Painting, Science, and the Perception of Coloured Shadows

Painting, Science, and the Perception of Coloured Shadows
Author: Paul Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-03-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351042009

Many artists and scientists – including Buffon, Goethe, and Philipp Otto Runge – who observed the vividly coloured shadows that appear outdoors around dawn and dusk, or indoors when a candle burns under waning daylight, chose to describe their colours as ‘beautiful’. Paul Smith explains what makes these ephemeral effects worthy of such appreciation – or how depictions of coloured shadows have genuine aesthetic and epistemological significance. This multidisciplinary book synthesises methodologies drawn from art history (close pictorial analysis), psychology and neuroscience (theories of colour constancy), history of science (the changing paradigms used to explain coloured shadows), and philosophy (theories of perception and aesthetic value drawn from Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty). This title will be of interest to scholars in art history, art theory, and the history of science and technology.

Painting, Science, and the Perception of Coloured Shadows

Painting, Science, and the Perception of Coloured Shadows
Author: Paul Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2021
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781351042024

"Many artists and scientists - including Buffon, Goethe, and Philipp Otto Runge - who observed the vivid coloured shadows that appear outdoors around dawn and dusk, or indoors when a candle burns under waning daylight, chose to describe their colours as 'beautiful'. Paul Smith explains what makes these ephemeral effects worthy of such appreciation - or how depictions of coloured shadows have genuine aesthetic and epistemological significance. This multi-disciplinary book synthesises methodologies drawn from art history (close pictorial analysis), psychology and neuroscience (theories of colour constancy), history of science (the changing paradigms used to explain coloured shadows), and philosophy (theories of perception and aesthetic value drawn from Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty). This title will be of interest to scholars in art history, art theory, and the history of science and technology"--

Vitalist Modernism

Vitalist Modernism
Author: Fae Brauer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000826910

This book reveals how, when, where, and why vitalism and its relationship to new scientific theories, philosophies and concepts of energy became seminal from the fin de siècle until the Second World War for such Modernists as Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Hugo Ball, Juliette Bisson, Eva Carrière, Salvador Dalì, Robert Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Edvard Munch, Picasso, Yves Tanguy, Gino Severini and John Cage. For them, Vitalism entailed the conception of life as a constant process of metamorphosis impelled by the free flow of energies, imaginings, intuition and memories, unconstrained by mechanistic materialism and chronometric imperatives, to generate what the philosopher Henri Bergson aptly called Creative Evolution. Following the three main dimensions of Vitalist Modernism, the first part of this book reveals how biovitalism at the fin de siècle entailed the pursuit of corporeal regeneration through absorption in raw nature, wholesome environments, aquatic therapies, electromagnetism, heliotherapy, modern sports, particularly rugby, water sports, the Olympic Games and physical culture to energize the human body and vitalize its life force. This is illuminated by artists as geoculturally diverse as Gustave Caillebotte, Thomas Eakins, Munch and Albert Gleizes. The second part illuminates how simultaneously Vitalism became aligned with anthroposophy, esotericism, magnetism, occultism, parapsychology, spiritism, theosophy and what Bergson called "psychic states", alongside such new sciences as electromagnetism, radiology and the Fourth Dimension, as captured by such artists as Juliette Bisson, Giacomo Balla, Albert Besnard, Umberto Boccioni, Eva Carrière, John Gerrard Keulemans, László Moholy-Nagy, James Tissot, Albert von Schrenck Notzing and Picasso. During and after the devastation of the First World War, the third part explores how Vitalism, particularly Bergson’s theory of becoming, became associated with Dadaist, Neo-Dadaist and Surrealist notions of amorality, atemporality, dysfunctionality, entropy, irrationality, inversion, negation and the nonsensical captured by Hans Arp, Charlie Chaplin, Theo Van Doesburg, Kazimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitters and Vladimir Tatlin alongside Cage’s concept of Nothing. After investigating the widespread engagement with Bergson’s philosophies and Vitalism and art by Anarchists, Marxists and Communists during and after the First World War, it concludes with the official rejection of Bergson and any form of Vitalism in the Soviet Union under Stalin. This book will be of vital interest to gallery, exhibition and museum curators and visitors, plus readers and scholars working in art history, art theory, cultural studies, modernist studies, occult studies, European art and literature, health, histories of science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, sport studies, heritage studies, museum studies and curatorship.

Visual Culture and Pandemic Disease Since 1750

Visual Culture and Pandemic Disease Since 1750
Author: Marsha Morton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2023-07-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000904148

Through case studies, this book investigates the pictorial imaging of epidemics globally, especially from the late eighteenth century through the 1920s when, amidst expanding Western industrialism, colonialism, and scientific research, the world endured a succession of pandemics in tandem with the rise of popular visual culture and new media. Images discussed range from the depiction of people and places to the invisible realms of pathogens and emotions, while topics include the messaging of disease prevention and containment in public health initiatives, the motivations of governments to ensure control, the criticism of authority in graphic satire, and the private experience of illness in the domestic realm. Essays explore biomedical conditions as well as the recurrent constructed social narratives of bias, blame, and othering regarding race, gender, and class that are frequently highlighted in visual representations. This volume offers a pictured genealogy of pandemic experience that has continuing resonance. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual studies, history of medicine, and medical humanities.

Color and Light

Color and Light
Author: James Gurney
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2010-11-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0740797719

Unlike many other art books only give recipes for mixing colors or describe step-by-step painting techniques, *Color and Light* answers the questions that realist painters continually ask, such as: "What happens with sky colors at sunset?", "How do colors change with distance?", and "What makes a form look three-dimensional?" Author James Gurney draws on his experience as a plain-air painter and science illustrator to share a wealth of information about the realist painter's most fundamental tools: color and light. He bridges the gap between abstract theory and practical knowledge for traditional and digital artists of all levels of experience.

The Visual World of Shadows

The Visual World of Shadows
Author: Roberto Casati
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2023-12-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262550849

How the perception of shadows, studied by vision scientists and visual artists, reveals the inner workings of the visual system. In The Visual World of Shadows, Roberto Casati and Patrick Cavanagh examine how the perception of shadows, as studied by vision scientists and visual artists, reveals the inner workings of the visual system. Shadows are at once a massive problem for vision—which must distinguish them from objects or material features of objects—and a resource, signaling the presence, location, shape, and size of objects. Casati and Cavanagh draw up an inventory of information retrievable from shadows, showing their amazing variety. They present an overview of the visual system, distinguishing between measurement and inference. They discuss the shadow mission, the work done by the visual brain to parse, and perhaps discard, the information from shadows; shadow ownership, the association of a shadow with the object that casts it; shadow labeling, the visual system's ability to tell shadows from nonshadows; and the shadow concept, our knowledge about shadows as a category. Casati and Cavanagh then apply the theoretical apparatus they have developed for shadows to other phenomena: illumination, reflection, and transparency. Finally, they examine the art of the shadow, paying tribute to artists' exploration of shadow, analyzing a series of artworks (reproduced in color) from a rich and fascinating art historical corpus.

Perception Beyond Gestalt

Perception Beyond Gestalt
Author: Adam Geremek
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2013-09-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135124779

How does the brain piece together the information required to achieve object recognition, figure-ground segmentation, object completion in cases of partial occlusion and related perceptual phenomena? This book focuses on principles of Gestalt psychology and the key issues which surround them, providing an up-to-date survey of the most interesting and highly debated topics in visual neuroscience, perception and object recognition. The volume is divided into three main parts: Gestalt and perceptual organisation, attention aftereffects and illusions, and color vision and art perception. Themes covered in the book include: - a historical review of Gestalt theory and its relevance in modern-day neuroscience - the relationship between perceptive and receptive fields - a critical analysis of spatiotemporal unity of perception - the role of Gestalt principles in perceptual organization - self-organizing properties of the visual field - the role of attention and perceptual grouping in forming non-retinotopic representations - figural distortions following adaptation to spatial patterns - illusory changes of brightness in spatial patterns - the function of motion illusions as a tool to study Gestalt principles in vision - conflicting theories of color vision and the neural basis of it - the role of color in figure-ground segmentation - chromatic assimilation in visual art and perception - the phenomena of colored shadows. Including contributions from experts in the field, this book will provide an essential overview of current research and theory on visual perception and Gestalt. It will be key reading for researchers and academics in the field of visual perception and neuroscience.

A History of Light and Colour Measurement

A History of Light and Colour Measurement
Author: Sean F. Johnston
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1420034774

2003 Paul Bunge Prize of the Hans R. Jenemann Foundation for the History of Scientific Instruments Judging the brightness and color of light has long been contentious. Alternately described as impossible and routine, it was beset by problems both technical and social. How trustworthy could such measurements be? Was the best standard of inten

Shadows and Enlightenment

Shadows and Enlightenment
Author: Michael Baxandall
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780300072723

Shadows are holes in light. We see them all the time, and sometimes we notice them, but their part in our visual experience of the world is mysterious. In this book, an art historian draws on contemporary cognitive science, eighteenth-century theories of visual perception, and art history to discuss shadows and the visual knowledge they can offer.