Abstract
The impact is considered of D'Arcy Thompson's notion of biological form as set out in On Growth and Form on postwar avant-garde experimental art practices associated with the Independent Group, Nigel Henderson's photography, and László Moholy-Nagy's post-Bauhaus art theory. How Thompson's insistence on the importance of physical forces in shaping biological form, and of distortion as a component of symmetrical systems, influenced the writings and practices of these artists, is explored, linking abstraction to legacies concerned with materiality and technique encountered earlier in Constructivism. Henderson's photograms and ‘stressed photography’ are shown to be directly inspired by Thompson's conception of form as a diagram of forces, and attest to a novel understanding of rules of symmetry in abstract form that may be seen in the dynamic processes at play in complex natural phenomena. How Moholy-Nagy explored these notions theoretically is examined, for example in his definition of drawing in Vision in Motion, which cites Thompson directly as a source of inspiration.
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References
1.R. Arnheim, Review [Reviewed work: Accent on form, an anticipation of the science of tomorrow by Lancelot Law Whyte], The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 14 (June, 1956), p. 503.
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
4.L. L. Whyte ed., Aspects of Form: a symposium on form in nature and art (London, 1951).
5.‘Lancelot Law Whyte, philosopher, scientist and investment banker, was a Leonardo Honorary Editorial Advisor from the inception of the journal in 1968. His death is a great loss for those who have a vital concern for bringing art and science close together ’, wrote the footnote in Whyte's ‘Letter from a scientist to an artist’ which appeared in Leonardo, Vol. 6 (Autumn, 1973), pp. 351–354, p. 351.
6.Whyte, ‘Letter from a scientist to an artist’, p. 351.
7.Ibid.
8.Ibid.
9.Ibid.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Ibid.
12.E. Mundt, ‘Scientific and artistic knowledge in art education’, College Art Journal 10 (Summer 1951), pp. 333–336, p. 333.
13.In the article, Mundt drew on the work of Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical world and Eddington's assertion on the existence of two types of knowledge. Knowledge derived from one's consultation of ‘wave mechanics’ and mathematical equations correlating certain functions of water is fundamentally distinct from one's insights derived from one's direct experience of the phenomena while, at the same time, he or she recalls ‘some lines of poetry’. Ibid., p. 333.
14.Ibid., p. 334.
15.D. Thistlewood, ‘Organic art and the popularization of a scientific philosophy’, British Journal of Aesthetics 22 (4) (1982): 311–321.
16.For a thorough discussion of the exhibition see I. Moffat, ‘A Horror of Abstract Thought’: Postwar Britain and Hamilton's 1951 ‘Growth and Form Exhibition’, October 94, The Independent Group (Autumn, 2000): 89–112.
17.E. H. Gombrich, ‘Meditations on a hobby horse, or the roots of artistic form’, L. L. Whyte ed., Aspects of Form: a symposium on form in nature and art (London, 1951), pp. 209–228; C. H. Waddington, ‘The character of biological form’, L. L. Whyte ed., Aspects of form: a symposium on form in nature and art (London, 1951), pp. 43–56. For Waddington in the context of contemporary art and Thompson see C. H. Waddington, Behind Appearance (Cambridge, Mass. 1969) and M. Kemp, SeenIUnseen: Art, science and Intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble Telescope (Oxford, 2006), p. 211.
18.Tate archive, Henderson papers, 9211-2-23.
19.Tate archive, Henderson papers, 921-1-9, Tate archive, Henderson papers, 921-1-10.
20.Tate archive, Henderson papers, 9211-2-23.
21.Tate archive, Henderson Papers, 9211-5-1-1.
22.Ibid.
23.Ibid.
24.Ibid.
25.The Architectural Review, 110 (October, 1951).
26.L. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in motion (Chicago, 1947).
27.J. Trotter and D. McLean, Electron microscope study of quenched and tempered steel, Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute (September 1949), 163: 9–13.
28.The Architectural Review, 109 (May 1951), p. 274.
29.L. Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision (New York, 1928).
30.D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form, Cambridge, 1942, p. 15.
31.Thompson, On Growth and Form, p. 357.
32.See for example Stressed Photograph of a Bather c.1950 Photograph, black and white, on paper at the Tate.
33.L. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion (Chicago, 1947), p. 5.
34.Ibid.
35.Ibid.
36.Ibid., p. 35.
37.Thompson, On Growth and Form (Cambridge, 1942), p. 16, cited in Moholy-Nagy, Vision in motion, p. 36.
38.Moholy-Nagy, Vision in motion, p. 36.
39.Ibid.
40.Ibid.
41.Ibid., p. 38.
42.See H. Read, Art and Industry, (London, 1934) and H. Read, Education through Art (London, 1943).
43.L. L. Whyte, Aspects of Form: a symposium on form in nature and art (London, 1951).
44.L. Moholy-Nagy, The new vision and Abstract of an artist, (New York, 1947). p. 14.
45.L. Moholy-Nagy, The new vision and Abstract of an artist, p. 13.
46.L. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in motion, p. 63.
47.L. Moholy-Nagy, Vision in motion, p. 63.
48.The book was part, and still is, of the architectural school curricula as the reading lists of Architectural Association show. Greg Lynn's contemporary discussions of Thompson is perhaps most illustrative of the way in which this early twentiethth century text may be seen to have profoundly influenced architectural theory and practice as far as design for complexity is concerned, in particular.
49.For a discussion on the reception of Thompson's work in Bauhaus theory, and the writings of Moholy-Nagy but also the appropriation of Thompson's principles by British artists and art historians such as Herbert Read, see A. Kaniari, ‘Engineering, design and biology outside the evolutionary perspective? D'Arcy Thompson's 1917 On Growth and Form in the context of Design History’, T. de Rijk and J. W. Drukker (ed.), Design and Evolution (CD) (Delft TU, 2006).
50.Thompson, On Growth and Form, 1961; 1992, p. 116.
51.Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision, p. 25.
52.Ibid.
53.Ibid.
54.Ibid., p. 151.
55.Ibid., p. 153.
56.Ibid., pp. 290–291.
57.Both works in the Tate. In a discussion of the works in my opening remarks to the workshop Disciplines, Objects and Interdisciplinary Thinking in Art History 1950–2000. Biology, D'Arcy Thompson and the Historical Explanation of 20th Century Experimental Art Form which I organized as Academic Visitor to the Art History Department, University of Oxford in May 2010 with participants including Martin Kemp, Susan Derges, Ellen Levy, Tim Horder, Matthew Jarron and Michael Weinstock.
58.The term is Martin Kemp's. See Kemp, SeenIUnseen: Art, science and Intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble Telescope, p. 211.