Molecular Aesthetics ed. by Peter Weibel and Ljiljana Fruk (review)

This amazing book is hard to pigeonhole—it is neither a coffee table book, text book, art catalogue, nor a scientific treatise but adequately fulfils aspects of each of these categories. Molecular Aesthetics is almost 500 pages long, contains numerous color and black-and-white images—historical photographs, artwork, diagrams/drawings and images from instruments that “see” at nanoscales. The images are accompanied by various scholarly essays and artists’ profiles and statements. As a bonus, the book comes with a pair of rose-colored glasses—actually one lens is rose and the other blue. Amazing things happen when viewing the artwork through these spectacles.

The first section discusses and shows 23 molecules that “changed the world.” These are astonishing, to say the least, and as varied as water, DNA, thalidomide, caffeine, DDT and polyethylene. The next section of Molecular Aesthetics, the bulk of the book, contains the essays and artist profiles. This section is divided into seven sections, followed by the contributors’ biographies.

The editors are to be congratulated on bringing to fruition this mammoth compilation of science and art. “At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we register that art and science work together in common problem fields, that are the invisible fields that remain concealed to the human eye” (p. 72). The book is very much about this neo-symbiotic relationship of science and art, though the discussion of this relationship is not without its problems. Root-Bernstein uses the wonderful term “aesthetic cognition” to describe how scientific and artistic aesthetics are, at times, similar and lead us to new levels of understanding, “An understanding of how arts influence sciences through aesthetic concerns can therefore be valuable to scientists striving for innovation” (p. 265). The Watson and Crick aesthetic evaluation and visualization of their double helix model of DNA is a classic example of such a symbiotic relationship.

I have two problems with the whole science-art discussion (not the liaison itself), which this book, in certain sections, does little to improve. Firstly, many writers focus on a perceived antagonism between contemporary art and science. This, in my opinion, is a falsely perceived antagonism carried over from the “dark ages” of the 1950s. “According to some scholars, the arts have no positive status at all because they produce no testable knowledge” (p. 265). This statement is so inane it does not even warrant a comment. The scientists and artists that are actually doing the work (together or separately) could not care less about such boring, useless debates. Secondly, many theorists, talking and writing about new media art, verge on the almost evangelical, trying to convince us that traditional representational art (e.g. a portrait painted in oils on canvas) is an anachronistic dinosaur, totally passé and dead. The bad news for these new media fundamentalists is that worldwide gallery and museum attendance is increasing for exhibitions that display contemporary portraiture, the old masters (from all periods) and so-called traditional art. It is my contention that all forms of art are valid and beneficial to society. Of course, styles, subject matter and materials go in and out of fashion, but this does not mean that art that may not be the flavor of the month is no longer valid. Some new media advocates are writing an unnecessary apologetics for this latest fashion.

Reading this book, bearing this criticism in mind, will be a wonderful, rewarding experience and a fascinating glimpse into that which is beyond the normal reach of our senses. I was delighted to come across many of my favorite artists featured in Molecular Aesthetics, some of whom I have worked with, such as John McCormack, Julian Voss-Andreae and Blair Bradshaw, to name a few. Thierry Delatour’s essay on molecular songs was simply brilliant; his concept opens up a completely new genre of molecular music.