Seen | Unseen: Art, Science, and Intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble Telescope

by Martin Kemp

Seen | Unseen is a deep, richly illustrated, and erudite analysis of the interconnections between science and the visual arts. Martin Kemp explores the responses of artists, scientists, and their instruments, to the world--ranging from early representations of perspective, to pinhole cameras, particle accelerators and the Hubble telescope.

From Leonardo, Durer, and the inventors of photography to contemporary sculptors, and from Galileo and Darwin to Stephen J. Gould, Kemp considers the way in which scientists and artists have perceived the world and responded to its patterns, and sees common "structural intuitions" reflected in their work.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published October 12, 2006

About the author

Martin Kemp is professor of the History of Art at Oxford University, and the author of many books including The Science of Art, Visualizations and the recent Leonardo. He is also a frequent contributor to Nature, the international science journal, where he writes on science and art. Together with Antonio Criminisi, he wrote an article in NEW 1_2005: "Paolo Uccello's 'Battle of San Romano': Order from Chaos" is the most recent report on how they apply 3D graphic techniques to the process of art history investigation.

Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[nylki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very inspiring collection of examples of images in the sciences.
If you are interested in art history and biology/architecture/astronomy/Computer Science as well, I can recommend this book.