La Simmetria: Seminari Interdisciplinari di Venezia ed. by Evandro Agazzi (review)

Books 69 numerous black-white reproductions of art works, ranging from examples of pre-Hellenic marble sculpture to contemporary painting. 1 find that Rhinelander’s ‘impressionistic’ book is a beautifully written and a concise review of significant ideas concerning the characteristics of humans and of their values and the meaning of knowledge. 1 highly recommend the book to the readers of Leonardo. La Simmetria: Seminari Interdisciplinaridi Venezia. Evandro Agazzi, ed. 11 Mulino, Bologna, 1973. 452 pp. Reviewed by AdrianoBerengo* The interdisciplinary seminar on the concept of symmefry, sponsored by the Italian National Commission of Unesco in Venice, in collaboration with the Giorgio Cini Foundation, demonstrates how fruitful such meetingscan be. Particularly so on this occasion, since an interdisciplinary approach was maintained, thanks mainly to the fact that the contributors repressed excessive ‘narcissism’ and concentrated on the meaning of a concept so fundamental to different sciences, starting with its meaning in contemporary physics. The writer Roger Caillois, who had the difficult task of summarizing the findings of the seminar, emphasized the implicit value of dissymmetry. On this point, particularly noteworthy is Roger Bastide’s contribution entitled Symmetry and Sacrality, which takes up, among other things, a series of concepts introduced into anthropology by the structuralists. Bastide affirms that, long before the structuralist school, the concepts of symmetry and dissymmetry were used by the historians of religion ‘with the only purpose of insisting upon asymmetry which would define, in the last analysis, the religioussphere’(p. 251). I share, though, Vittore Branca’s regret that the seminar lacked a direct contribution on art-‘the missingparticipant’, as he referred to it. However, the problem of symmetry in art emerged indirectly. Evandro Agazzi, in the second part of his report entitled Symmetry in the Logic and Epistemologic Perspective, briefly noted how art (from the individuation of primative forms of symmetry, geometrical decorations, certain forms of architecture, rhythm in music, etc). has developed in the direction both of more complex forms of symmetry and of dissymmetry. The dialectic between symmetry and dissymmetry, which is an essential characteristic of scientific research, has a particular bearing on works of art that are characterized by the disruption and restoration of equilibrium. These reconciliations are meant not only in an historical sense but also in a biographical one, for, according to Agazzi, great works of art come forth in the lives of artists when they succeed in breaking a symmetry that has become too academic for them and establish another kind of symmetry. The Palauo Ducale in Venice, Agazzi remarks, is full of spatial symmetries, but these are ‘in the’ Palazzo, which give it unity and ‘life’. In the discussion that followed, Jacques Nicolle expressed his conviction, based on repeated experience,that symmetry is most vital to the arts and that artists of originality utilize aspects of it, even if not consciously. He remarked that Goethe, in his conversations with Eckennan on theatre, said that if a certain element (character or object) on a stage is to be emphasized , it should be placed on the right-hand side of viewers. The primacy of the right side over the left side of a stage has since been supported by scene designers of Paris theatres. At the Comkdie Frangaise when Molitre’s ‘The Miser’ is staged ‘the treasure-chest is always placed on the right hand side of the viewer’ (p. 195). Curiously enough, this tendency in theatre contrasts with the one often noticed in painting (F. J. Malina, R. Arnheim), according to which the focus of interest tends to be in the upper left-hand quadrant of a painting, at least in Occidental works. For Callois, the unconscious, spontaneous distinction between right and left in painting and in the theatre depends on cultural factors. In paintings of the Annunciation, the *Stage XII, D-163, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794,U.S.A. reason that the angel is situated almost always on the left and the Virgin on the right may be the habit of reading from left to right. However, Henry Hecaen warned that one must be very cautious before assuming that a right or left preferenceis due only to socio-historical aspects. Experiments have established ‘in...