Author explores link between art, physics

Sue Vorenberg | The New Mexican

7/3/2008 - 7/3/08

Jack Leibowitz likes to use the example of a big blank page, yawning for miles in every direction, to explain the underlying thread he sees between the worlds of art and physics.

The big blank page creates a symmetry of sorts. It's the same in every direction. And unless you're at the edge of it, you can't tell where it starts or where it ends.

Now put an object somewhere on the page.

If you pick the object up and move it, then center it in your vision again, there's no way to tell the object has been moved, because the symmetry behind it makes it look exactly the same, said Leibowitz, a 10-year resident of Santa Fe who has a new book out called Hidden Harmony: The Connected Worlds of Physics and Art.

"Symmetry deprives us of information, both in art and in physics," Leibowitz said. "But if you can break that symmetry, it suddenly releases information."

If you put a permanent mark on the page, or make your first brush stroke on a blank canvas, suddenly the symmetry is broken. You have a frame of reference.

But that mark, that instability or nonsymmetry, creates yet another dilemma. The artist must then find a way to re-balance the equation, to make the parts of the painting work together, not by restoring the original symmetry, but by creating a new cohesiveness.

And in an odd way, that's also how the world of science works, said Leibowitz, a retired professor who taught both physics and art at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

"In physics, if you look back at Isaac Newton, that was a time (from the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s) when the world made sense to everyone," Leibowitz said. "If you were observing a phenomenon in one space, and somebody else was observing it in a different space, you could expect your observations of those phenomenon to be the same."

But into this generally symmetric observational world stumbled James Clerk Maxwell, a physicist who in the mid-1800s created a series of four equations that explained all the properties of electric and magnetic fields and how they relate to their sources.

Through those equations, Maxwell was able to show that light is an electromagnetic wave. And derivations of those equations were able to explain all the laws of classical electromagnetism.

But, like a brush stroke on the blank canvas of Newton's symmetry, there was a problem with Maxwell's explanation of how the world worked.

In Maxwell's equations, constants and definitions change depending on the situation. And those observations that in Newton's time made sense no matter where you did them? They were suddenly thrown out of balance, Leibowitz said.

"In Maxwell's equations, it looks as though the symmetry of the world has been given up," he said. "And it took two generations before Albert Einstein came along and said 'no, that doesn't work.' "

Einstein's theory of relativity, which Leibowitz says actually isn't about factors being relative, was much like the artist's second and subsequent strokes on a page. It was aimed at putting the world back in order, so observations made sense again.

"Einstein didn't want to call it relativity, he wanted to call it invariance, which is more in line with it keeping the symmetry of objects," Leibowitz said. "And to do that he had to turn time and space inside out."

And, like the continuing work of an artist to balance areas of a painting, subsequent scientists have continued to create equations and make observations to add even more balance after Einstein's work, Leibowitz said.

The result, as well, of either world, is a sense of beauty — and a way to see inside the larger composition of both art and science, Leibowitz said.

And that sense is evident in some ways in a painting by Jackson Pollock called Lavender Mist, displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Leibowitz said.

In front of the painting — which to the untrained eye looks like a bunch of squiggles, lines and blotches — sits a bench, he said.

"If you sit at that bench for a while you see a framework of these bright lines, and you look into the painting and you see lavender gauze," Leibowitz said. "It's almost like seeing a natural structure that you couldn't see at first."

Those structures, like the ones that explain physics and math, can also be found in music, literature and art, he said.

"It's a mix of that," Leibowitz said. "And one of the things I hope I can show people with this book is that if they don't like science, then they're not seeing that deeper mystery in the physical world. My intent is to give people a feeling of how all this hangs together. They shouldn't be scared of the sciences, because they can be just as beautiful as art."

Leibowitz will give a free lecture and book signing 7 p.m. July 11 at the New Concepts Gallery, 610 Canyon Road.

Contact Sue Vorenberg at 986-3072 or svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.

IF YOU GO

Who: J.R. Leibowitz, author of Hidden Harmony: The Connected Worlds of Physics and Art

What: Book talk and signing

Where: New Concepts Gallery, 610 Canyon Road

When: 7 p.m. July 11

Cost: Free

Information: Call 795-7570