Intimate Geometries
Intimate Geometries

Author: Robert Storr

Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC

Published: 2016-10-11

Total Pages: 829

ISBN-13: 1580933637

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In a career spanning nearly 75 years, Louise Bourgeois created a vast body of work that enriched the formal language of modern art while it expressed her intense inner struggles with unprecedented candor and unpredictable invention. Her solo 1982 retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art launched an extraordinarily productive late career, making her a much-honored and vivid presence on the international art scene until her death in 2010 at the age of 98. Trained as a painter and printmaker, Bourgeois embraced sculpture as her primary medium and experimented with a range of materials over the years, including marble, plaster, bronze, wood, and latex. Bourgeois contributed significantly to Surrealism, Postminimalist, and installation art, but her work always remained fiercely independent of style or movement. With more than 1000 illustrations, Intimate Geometries: The Art and Life of Louise Bourgeois comprehensively surveys her immense oeuvre in unmatched depth. Writing from a uniquely intimate perspective, as a close personal friend of Bourgeois, and drawing on decades of research, Robert Storr critically evaluates her achievements and reveals the complexity and passion of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

Shape
Shape

Author: Jordan Ellenberg

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 1984879065

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An instant New York Times Bestseller! “Unreasonably entertaining . . . reveals how geometric thinking can allow for everything from fairer American elections to better pandemic planning.” —The New York Times From the New York Times-bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong—himself a world-class geometer—a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything. How should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? How do computers learn to play Go, and why is learning Go so much easier for them than learning to read a sentence? Can ancient Greek proportions predict the stock market? (Sorry, no.) What should your kids learn in school if they really want to learn to think? All these are questions about geometry. For real. If you're like most people, geometry is a sterile and dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade, along with your braces and active romantic interest in pop singers. If you recall any of it, it's plodding through a series of miniscule steps only to prove some fact about triangles that was obvious to you in the first place. That's not geometry. Okay, it is geometry, but only a tiny part, which has as much to do with geometry in all its flush modern richness as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel. Shape reveals the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face. Geometry asks: Where are things? Which things are near each other? How can you get from one thing to another thing? Those are important questions. The word "geometry"comes from the Greek for "measuring the world." If anything, that's an undersell. Geometry doesn't just measure the world—it explains it. Shape shows us how.

Foliations and the Geometry of 3-Manifolds
Foliations and the Geometry of 3-Manifolds

Author: Danny Calegari

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

Published: 2007-05-17

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0198570082

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This unique reference, aimed at research topologists, gives an exposition of the 'pseudo-Anosov' theory of foliations of 3-manifolds. This theory generalizes Thurston's theory of surface automorphisms and reveals an intimate connection between dynamics, geometry and topology in 3 dimensions. Significant themes returned to throughout the text include the importance of geometry, especially the hyperbolic geometry of surfaces, the importance of monotonicity, especially in1-dimensional and co-dimensional dynamics, and combinatorial approximation, using finite combinatorical objects such as train-tracks, branched surfaces and hierarchies to carry more complicated continuous objects.

Varieties of Realism
Varieties of Realism

Author: Margaret A. Hagen

Publisher: CUP Archive

Published: 1986-05-31

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780521313292

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Varieties of Realism argues that it is not possible to represent the layout of objects and surfaces in space outside the dictates of formal visual geometry, the geometry of natural perspective. The book examines most of the world's coherent representational art styles, both in terms of the geometry of their creation and in terms of their perceptual effects on the viewer. A lucid exposition of modern geometrical principles and relations, accessible to the nonmathematical reader, is followed by an analysis of all known styles as variants of natural perspective, as true varieties of realism. Delineating the physical and mechanical constraints that determine the act of visual representation in painting and drawing, the author traces the intimate relations among seemingly distant styles and considers the kind of perceptual information about the world each can carry. Margaret Hagen is a perceptual psychologist with an ecological point of view. Her rigorous but readable presentation of visual theory and research offers provocative new insights into the connections among vision, geometry, and art.

Proust and the Arts
Proust and the Arts

Author: Christie McDonald

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-11-05

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1107103363

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Offers new perspectives on Proust's complex and creative relation to a variety of art forms from different eras.

The Shape of a Life
The Shape of a Life

Author: Shing-Tung Yau

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0300245521

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A Fields medalist recounts his lifelong effort to uncover the geometric shape—the Calabi-Yau manifold—that may store the hidden dimensions of our universe. Harvard geometer Shing-Tung Yau has provided a mathematical foundation for string theory, offered new insights into black holes, and mathematically demonstrated the stability of our universe. In this autobiography, Yau reflects on his improbable journey to becoming one of the world’s most distinguished mathematicians. Beginning with an impoverished childhood in China and Hong Kong, Yau takes readers through his doctoral studies at Berkeley during the height of the Vietnam War protests, his Fields Medal–winning proof of the Calabi conjecture, his return to China, and his pioneering work in geometric analysis. This new branch of geometry, which Yau built up with his friends and colleagues, has paved the way for solutions to several important and previously intransigent problems. With complicated ideas explained for a broad audience, this book offers not only insights into the life of an eminent mathematician, but also an accessible way to understand advanced and highly abstract concepts in mathematics and theoretical physics. “The remarkable story of one of the world’s most accomplished mathematicians . . . Yau’s personal journey—from escaping China as a youngster, leading a gang outside Hong Kong, becoming captivated by mathematics, to making breakthroughs that thrust him on the world stage—inspires us all with humankind’s irrepressible spirit of discovery.” —Brian Greene, New York Times–bestselling author of The Elegant Universe “An unexpectedly intimate look into a highly accomplished man, his colleagues and friends, the development of a new field of geometric analysis, and a glimpse into a truly uncommon mind.” —The Boston Globe “Engaging, eminently readable. . . . For those with a taste for elegant and largely jargon-free explanations of mathematics, The Shape of a Life promises hours of rewarding reading.” —American Scientist

Sacred Geometry for Artists, Dreamers, and Philosophers
Sacred Geometry for Artists, Dreamers, and Philosophers

Author: John Oscar Lieben

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2018-08-28

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 1620557029

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An illustrated guide to harmonics--the sacred geometry principles that underlie the natural world--and its practical applications • Demonstrates how the vesica piscis is a matrix from which ideas and forms emanate, connecting cosmic time cycles, measures of space, and musical tones • Provides harmonic analyses of ancient sculpture, architecture, the solar system, the Earth-Moon relationship, and the structure of water and waves • Explains how to apply sacred geometry to create building floor plans, pottery figures, gardens, and sacred ceremonial spaces We are in the midst of a revival of an ancient way of looking at the world--an approach that enabled great civilizations of the past to bring forth inventions of great beauty and power. This school of thought--harmonics--envisioned the natural world and the solar system as an interlocking matrix of harmonious numbers, perfectly woven into the creative fabric of life and the surrounding universe. Exploring the art and science of harmonics, John Oscar Lieben shows how to create harmonious forms using the ancient tools of number, geometry, and musical tone--an approach that resonates with nature’s own ways of creation. He demonstrates many practical applications that result from the study of harmonics, providing analyses of ancient sculpture and architecture, as well as original examples of building floor plans, pottery figures based on planetary proportions, gardens based on harmonic principles, and ceremonial spaces that honor cosmic harmonies and sacred geometric relationships. Showing how harmonics can also be applied to the mysteries of time and space, the author demonstrates how the vesica piscis and many other variations of the vesica shape reveal numerical synchronicities and correspondences that connect cosmic time cycles, measures of space, and musical tones. The author applies harmonics and the “vesica construction” matrix to illustrate many of nature’s wonders, including the Earth-Moon relationship, the interactions of the Golden Number and the musical scale, and how the Flower of Life symbol connects the universal field with the pattern of raindrops falling on a pond. Offering an approach to sacred geometry that pairs the mystical with the practical, the cosmic with the earthly, the author reveals how the art and science of harmonics should be required study for both the artist and the seeker of eternal truths as well as the scientist who seeks an entrance into the sacred foundations of nature.

The Geometry of Creation
The Geometry of Creation

Author: Robert Bork

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 783

ISBN-13: 1351888978

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The flowering of Gothic architecture depended to a striking extent on the use of drawing as a tool of design. By drawing precise "blueprints" with simple tools such as the compass and straightedge, Gothic draftsmen were able to develop a linearized architecture of unprecedented complexity and sophistication. Examination of their surviving drawings can provide valuable and remarkably intimate information about the Gothic design process. Gothic drawings include compass pricks, uninked construction lines, and other telltale traces of the draftsman's geometrically based working method. The proportions of the drawings, moreover, are those actually intended by the designer, uncompromised by errors introduced in the construction process. All of these features make these drawings ideal subjects for the study of Gothic design practice, but their geometry has to date received little systematic attention. This book offers a new perspective on Gothic architectural creativity. It shows, in a series of rigorous geometrical case studies, how Gothic design evolved over time, in two senses: in the hours of the draftsman's labor, and across the centuries of the late Middle Ages. In each case study, a series of computer graphics show in unprecedented detail how a medieval designer could have developed his architectural concept step by step, using only basic geometrical operations. Taken together, these analyses demonstrate both remarkable methodological continuity across the Gothic era, and the progressive development of new and sophisticated permutations on venerable design themes. This rich tradition ultimately gave way in the Renaissance not because of any inherent problem with Gothic architecture, but because the visual language of Classicism appealed more directly to the pretensions of Humanist princes than the more abstract geometrical order of Gothic design, as the book's final chapter demonstrates.

Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois

Author: Jean-Francois Jaussaud

Publisher: Laurence King Publishing

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781786275592

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A rare glimpse inside the private world of Louise Bourgeois, one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. "Readers who already love the artist will be thrilled by the richness of this book, and those who didn't know her work before will discover a complex, brilliant, and deeply emotional artist who used her creative gifts to reshape the world around her." – Architectural Digest "Bound in soft sky–blue linen cloth and full of suggestive photography, the pleasure begins when the book is first held, its heft and weight, the mix of textures and fonts suggest something to be savored, then saved." – New York Journal of Books Louise Bourgeois was one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century and photographer Jean–François Jaussaud met her for the first time in 1994 at her studio in Brooklyn. But it was not before she had interrogated him about every aspect of his life that he earned her trust. A rare photo session was set up in Spring 1995, under one condition: she would destroy the photographs if she didn't like them… Jaussaud agreed to it and passed the test. He was then given carte blanche to photograph her studio and her house in Chelsea, and he kept coming back for another eleven years. Jaussaud's photographs of Louise Bourgeois in her house and studio are a moving testimony showing how completely implicated in her work she was, to the point that her private life and her work were inextricably interwoven. Louise Bourgeois: An Intimate Portrait also contains: •Extracts from Bourgeois' diary • Personal notes • Short texts from Jaussaud, Marie–Laure Bernadac, and Xavier Girard. This is a must–have addition to any serious admirer of Louise Bourgeois as well as a fascinating entry point for those just discovering her groundbreaking explorations of the family, sexuality, bodies, death, and the unconscious.