It's a Small World: A priliminary explanation of the links between biology and the visual arts made possible by microscopy

Abstract

For many years I have maintained that staff and students in Schools of Art have ";missed out"; in gaining experience of things microscopic. In an attempt to redress the situation I offered my services as part technical college and school of art liaison, and from time to time this invitation was accepted.

The aim of this article is to touch on some aspects of biology and its associated technology which teachers of art and design might find useful. It is not meant to be an authoritative review of history of the modern scene, merely one scientist's personal view which developed from his involvement in technical education.

The 17th Century is a convenient starting point, as it was in this period that the optical microscope began-

........ to help our Blindnesse so as to device a pair of new and Artificial eyes

By whose augmenting power we now see more then all the world Has ever doun Before.' (Henry Powers 1664)

The early microscopists did in fact draw or describe very precisely what they saw, and Robert Hooke in Micrographia (1665) drew cells of cork using his undoubted skill as an artist - just one facet of this remarkable man of science. In Holland in 1676 Antony van Leeuwnhoek a Dutch draper, first saw his ";little animalcules"; - bacteria - and wrote chatty letters to the Royal Society; in Italy Marcello Malpighi investigated the anatomy and embryology of plants and animals. Nehemiah Grew, an English doctor, published an extensively illustrated volume summarizing his detailed studies of plant anatomy (1672). A few of the books which might well be included in the libraries of Schools of Art (if they are not already there), which cover developments during the 18th and 19th Centuries, are given at the end of this review of the subject.