Scott Gilbert, Swarthmore College, University of Helsinki
Wagner Free Institute of Science
Time: 5:30pm
Location: Wagner Free Institute of Science
Saint Valentine’s Day, a celebration of love between intimate companions, is often symbolized by images of hearts, doves, cupids and... embryos? Images of fertilized cells and fetuses may not be traditional icons for Saint Valentine’s Day, but a few unconventional 20th-century artists used these modern scientific depictions to speak about love, passion, politics, and society.
Dr. Scott Gilbert, a Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College, recently made the fascinating discovery that Klimt, Kahlo, and Rivera all depicted images of fertilized cells and embryos (often with scientific accuracy) in their artwork, and each to convey a unique, powerful message. During his illustrated talk, Dr. Gilbert will take an in-depth look at their paintings, which span a 50-year period and thousands of miles, to see how they merged science and art, and to explain the meaning behind their deliberate appropriation of scientific images.
Gustav Klimt is perhaps best known for his painting The Kiss (1907-1908) – a famous, iconic work symbolizing intimacy, selfless love and romance. Klimt painted Danaë in the same year, a Secessionist painting depicting the mythological story of Zeus’ impregnation of Danaë, the beautiful daughter of King Akrisios. In the painting Danaë is nude, reclining with a shower of golden coins/rain between her legs. This shower, said to symbolize Zeus and the act of impregnation, runs down the left side of the canvas. Prominently featured in the foreground of the painting is something harder to decipher – a flowing purple gown with circular, bi-morphic forms. Art historians assigned these disks a purely ornamental function, but Gilbert, who studies embryological changes, recognized these forms as embryonic cells, specifically mammalian blastocysts. Could it be that Klimt was aware of blastocysts, described for the first time in the 1880s? Gilbert offers compelling evidence to support that he was and intriguing insight into the allegorical nature and meaning of the painting.
In Man, Controller of the Universe (Or Man in the Time Machine) (1934), Diego Rivera includes biological illustrations of cells, bacteria, ovulation and egg development, which unlike Klimt’s stylized/abstract depictions, are borrowed directly from textbooks with scientific accuracy. Dr. Gilbert will explain how Rivera used these symbols to convey communist ideals and mans’ growing control over nature and human reproduction. Frida Kahlo refuted this view in her painting Moses (1945) by using images of dividing cells, embryos and a fetus to represent the erotic consummation of love and to celebrate the generative power of women.
Join us to examine this fascinating period in history when science and art intermingled – when biology influenced artistic creativity and created a new language for political and social commentary. Scott Gilbert will again bring science to art with new insight into the history, and meaning of these works.
How does an artist paint love? How will you represent and communicate love this Valentine’s Day? We recommend consulting a biology textbook for inspiration and bringing your date to this lecture.
Dr. Scott Gilbert is the Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College and is a Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Helsinki. His award-winning research looks at the ways in which evolution is a product of embryological changes. He is published extensively in academic journals and is the author of three textbooks. He is the recipient of many award– to list a few, he received the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Grant, the Viktor Hamburger Prize for Excellence in Education in 2002, the Kowalevsky Prize in Evolutionary Developmental Biology and he is an elected fellow of the AAAS and the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists. In addition, he is a science historian, musician, and serves on the Wagner Free Institute of Science Advisory Council.