ARTIST AND MATH

MATH AND ART

Some artists think about and use MATH when making art, especially when they plan their composition.  Composition is a fancy art way of saying where an artist arranges and places objects and elements in their art.  Let's look at how artists use Symmetry, Parallel Lines and Perpendicular Lines in art.

Symmetry in Math

That imaginary line that seems to divide a symmetrical shape in half is called a LINE OF SYMMETRY.  Picture it as the line where the shape could be folded in half.  Why does the triangle have more than one?

Symmetry in Nature

Symmetry can be found in nature.  From flowers and seashells to bodies of animals.

Radial Symmetry

SYMMETRY around an axis.  Think of a bike wheel or a starfish.

 

Rose Stained Glass Window

Symmetry in Art

Symmetry in art can create balance and harmony and make the art visual nice to look at.  

Heather Hanson is both artist and dancer.  She combines both to create symmetrical artworks.  Her kinetic drawings are part dance, part performance art using her body as a drawing tool and ending up as large scale pieces in charcoal or pastels.  

Do you notice SYMMETRY in her art?

Let's look at a few other works of art that use symmetrical compositions.  

Pantheon in the Acropolis.

Aztec mosaic ornament

Parallel Lines

PARALLEL LINES are lines that never intersect (cross) or touch and stay the same distance apart  (equidistant).

Op artist Bridget Riley filled her art with lines.  Here are some ways she used PARALLEL LINES.

Perpendicular Lines: 

Lines that intersect or cross at a 90 degree angles.  A square has four, 90 degree angles. 

Let's look at some perpendicular lines in art.  

Piet Mondrian's Geometric art is a great place to view PERPENDICULAR LINES.  The black lines criss cross at 90 degree angles.

Here are a few more examples of PERPENDICULAR LINES!

Is it symmetrical?  

Raise your hand when you see PARALLEL LINES.  Can you find PERPENDICULAR LINES?

This is the same artist, Sol Lewitt.  Are These lines Parallel?  or Perpendicular?

enchanted forests and tree art

You might say this art is tree-mendous!

Forests and trees have been featured in stories, fairytales, settings for plays.  Artists are inspired by the world around them. Let's explore trees and forests through the eyes of artists.

Contemporary artist Trenton Doyle Hancock created a forest of fabric trees as the scenery for the Austin Ballet Company.  For a short time, this same tree mural was later installed at our Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.

Trenton creates large tangled forests and gnarled tree artworks filled with line and pattern.  This massive tree, almost is like a maze that Trenton wants you to find your way out of the puzzle.  The word Legends wraps around the tree sending a message of power and hope.

During the first Spring of the pandemic, like most people who were staying home, English artist David Hockney looked to his surroundings and garden for inspiration.  

Can you tell what inspired his work?  David creates in many mediums and these artworks were made on an Ipad.  

Over several years, Piet Mondrian did many studies of trees and over time trying to use as few lines as possible.  

With only lines, we still recognize the drawings and paintings as trees.

Piet Mondrian – Horizontal Tree, 1911

Evening; Red Tree (1908-1910) by Piet Mondrian


Brazilian photographer and filmmaker Vitor Schietti waits patiently to capture a photo of a light filled tree.  

As twilight fills the sky, Vitor sets up his camera and snaps photos of the branches and the tree canopy filled with light from LED lights and fireworks.

These sculptural trees look like they were cut down from the forest.  They are actual branches, roots and the bark of real trees. 

 Ai Weiwei gathered tree parts from his homeland of China.   The pieces and parts of different trees are reconstructed to create one tree. What does reconstructed mean? In China parts of a tree are sold at markets as a decorative item to be displayed in the home.  

Egon Schiele's trees seem to each be going through the growing seasons.  Imagine how a tree looks in Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.

Four Trees (1917) by Egon Schiele

Grandma Moses, an untrained artist, capture trees at various season in her folk art paintings.  What season is painted in this artwork?  Grandma Moses gave us clues that might tell you what type of trees these are. Do you know?

Some artists show the entire tree from roots, trunk and canopy and others zoom in.  What clues tell you Van Gogh painted an Almond Tree?

Almond Blossoms (1890) by Vincent van Gogh

Lee Gil-rae's "Millennium ― Old Pine Tree 2019-3," left, and Jeong Hong-rae's 18th century painting "Scholars with a Pine Tree"

Korean artist Lee Gil Rae uses nature as his source of inspiration to craft intricate tree-form sculptures from steel and copper. He says his art is in response to deforestation and environment.  

Avenue of Schloss Kammer Park (1912) by Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt painted both of these tree artworks but he also painted this tree...

Tree of Life was painted first as a study for a mosaic that fills a dining room wall in a palace in Belgium. The Tree of Life represents wisdom, protection, strength, and beauty. It reaches up into the sky and down into the earth.

Quietly raise your hand when you know where this Silver Tree sculpture is located?

Roxy Paine has created several version of stainless steel trees.  Roxy wants the silvery branching sculpture to show her care about the environment.

Will you create art inspired by nature?

Will trees inspire your work?