Geology of Images: Finding Pre-biotic, Neo-Dadaist Images in Antique Astronomy Prints

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1768

Sometimes when you look hard enough you will see (if not actually "find") what you're looking for; determined to  make a discovery, you can sometimes force yourself into believing that what you're seeing is what it was that was needed to be seen .

The  microscopical world of astonomical antiquarian prints is an interesting one--and in some ways, modern ways, are  on the Robert Hooke/Micrographia magnitudes for the remarkable magnified worlds that their detail reveal--but mostly right now I'm interested in the odd/beautful designs that are hidden in larger scientifc engraved presentations.

[Even in fairly famous scientific images lke the one above--explaining the rainbow--there are all manner of unexpected artistic finds outside of their significant scientific contributions.]

These images from the title of this post, on the other hand, are just simply "there"--all you need is a little magnification and some sharp vision, and the things come to life.  When looking hard at these images and seeing the teaming non-representational artforms that swim through so many of them it seems remarkable to me that these things weren't seen as art before Kandinsy finally "discovered" this  artform in 1911.

(For example Mr. Marey produced a very remarkable Nude descending-like series of photographs 40 years before Duchamp--but the Marey images were observed scientifically, and I'm unaware of anyone who ever wrote an artistic appreciation of that work before 1900.  [Marey left, Duchamp right.] But that is another story.)

For us today with almost 100 years of Kandinsky/Klee/Duchamp/Braque/Malevich under our belts it is relatively easy to see the artfullness of the pieces and bits of these engravings--not so a hundred-plus years ago, and harder yet for 200+. 

For example, there are some things that take on an absolutely pre-biotic flavor, like material that we'd come to see a half-century ago, as in these details from an 1850's  French lithograph on nebualae:

and which come from here:

In an odd way they remind me of a Bosch painting on a pool of slightly-moving oil, the forms of people and objects just barely moving against each other without losing their essential contour or color. Another bio-astronomical section is here:

coming from this engraving relating to sunspots from the 1850's, though it looks more a mor modernist, Absurdist romp.

What I find most attractive are the glorious details on larger engraved plates from encyclopediae, where there are five or ten or more designs per page; their reduction hides their beauty a bit, as we can see in the following examples:

 

And its origin:

   (I cannot let it pass that the central image here relates to Sir William Herschel's spectacular 1790 rendering of the Milk Way, which he was able to deduce by measuring the density of the stars to come up with a splendid representation of what the galaxy looked like.  He was able to do a better job mapping the galaxy than cartographers were able to do mapping the entire coastline of Australia.)

Engraved mechanical/geometrical diagrams are endlessly interesting, each one with a high Ken Burns potential for finding Found Art, as we can see here:

  Which form part of one diagram from this sheet published inteh Rees Cyclopedia (1800-1820):

 

Further, from the same sheet comes this detail, which is scratching up against the Constructivists a bit, suggesting itself to a Malevich; or perhaps (moving ahead a few decades) something for a Joseph Cornell box:

Which is a detail from this, which again is a detail from the larger engraving two images up:

Most often, though, the smaller but complete images composing the larger mosaic of scientific diagrams must necessarily stand on their own, though sometimes, once exhumed from their diminutive stature, they can take on a life outside of the sciences, as with this Dadaist image:

Which is found here:

   

So with a little magnifying glass, access to some old encyclopediae, and some SpongeBobian imagination, pre-historic modern art can be found pretty easily--and quickly.  A little focused vision and a 10x lens will let the stuffy past slide off the page, just like on the top of a mesa in Jemez Springs after a strong rain, seeing the soil run off just a little to reveal acres of Anasazi pot shards. The stuff is everywhere--all you need to do to find them is to look, a little.

 

Comments

[Charles]

It is always fascinating to see your presentations of the microscopic details of engravings, as they reveal the finer aspects of creating a visual illusion. But your illustrations, especially the first one of the eye, and the astronomical diagrams, show an interesting intersection of the arts and sciences through linear perspective and projective geometry. I spent many hours studying and practicing this in art school.

One of the basic theories of linear perspective is that the drawing is a projection of a 3D scene onto a plane, and that projection implies a specific viewpoint. This was widely shown in early perspective instructional diagrams like this one:

http://tinyurl.com/7pq6b25

This quickly became the scientific metaphor for vision, as in this diagram by Descartes:

http://tinyurl.com/76a5gqc

These diagrams look quite similar to the astronomy diagrams that trace the rays projected from the sun. But more interestingly (to me at least) the diagrams are viewed from "God's Eye" which looks down at the astronomical objects from above.

The illustrators and engravers would have been aware of what they were doing, it is clearly demonstrated in the final illustration in your post. This is such a powerful metaphor for vision, in both science and art, that it is still common today. These diagrams constructed how we think about vision.