouldn't the art world and the science world be making big strides at once and maybe in similar directions?

No comments:

Post a Comment