Waubonsee Community College

The fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry in modern art, Linda Dalrymple Henderson

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 657-697) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry in modern art

bibliography

862041313

Linda Dalrymple Henderson

Leonardo

In this groundbreaking study, first published in 1983 and unavailable for over a decade, Linda Dalrymple Henderson demonstrates that two concepts of space beyond immediate perception - the curved spaces of non-Euclidean geometry and, most important, a higher, fourth dimension of space - were central to the development of modern art. The possibility of a spatial fourth dimension suggested that our world might be merely a shadow or section of a higher dimensional existence. That iconoclastic idea encouraged radical innovation by a variety of early twentieth-century artists, ranging from French Cubists, Italian Futurists, and Marcel Duchamp, to Max Weber, Kazimir Malevich, and the artists of De Stijl and Surrealism. In an extensive new Reintroduction, Henderson surveys the impact of interest in higher dimensions of space in art and culture from the 1950s to 2000. Although largely eclipsed by relativity theory beginning in the 1920s, the spatial fourth dimension experienced a resurgence during the later 1950s and 1960s. In a remarkable turn of events, it has returned as an important theme in contemporary culture in the wake of the emergence in the 1980s of both string theory in physics (with its ten- or eleven-dimensional universes) and computer graphics. Henderson demonstrates the importance of this new conception of space for figures ranging from Buckminster Fuller, Robert Smithson, and the Park Place Gallery group in the 1960s to Tony Robbin and digital architect Marcos Novak. -- Publishers website

Reintroduction : View from the twenty-first century -- Augmenting a 1983 history of the fourth dimension in culture and art (1900-1950) : X-rays and ether physics as the context for the "fourth dimension" ; Stuart Davis and four-dimensional space-time in the era of Einstein -- The fourth dimension 1950-2000: an overview : "Keepers of the flame" of the fourth dimension: László́ Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Duchanmp, and Buckminster Fuller ; Popular literature on the fourth dimension in the 1950s-1960s, including the writings of Martin Gardner ; American artists' responses to the spatial fourth dimension in the 1960s: Robert Smithson and the Park Place Gallery Group ; Vehicles for the spatial fourth dimension in the 1970s and 1980s: Expanded cinema and new media; computer graphics and string theory -- The 1970s through the 1990s: the four-dimensional art of Tony Robbin -- The 1990s: from hyperspace to cyberspace and Marco Novak's digital architecture; new developments in string theory -- Concluding thoughts -- Introduction -- 1. The Nineteenth-Century background : Non-Euclidean geometry ; The geometry of n dimensions ; The rise of popular interest in the new geometries -- 2. Cubism and the new geometries : Paris 1900-1912: the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry in popular literature ; The visual tradition of "the fourth dimension ; Chronology of events ; The fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry in Cubist theory and practice ; An alternative view among the Cubists: the Theosophist Kupka ; Boccioni's Italian futurist critique of Cubism's fourth dimension -- 3. Marcel Duchamp and the new geometries ; Duchamp's introduction to n-dimensional and non-Euclidean geometry ; The Large glass ; The notes in A l'infinitif ; Later works -- 4. The fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry in America : Max Weber ; Gelett Burgess ; Claude Bragdon ; New York 1913 and the Armory Show ; Wartime New York: Duchamp and the Arensberg Circle ; The 1920s -- 5. Transcending the present: the fourth dimension in the philosophy of Ouspensky and in Russian futurism and suprematism : The secondary role of non-Euclidean geometry and relativity theory before the revolution ; Hyperspace philosophy in Russia: Peter Demianovich Ouspensky ; Early Russian futurism and Larionov's Rayonism ; The fourth dimension in Russian futurist philosophy: Matyushin and Kruchenykh ; The fourth dimension in the art of Malevich ; The 1920s: El Lissitzky and others -- 6. The new geometries during World War I and the postwar period in France and Holland: reevaluation and transformation : The wartime debate: Severini and Ozenfant ; Early De Stijl and the fourth dimension ; The popularization of the theory of relativity in France ; Van Doesburg's pursuit of an art for the world of space-time ; Art and relativity in the 1920s: an overview -- Conclusion : The new geometries in art and theory 1900-1930 ; The fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry in art and theory since 1930 -- Appendix A: The question of Cubism and relativity -- Appendix B: American articles propularizing the new geometries, 1877-1920 -- Appendix C: Of the book by Gleizes and Metzinger Du Cubisme