The Shock of Recognition

Motifs of Modern Art and Science

Series: 

Author:
Lewis Pyenson
In The Shock of Recognition, Lewis Pyenson uses a method called Historical Complementarity to identify the motif of non-figurative abstraction in modern art and science. He identifies the motif in Picasso’s and Einstein’s educational environments. He shows how this motif in domestic furnishing and in urban lighting set the stage for Picasso’s and Einstein’s professional success before 1914. He applies his method to intellectual life in Argentina, using it to address that nation’s focus on an inventory of the natural world until the 1940s, its adoption of non-figurative art and nuclear physics in the middle of the twentieth century, and attention to landscape painting and the wonder of nature at the end of the century.
Copyright Year:
2021
E-Book (PDF)
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-32573-9
Publication:
12 Oct 2020
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-32572-2
Publication:
11 Dec 2020
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Lewis Pyenson is Emeritus Professor of History at Western Michigan University, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and former graduate dean. Widely published in the history of modern science, he is also a novelist and sculptor.
“[…] this impressive book, which clearly is the culmination of many years' research and writing […] will make an invaluable addition to any scientist's library.”
- Raymond L. Lee Jr., American Journal of Physics 91, 327 (2023)

"I believe this brawny book makes a major contribution to our understanding of how different disciplines, seemingly isolated, can express similar patterns of thought or concepts. Highly recommended."
- David R. Topper, ​​​​​​​Senior Scholar in History of Art, University of Winnipeg, in: Amazon.ca book review (May 30, 2021)

"A esa mirada analítica, aplicada a dos campos fundamentales de la actividad humana [el de la historia de la ciencia y el de la historia de las artes plásticas], hay que concebirla como un dispositivo de exploración y descubrimiento de motivos, es decir, complejos significantes de nociones y prácticas detectables tanto en la indagación científica cuanto en la creación estética. La forma en que Pyenson presenta los antecedentes de su propuesta metodológica y cognitiva, a la que él llama “complementariedad historiográfica”, es exhaustiva, precisa y generosa."
- José Emilio Burucúa, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, In: Prismas - Revista De Historia Intelectual, 26(1) (2022), 285–286.
Abbreviations xi
List of Figures and Tables xii
Introduction 1

PART 1 Historical Complementarity

1 Complementary History 35
  1 The Intrinsic Past of Art and Science 35
  2 Historical Complementarity Introduced 40
  3 Penetrating Deeper into Culture 49
  4 The Method of Historical Complementarity 55
  5 Up from the Bottom 65
  6 The Common Ground of Intellectual Life 78

2 How Moderns Understood Art and Science 82
  1 The Ideal and Abstract Consensus 82
  2 Art and Science as Vexatious Twins 95
  3 Neo- Idealists and Symbols 108
  4 Leonardo as a Modern Icon 117

PART 2 Ut pictura mathesis: Vision and Perspective in Picasso’s and Einstein’s Education

3 A New Look at Picasso and Einstein 127

4 Picasso 144
  1 Figuring It Out 144
  2 A Coruña: Art and Science in an Atlantic Palace 157
  3 High Art and Design in Barcelona 167
    3.1 The School of Drawing 168
    3.2 Mathematics 173
    3.3 Technology and Science 180

4 What Picasso Saw 183

5 Einstein 190
  1 Young Einstein’s Visualization 190
  2 Images of Western Civilization 204
  3 The Eye and the Hand 219
  4 Surfaces and Their Projection 221
  5 Intimations of Relativity 230

6 Picasso and Einstein in Common 240

PART 3 Inside/ Outside: Abstraction in Domestic Décor and Public Experience

7 An Intellectual Climate 247
  1 Complementarity and Analogy 247
  2 Off Center: Politics and Philosophy 251
  3 Neo- Idealism in Painting and Physics 258

8 Non- figurative Design in Rooms and on Streets 269
  1 Decorating for the Interior Turn 269
  2 Carpets 273
  3 Wallpaper 277
  4 Electrical Lighting 293
  5 Light and Shadows in the Bourgeois and Scientific Experience 304

9 Teaching and Displaying Abstract Style 310
  1 Art and Science in Great Britain 310
  2 Design in the Department of Science and Art 313
  3 Gottfried Semper in London 317
  4 Christopher Dresser as a Designer 320
  5 Semper’s and Dresser’s Legacy 328
  6 The Appeal of Abstraction 334

10 Mathematics, Art, and Apparitions in School and Gallery 339
  1 Felix Klein’s Models 339
  2 Nineteenth- Century Plaster Casts 342
  3 Klein’s Intuition 346
  4 L.E.J. Brouwer’s Affinity with Felix Klein 356
  5 Responses to and Varieties of Abstraction 358
  6 Interface of Artists and Mathematicians 361
  7 Klein and Picasso 369

11 Abstraction as Neo- Idealist Virtue 377

PART 4 Nation: Horizons of Artistic and Scientific Culture in Argentina

12 Complementarity and National Style 393

13 Landscape and the Hope of a Modern Nation 400
  1 Córdoba la docta 400
  2 Venerable and Venerated Learning 402
  3 The Rise of the Research University 410
  4 Printing, Publishing, and Illustrating 423
  5 Painting Argentina 440
6 Non- figurative Abstraction Delayed 454

14 The Gallery in a Laboratory and a New Sense of Land and Sky 461
  1 A Unique Collection of Art 461
  2 Tandar and the Horizon Index 482
  3 Language, Science, and Art 490
  4 Scientists Address Art 502
  5 Art into the New Millennium 513
    5.1 The Great Instauration 513
    5.2 Small Actors in a Large Drama: Luis Felipe Noé 515
    5.3 Earth and Sky: Ernesto Pesce 534
  6 Art and Science to Tame Our Time 542
  7 The Auger Project: From the Laboratory to the Stars 559

15 The Wonder of the World 567

Conclusion: Complementary Endeavors and Leading Motifs 577

Books Cited 589
Index of Names 637
Readers interested in the social history of modern art and science; new light on Picasso and Einstein; and intellectual life in Argentina.
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Publisher:
Brill
Language:
English
Pages:
xvi, 650 pp.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004325739

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