Book cover of Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science, and the Spiritual

Book description

How science changed the way artists understand reality

Exploring the Invisible shows how modern art expresses the first secular, scientific worldview in human history. Now fully revised and expanded, this richly illustrated book describes two hundred years of scientific discoveries that inspired French Impressionist painters and Art Nouveau architects, as…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Exploring the Invisible as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The Romantic painters of the early 19th century were intrigued with notions of the sublime, the Absolute, and the unity and divinity of all nature. After the mid-1880s the focus of the avant-garde painters became energized by the quest to escape the bounds of ā€œmaterialismā€ (an umbrella term by which they meant positivism, the mechanistic worldview of Newtonian physics, as well as the destructive effects of industrialism). Lynn Gamwell illuminates the fascination many of the modern artists felt for various scientific discoveries in various decades. For instance, the first exhibition of x-rays by the Berlin Physical Society in 1896…

From Charlene's list on the spiritual dimension of modern art.

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A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

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