The New Reality in Art and Science

Author(s): E. M. Hafner
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History , Oct., 1969, Vol. 11, No. 4, Special
Issue on Cultural Innovation (Oct., 1969), pp. 385-397
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/178070

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Comparative Studies in Society and History

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 The New Reality in Art and Science
E. M. HAFNER

Hampshire College

We are often told, and it is easy to believe, that the im

art are not drawn from the real world. In the most conventional view
of the modern school, abstract painting is a search for free expression
of the artist's own vision. The non-representational painter works as he
pleases and is pleased by little that he sees. A humorous drawing in a
sophisticated magazine shows a studio full of wild canvases, with the
artist gazing through the window at a magnificent sunset. He says to a
friend, 'Yes, old man, I admit that it's beautiful. Sometimes I'm sorry
it's not the sort of thing I do.' Authority for the establishment of a public
attitude that makes such a joke possible is to be found in the writings
of many critics and in the words of artists themselves. Harold Rosenberg:
'The big moment [in art] came when it was decided to paint-just to paint.
The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value, political,
aesthetic, moral.' Andre Malraux: 'What then was painting becoming,
now that it no longer imitated or transfigured? Simply-painting.'
Sheldon Cheney: 'I cannot do better, in trying to help you to an under-
standing of modernism, than to point out the devastating effect the realistic
movement had on the arts as a whole.' Piet Mondrian: 'In order that
art ... should not represent relations with the natural aspect of thin
the law of the denaturalization of matter is of fundamental importance.'
Clive Bell: 'Creating a work of art is so tremendous a business that
leaves no leisure for catching likenesses.' Kasimir Malevich: 'From
the supremist point of view, the appearances of natural objects are in
themselves meaningless... The representation of an object ... is
something that has nothing to do with art.' Laurence Binyon, in 1911:
'The theory that art is, above all things, imitative and representative, no
longer holds the field with thinking minds.' Ortega y Gasset: 'Painting
completely reversed its function and, instead of putting us within what is
outside, endeavored to pour out upon the canvas what is within: ideal
invented objects.' And Camille Graser, in a letter which we shall be
examining in detail: 'In all of my work ... there exists no dependence
c 385

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
386 E. M. HAFNER

on the tangible environment, in spite of the fact that I love nature very
much.'
Statements of this kind gather strength from a variety of aesthetic
doctrines, the most common of which suggests that the painter avoids
imitation of nature by emulating something else, something that is
presumably subjective and abstract in its very essence. We are urged, for
example, to accept music as a model of the arts:
It is almost impossible to state any theory of the abstract in art without resource to
the terminology and the parallel of music. For music is a wholly non-representative
[sic] art based in its physical aspect on certain widely understood phenomena. The goal
of the abstract painters is an art of color as free from associative and objective interest
as is this other art of sound.... Painting must be stripped of the trivial and extran-
eous elements that give rise to the pleasures typical of drama, anecdote, photography,
etc.'

The argument appears to be that music is non-representational, that it is

nonetheless in some sense artistically valuable, that there is no essential
need for depiction of natural objects in painting, and that a painter's
'goal' of freedom from 'associative and objective interest' is therefore
respectable. What we are not told, of course, is why an absence of 'trivial
and extraneous elements' should be the mark of the purest and best in art
or, for that matter, why music should be of any aesthetic interest to us
in the first place. The fact that modern music appears to be in a state of
artistic crisis is not helping us to answer such questions with confidence.
One can look to composers themselves for an account of their art; one
finds statements like this:

We included in the Computer Cantata representative examples of the various significant

categories of electronic sound. In each case, we deliberately selected the simplest
example of each. .... For ordinary electronic sounds, we selected, first, the three most
basic periodic signals, namely, sine tone ... square wave .. and sawtooth wave, and,
second, two types of noise, namely, white noise and ordinary noise. This ordinary noise,
which we called for convenience 'colored noise', was represented by eight characteristic
recorded concrete sounds designated in the score by the mnemonic signs, CLICK, CLACK,
SISS, CRACKLE, SNAP, POP, BANG and BOOM. The third category of electronic sound was,
of course, synthesized by means of the CSX-1 computer.2

No wonder, perhaps, that Henry Pleasants reached the conclusion that

serious music is a dead art whose last truly modern exponent was Wagner,
following whom everything has been 'reaction, refinement, and desperate
experimentation'. Paul Hindemith expressed his complaint this way:
A group of composers, in an attempt to replace with an apparent rationality what is
lacking morally, develops an over-sublimated technique which produces images and
emotions that are far removed from any emotional experience a relatively normal human

1 Sheldon Cheney, A Primer of Modern Art (New York: Liveright, 1958), p.159.
2 L. A. Hiller and R. A. Baker, 'Computer Cantata: A Study in Compositional Method',
Perspectives of New Music, Fall 1964, p.65.

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE NEW REALITY IN ART AND SCIENCE 387
being has ever known. In doing so they advocate the esoteric art pour l'art, the followers
of which can only be emotional imps, monsters and snobs.3

If modern music as a model of artistic abstraction draws frequent hostile

fire, concurrent trends in painting are often no more kindly received:
Most of the mushrooming art movements seem to have forgotten the essential role of
artistic creation. By and large, the art world has become the scene of a popularity contest
manipulated by appraisers and impresarios who are blind to the fundamental role of
the artistic image ... [Artists] come together in small groups in great cities where, in
the safety of little circles that shut out the rest of the world, the initiates share one
another's images. They generate illusory spontaneity, but miss the possible vital con-
nections with ... reality.4

Mourning the retreat of modern art from the world of sensible experience,
these critics (many of whom are artists as well) express a view of the matter
that is widely shared by laymen. Putting aside those who regard most of
current art as a rude and expensive hoax 'manipulated by appraisers',
many thoughtful people of our time find themselves unable to give serious
attention to modern trends in painting. The artist seems-and often
claims-to have left the real world behind him in a search for the meaning
of his own complex subconsciousness. Scholarly jargon, with such terms
as analytical cubism, geometric constructivism, and abstract expressionism,
carries frightening overtones of a discipline that has contracted into an
austere and private domain.
I wish to begin a study of this situation by pointing to the striking
similarity between the layman's view of modern art and his view of
modern science. Here, for example, is a statement about science:
Our twentieth-century world, with its swift technological and scientific advances and
socio-economic upheavals, our century which has witnessed the rapid shrinking of
the world's dimensions, is obligated to give its children a view of science which reflects
these changes. Yet today the average man, who may occasionally be led to cast a casual
glance in the direction of abstract science, still sees it as a mental challenge that is both
revolutionary and startling-at times irritating and aggressive, and at other times
meaningless or merely innocuous and inoffensive.5

Does this not express in familiar terms the impasse between layman
and scientist? It is, in fact, a statement dealing with abstract painting; I
have merely changed a few words, substituting science for art. The lay-
man looks at both of these esoteric worlds with confusion and dismay,
puzzled and intrigued by the insistence of the experts that something of
enormous significance is taking place beyond his ken.
What seems to disturb a layman most about abstract painting is its

3 Paul Hindemith, A Composer's World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 43.
4 Gyorgy Kepes, 'The Visual Arts and the Sciences', in Science and Culture (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 148.
5 Paraphrase from Michel Seuphor, Abstract Painting (New York: Dell Publishing Com-
pany, 1964), p. 7.

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
388 E. M. HAFNER

studied avoidance of recognizable image; what disturbs him about science

is the inaccessibility of its language, which also seems to present itself
as an avoidance of the recognizable. In fact, the departure of modern
physics from common notions of reality is urged upon him by many
popularizers of the current trend. Speaking of the quantum mechanical
view of matter, Arthur Koestler says 'These waves . . . travelling through
a non-medium in multi-dimensional non-space are the ultimate answer
modern physics has to offer to man's question after the nature of reality.'6
On the same subject Jeans says:
The concepts which now prove to be fundamental to our understanding of nature .. .
seem to my mind to be structures of pure thought, incapable of realization in any sense
which would properly be described as material.7

Bertrand Russell has expressed the idea that an abstract view of the world
is the only one possible: 'Physics is mathematical not because we know
so much about the physical world, but because we know so little. It is
only its mathematical properties that we can hope to discover.' And
Eddington tells us that, in studying the physical world, we are only
studying ourselves:
... we have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but
regained from nature what the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange
footprint on the shore of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after
another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the
creature that made the footprint. And Lo! it is our own.8

Strikingly similar to this is a statement by the constructivist sculptor

Naum Gabo:

There is nothing in nature that is not in us. Whatever exists in nature exists in us in
form of our awareness of its existence. All creative activities of mankind consist in the
search for an expression of that awareness.9

The conviction shared by Eddington and Gabo, speaking for science

and art respectively, is that our image of nature is an image of ourselves.
Let us suppose that this is true. What then becomes of the concept of
reality? It is evidently not a fixed substratum of perception toward which
we probe with ever sharper tools, but a shifting set of concepts dependent
on the depth of our perception and the character of our probes. The real
world of Aristotelean physics was not merely reinterpreted, but to a large
degree replaced by the real Newtonian world, which has in turn been
replaced by the new world of relativity and quantum mechanics. Before
the modern sequence of astronomical observation which began with
6 Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers (New York: Macmillan, 1959), p. 531.
7James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge, 1930), p. 146.
8 A. S. Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation (Cambridge, 1953).
9 Naum Gabo, 'Art and Science', in The New Landscape (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1956).

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE NEW REALITY IN ART AND SCIENCE 389
Galileo, structural features of the earth were unique among objects of
the real universe. Before the discovery of variable luminosities and reces-
sional redshifts, the stars were truly fixed in a celestial sphere.
Each new scientific probe gives us a new reality, whose images are
bewildering until' they become commonplace. Radiographs of familiar
objects would be mysterious and disturbing to observers accustomed only
to external surfaces. Microphotographs of organic structures are recog-
nizable and informative images of reality to the trained eye; studies of
strained plastics in polarized light make visible a strange world at the
interior of matter. Even without elaborate optical tools, we see a changing
scene with every changing perspective. When we move close to a fracture
in glass, or far from a landscape, we discover new patterns in familiar
things. And we find the stimulus of new patterns in every unfamiliar
object even at the distance of normal vision.
Just as the shifting objectivity of science brings us a new subjective
view, the interpretations and abstractions of graphic art reveal unsuspected
nuance in reality. 'One can say that although the color-saturated atmo-
sphere of Paris is older than the city itself, its beauty was first revealed by
the Impressionists. Or again, tessellated floors existed in Italy long before
their beauty was revealed by the Quattrocentro painters with their passion
for perspective.'10 Whether we speak of science or art, we recognize
the essential role played by revolution. Every epoch is marked by its
current paradigms: coherent traditions of observation and interpretation
which set the stage for normal activity. But every epoch ends in revolution,
after which the old paradigms give way to the new. Whenever this happens,
it is fair to say that the real world itself has changed. Here is an expression
of that idea:

Examining the past from the vantage of contemporary historiography, the historian
may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with
them. Led by a new paradigm, we adopt new techniques and look in new places. Even
more important, during revolutions we see new and different things when looking with
familiar techniques in places we have seen before. It is rather as if the professional
community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects
are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well. Of course, nothing
of quite that sort does occur: there is no geographical transplantation; outside the
workroom everyday affairs continue as before. Nevertheless, paradigm changes do
cause us to see the world of our engagement differently. In so far as our only recourse
to that world is through what we see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution
we are responding to a different world.11

Is this a statement about changing patterns of science or about revolu-

tions in artistic perception? It might easily be either; actually, with a few
10 Georg Schmidt and Robert Schenk, eds., Kunst und Naturform (Basel: Basilius Presse,
1958).
u Paraphrase from T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1962).

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
390 E. M. HAFNER

minor alterations, it is T. S. Kuhn's assessment of the way in wh

scientific revolutions change our view of the world.
The more carefully we try to distinguish artist from scientist, the m
difficult our task becomes. Looking first at the words themselves, we
'skill' as a primitive synonym for 'art', and 'knowledge' for 'science
science falls to pieces without skill in observation and analysis; art with
knowledge is puerile. We may point to a high level of creativity as the
mark of art, suggesting that science is more the work of passive discov
But the artist's development is largely a process of self-discovery,
creative work of the highest calibre is possible (and essential) withi
framework of science. A set of aesthetic values has sustained much scie
an appreciation and an exploitation of quantitative structure find
way easily into art. Both activities are commitments to a sturdy sense
discipline, while at the same time neither is free from elements of cha
and simple good fortune. It is even difficult to distinguish art from sc
through a comparison of their principal aims. Paul Klee once asked
self to what extent and with what purpose the artist should con
himself with new scientific images of the world. He suggested that it
done

... only for purposes of comparison; only in the exercise of his mobility of mind.
Only in the sense of a freedom which does not lead to a fixed development, representing
exactly what nature once was, or will be, or could be on another star. But in the sense
of a freedom which merely demands its rights, the right to development as flexibly as
nature herself.12

This idea-that the motive for studying existing knowledge is the develop-
ment of intellectual mobility-is of course a scientist's principal credo
as well, and Klee's advice may apply with equal force to the scientist in
contemplation of artistic image.
Do the graphic images themselves, emerging from laboratory and
studio, betray their scientific or artistic origins? In most cases they do:
visual clues in enormous number and variety lead us to a quick decision.
There is no way of confusing Leonardo's anatomical sketches with the
Mona Lisa, even though the portrait contains a strong element of physio-
gnomic analysis. But it is an interesting and incontrovertible fact that the
newest images of science and art are easily confused except by very special
eyes. An observer attuned to Japanese prints and unaware of X-radio-
graphy might most comfortably see a radiogram of a lily as a delicately
idealized sketch from life, and many microphotographs might strike
almost anybody as abstract expressions of free artistic imagination. Let us
suppose that such a microphotograph were included without identification

12 Paul Klee, 1924 speech at Jena, reprinted in Modern Artists on Art (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.; Prentice-Hall, 1964), p. 88.

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE NEW REALITY IN ART AND SCIENCE 391

in an exhibit of modern drawings. Could it not be praised and

by professional critics, and received with the usual apathy or i
by laymen who see such works as sloppy drawings of noth
we not hear an artist exclaim, 'I wish I had done that!' and f
subsequent work was influenced by it? Would the experience n
that the views of Rosenberg, Malraux, Cheney, Mondrain, Bell
Binyon, and Ortega are blind to a deep relation between scie
And that Russell, Eddington, Gabo, Klee, and Kuhn are ge
bottom of things ?
Looking back once again 'from the vantage of contempora
graphy', we are constantly reminded that man's several kinds
activity are reflections of each other. All are engaged in a com
for ways of expressing our awareness of ourselves and of t
imagine to exist outside of ourselves. The Pythagorean noti
mathematics is a common key to science and art is perhap
example of this view of creative unity. It has been more or
at work through the ages down to our own time. For exam
have always derived stimulus from pure geometry, as can b
paintings of Kandinsky, and an analogous stimulus ha
astronomy, as in the evolution of general relativity. The gr
of geometrical influences on science is exhibited as much b
have failed as it is by occasional success. Kepler's lifelong
connection between solid geometry and the solar system
error, but at the same time forced him into a position from w
see another way to the truth.
While it can be asserted without question that art and s
the same conceptual material, it is far less certain that the
has exerted direct influence on the work of the other. W
obsessions strengthened by the music and the graphic art
Is it an accident that, in the work of both Raphael and Cop
earth loses its place at the center of the universe and man his
in creation? And, in our own time, is it by chance that b
science have abandoned the world of familar form in a search for new
perspective? These questions are easier to raise than they are to answer
in convincing terms, despite a large and growing literature on the subject.
Let us begin with a sampling of opinion. Here is a remarkable statement
by Leo Steinberg, who feels that the influence is direct and essential:
Wittingly, or through unconscious exposure, the non-objective artist draws much of
his iconography from the visual data of the scientist-from magnifications of minute
natural textures, from telescopic vistas, submarine scenery and X-ray photographs....
Where the Renaissance had turned to nature's display windows, and to the finished
forms of man and beast, the men of our time descend into nature's laboratories. But the
affinity with science probably goes further still. It has been suggested that the very
concepts of twentieth-century science are finding expression in modern abstract art. ..

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
392 E. M. HAFNER

not because painters illustrate scientific concepts, but because an awareness of na

in its latest undisguise seems to be held in common by science and art.13

Naum Gabo takes an equally positive view:

However dangerous it may be to make far-reaching analogies between art and sci
we nevertheless cannot close our eyes to the fact that at those moments in the hi
of culture when the creative human genius had to make a decision, the forms in w
this genius manifested itself in art and science were analogous.... Even for m
theorists of art the fact remains unperceived that the same spiritual state propels art
and scientific activity at the same time and in the same direction.14

Gyorgy Kepes, who has already been represented here with the remark
that much of modern art is a 'popularity contest manipulated by ap
sers . . blind to the fundamental role of the artistic image', neverth
sees a profound but misunderstood relation to science:
Because our modern specialization so often separates artist and scientist, neith
fully aware of the profundity of the other's work. Both reach beneath surface pheno
to discover basic natural pattern and basic natural process; yet the scientist ex
the artist to interpret literally and the artist expects the scientist to think mechanica

Robert Schenk provides us with typical expression of an intermed

position:
To seek direct and mutual influences behind the occasionally striking coincidences
between art and science is certainly to overlook their true relationship. The artist is
no more inspired in his work by the microcosmos than the scientist allows aesthetic
considerations to influence his. The real reason for these apparent formal coincidences
is surely to be found in the intellectual climate in which both art and science function
today.17

Standing in stark opposition to Steinberg and Gabo are strong denials of

such influence. Some are uttered by artists themselves. A few years ago,
Rosamond Bernier asked the constructivist sculptor, Antoine Pevsner,
about the apparent mathematical basis in his work. He said:
... I am glad to have a chance to clear up this matter. My work has nothing to do with
mathematics or science, although scientists say we are searching in the same direction.
But they search for the laws of the universe according to calculations, while I base
myself on pure art. My sculpture uses no figures or formulas, although scientists try
to find them in my work.18

Pevsner's view is shared by many artists who speak of 'pure art', 'liberation
from value', 'denaturalization of matter', and 'ideal invented objects'.
The tone of such statements is often cranky and defensive, suggesting
13 Leo Steinberg, 'The Eye is a Part of the Mind', Partisan Review, 20, 194 (1953), p. 194.
14 Naum Gabo, 'The Constructive Idea in Art', in Modern Artists on Art, op. cit, p. 105.
15 See note 4.
16 Gyorgy Kepes in The New Landscape, op. cit.
17 Robert Schenk in Kunst und Naturform.
18 From a 1957 conversation with Antoine Pevsner, published in Aspects of Modern Art
(New York: Reynal and Co., n.d.).

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE NEW REALITY IN ART AND SCIENCE 393

that the artist is almost afraid of objective and imitative elements in h

work. They also frequently reveal an ignorance of science. We won
for example, if Pevsner sees only calculations, figures, and formulas in
scientific search for universal law.
A most extraordinary collection of comparisons between microphoto-
graphs and works of abstract art appeared at the Kunsthalle, Basel, in
1958. The examples, together with a set of interpretive essays, have been
reproduced in a beautiful volume.19 One sees the n-hexatriacontane
crystal compared with a Honegger composition; trabeculae of the human
tibia with Max Bill's spatial rhythms; blood vessels of the kidney with
Clifford Still's organic structures; cells of the cerebrum with Schulze's
vision of meteors; nasal conchae with Kandinsky's capricious forms; and
many other provocative examples. The resemblances are sometimes utterly
shocking. Although the aim of the exhibition was to exploit such like-
nesses as boldly as possible, the simple fact that dozens of close parallels
could be found suggests that we cannot easily dismiss them as accidents.
They cry out for another explanation.
We might at first suspect that the artists have merely returned to nature,
filling their canvases deliberately with a new scientific landscape. Georg
Schmidt20 argues against this:
The inveterate opponents of non-representational art greeted the exhibition trium-
phantly as a giveaway: 'There you are! We always said non-representational art was
nothing but a new and commonplace form of naturalism....' If this objection were
valid it would mean that these painters were familiar with scientific photomicrography
before they went over to non-representational painting. But in fact the sequence of
events was the precise opposite. ... The fascinating beauty of form in photographs of
crystal and organic microstructure was perceived only after painters had discovered
the ordered world of extra-objective forms. The most one can say is ... that science,
pursuing its own course, had arrived at results which were formally similar to those
achieved by modern art....

Some of the painters themselves, even when confronted with such examples
involving their own work, hold to their doctrinaire abstractionist positions.
One of the most striking comparisons in the Basel exhibition showed
almost identical compositions of aspartic acid crystals on the one hand
and a constructivist painting by Camille Graser on the other. In response
to an inquiry about the influence of science on her work, Miss Graser
has written us a statement of which the following is a part:
The exhibit in Basel was a surprise. The parallels could not have been presented in a
more beautiful fashion; the world of the microcosm was fascinating. In the beginning, I
feared misconceptions and a confusion of principles of art. In all of my work, which is
'constructive-non-objective', there exists no dependence on the tangible environment,
in spite of the fact that I love nature very much. My concern in painting is the forming
of a new reality. My work is based on elements of form and number, and on the
19 See note 10. 20 Ibid.

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
394 E. M. HAFNER

analyzed light of the spectrum. Thus, stimulus from the microcosm is unthinkab
it would mean an erring deviation from my theory and would put upon me the
of a renegade naturalist. I believe that the newly won consciousness rests on the re
tion that the discovery of scientific truth on the one hand, and the creations of mod
art on the other, represent continual and searching advances on two dramati
opposed paths.21

Miss Graser's passionate denial of scientific influence is extraordina

several respects. She tells us that such stimulus is 'unthinkable', in a to
suggesting that if she were to deviate from the aesthetic principles of
group, she would run the risk of ostracism and contempt. Also, she app
to be caught in currents of quasi-scientific jargon so swift and perv
in our time as to threaten us all. Her statement is to this extent self-
contradictory: to work with 'elements of form and number, and ... the
analyzed light of the spectrum' is to recognize the tools of science; to be
concerned with 'the forming of a new reality' is to recognize the spirit of
science and its aims.
If these resemblances were not produced by chance or by conscious
imitation, how are we to account for them? Why have scientific studies of
a domain where ordinary vision fails given us images resembling 'abstract'
painting, some of which preceded the photographs? We have already
noted Schenk's view22 that the explanation lies 'in the intellectual climate
in which both art and science function today'. Dealing with the problem
of visualizing modern science, Steinberg23 arrives at the same conclusion:
The question is, of course, whether nature as the modern scientist conceives it can be
represented at all, except in spectral mathematical equations. Philosophers of science
concur in saying it cannot.... 'Our understanding of nature has now reached a
stage', says J. W. N. Sullivan, 'where we cannot picture what we are talking about'.
But this utterance of the philosophers contains an unwarranted assumption: that
whereas man's capacity for intellectual abstraction is ever widening, his visual imagina-
tion is fixed and circumscribed. Here the philosophers are reckoning without the host,
since our visualizing powers are determined for us not by them but by the men who
paint. Our visual imagination, thanks to those in whom it is creative, is also in perpetual
growth.... Thus the art of the last half century may well be schooling our eyes to
live at ease with new concepts forced upon our credulity by scientific reasoning.

It might at first seem that this positon is tenable only if the artist's role
is consciously didactic, aimed toward showing us how the new reality of
science can be brought within a comfortable visual compass. But to
accept this premise is to vitiate the idea, especially if we take the artist
at his own word. Gabo may insist that 'the same spiritual state propels
artistic and scientific activity', but he speaks for a tiny minority. Ranged
against him are the multitudes of Pevsners and Grasers, not to mention
the majority of art theorists and the entire apparatus of public relations
21 Translation of a letter from Camille Graser. I am indebted to Susan Presswood Wright
for her assistance in soliciting this statement.
22 See note 17. 23 See note 13.

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE NEW REALITY IN ART AND SCIENCE 395

in the galleries and academic departments of art. Thus, if Steinberg's

thesis is correct it nevertheless demands a symbiotic relation of extra-
ordinary power, capable of withstanding widespread and vigorous dis-
claimers of its very existence.
At the same time, we must realize that an artist's or a scientist's account
of his activities can easily miss the mark. Without necessarily intending to
mislead or to deceive us, he is compelled to explain himself within a pattern
of thought and expression fixed by a current set of paradigms and colored
by his prejudices. The process of creative discovery is essentially tentative
and confused, the clearest vistas being always backward. Koestler has
shown us the scientist as sleep-walker, stumbling toward insights which
prior doctrine has taught him to resist. We can understand, then, that the
creative arts move forward even more tentatively, and with even less
awareness of discovery. And added to conceptual uncertainty in both
science and art is an inadequacy of the language into which forms of
explication must somehow be made to fit. If scientific models and works
of art are themselves metaphorical descriptions of the world, our linguistic
treatments of them take us one more step away from our primitive
material, and tend to produce esoteric languages that are difficult to
conjoin. In von Humboldt's terms, 'By the same process whereby man
spins language out of his own being, he ensnares himself in it; each
language draws a magic circle round the people to which it belongs, a
circle from which there is no escape save by stepping out of it into an-
other'.
I wish therefore to propose that we can best approach the question
before us by paying relatively little attention to the utterances of critics
and philosophers of art and science, concentrating instead on the works
themselves. They speak to us directly, whenever we take the trouble to
observe them with trained sensitivity. If there is an element of science in
Camille Graser's paintings, it speaks for itself independently of the
language in which she denies it. If there is an aesthetic element in the
crystal photograph, it also speaks for itself independently of the purely
scientific language in which it is understood by crystallographers. Thus,
instead of searching wistfully for a common language that will somehow
subtend the two 'magic circles' of artistic and scientific philosophy, we
can fix our gaze directly on art and science. Then, as free as possible from
the distraction of unnecessary metaphor, we may see most clearly how
art and science shape the world of our perception, each in its own way.
We may also arrive at a clearer understanding of how and to what extent
they shape each other.
Facing the evidence on these terms, I am drawn strongly to the con-
clusion that the abstract forms of modern art are largely a result of
sympathetic vibration with concurrent trends toward abstraction in

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
396 E. M. HAFNER
science. It is impossible today, just as it has always been in the history of
our culture, for the artistic intellect to insulate itself from conceptual
revolutions. When the winds of science shift to a new quarter, everything
in their path bends a little; when we look at the resulting commotion, we
see an image of the wind itself. The response is inevitable at some sub-
conscious level even when the stimulus is unrecognized. An artist need no
more understand mathematical physics than the waving grain understands
meteorology. And we can witness and profit from the response without
understanding the subtle forces which produce it.
Let us turn, finally, to the other side of the question. To what extent
can the artistic imagination, as free from outside influences as possible,
develop forms and concepts which became subsequently imbued with
scientific meaning? We are, of course, well aware of the stimulus to
science provided by classical forms of art, brought most vividly to light
in great works of the Renaissance. Geometrical objects of highest value to
science appear in every period of art history; there can be little doubt
that their artistic treatment gave force to the early periods of mathematics,
physics, and astronomy. Indeed, some of the problems suggested by the
work of great masters have persisted undiminished into our time. There is
the problem of reflection symmetry, revolutionized by current discoveries
in microscopic physics after being brought to artistic consciousness by
such works as Michelangelo's 'Creation of Adam'. The artist shows the
right hand of God imparting life to the left hand of man; the physicist
asks himself whether a corresponding asymmetry can be found in the laws
of nature, and eventually discovers that the neutrino is left-handed. Yet
the asymmetry, as in the painting, is subtle and difficult to understand-a
small nuance in an overwhelmingly symmetrical world. Here is a pro-
vocative statement of the question, referring us to another work of art:
. . Our problem is to explain where symmetry comes from. Why is nature so nearly
symmetrical? No one has any idea why. The only thing we might suggest is something
like this. There is a gate in Japan, a gate in Neiko, which is sometimes called by the
Japanese the most beautiful gate in all Japan; it was built in a time when there was great
influence from Chinese art.... But when one looks closely he sees that ... one of the
small design elements is carved upside down; otherwise the thing is completely sym-
metrical. If one asks why this is, the story is that it was carved upside down so that the
gods will not be jealous of the perfection of man.24

But since the discovery that nature herself is not quite symmetrical, it is
tempting to turn the idea around: 'We might. .. think that the true
explanation of the near symmetry of nature is this: that God made the
laws only nearly symmetrical so that we should not be jealous of His
perfection!'

24 R. P. Feynman, 'The Feynman Lectures on Physics', Vol. I (Reading: Addison-Wesley,

1963).

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE NEW REALITY IN ART AND SCIENCE 397

It is possible to assert that modern abstract art is continuing and

ing the classical tradition, producing occasionally in its own way an
containing clues to new scientific reality. Try as he may to fre
from nature, the artist earns no more than 'the right to develop a
as nature herself'. Thus his ideas, however fanciful and whatever h
presume their origins to be, can eventually become identified as pr
of scientific insight. He cannot help breathing the atmosphere of h
inhaling the new fresh air of science and exhaling, after complex a
metabolism, a new artistic metaphor. There is frequent nonsen
world of art-trumpery, hypocrisy, venality, and commercialism b
on criminality. And there are all these things in the world of s
well. But the essential values of both are still with us, sustain
culture now as they have in the past. Their magic circles of langua
and perhaps should not mix; our sensitive perception is the bridge
them. Especially in view of the extraordinary success with which m
man has turned speculative fancy into a true vision of the world, s
not turn Gabo's precept into its converse: 'There is nothing in u
not in nature'?

This content downloaded from

132.204.251.254 on Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:14:19 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms