The first time I saw jellyfish was at The Monterey Bay Aquarium. I watched, totally entranced by their pulsing, graceful movement and elegant transparency. Perhaps they seem to represent female sexual response? But their beauty is stunning.
I loved jellyfish even more when I started seeing them snorkeling, despite having been stung by them a few times. I also loved small squid.
The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel is coauthored by Rainer Willmann and Julia Voss
Scientist and illustrator, popularized Darwinism, was responsible for original study in phylogenetic, stem cells, ecology, and phylum - words he invented to discuss his discoveries. He has been neglected, perhaps because his theories were co-opted by the Nazis
...His take on evolutionary theory, known as the biogenetic law or recapitulation, suggested that the evolution of a species was reflected in the individual’s embryonic development; the similarities between embryos of different species might point to their common ancestral origin
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"
...In Kustformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), 1899, science was put in the service of art. Haeckel believed that evolution would unite science with art and philosophy under one discipline, through which humans could reach a greater understanding of their world. His intention was to make the natural forms of elusive organisms accessible to artists, and supply them with a new visual vocabulary of protists, mollusks, trilobites, siphonophores, fungi, and echinoderms. Opening Art Forms, which is excerpted in The Art and Science, is like stepping into a cathedral, a place crafted by human hands that nonetheless inspires awe of the divine. Within are jellyfish that look like flowers, protists that resemble Fabergé eggs, presented like crown jewels on black velvet, the seeming cosmic vastness of the images belying their actual, microscopic size. - from review, NY Review of Books online
His illustrations were not always accurate.
...his illustrations of echidna embryos, Haeckel deceptively omitted limb buds at early stages, despite the fact that limb buds do exist then.
His illustrations are a seminal source of Art Nouveau's sinuous biomorphic curvilinearity. I understood that Art Nouveau was an early response to industrialization, but not so much that it was deeply connected to Enlightenment scientific discovery. I guess I thought it was channeling Baroque and Romanticism, which is probably fair to say, too.
It explains the singularly structural quality of the fluidity of form in Art Nouveau.
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| Gustave Klimt, Water Maidens, 1907 |
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| René Binet took his inspiration for the entrance gate at the Exposition Universal in Paris, 1900, from Haeckel’s radiolarians |
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