Darwin Day 2013

Natural selection is looking at you I, 2012    
Acrylic spraypaint/stencil, watercolour; DIN A4

With pleasure I like to inform you that my two entries to the on-line exhibition “Windows on Evolution” were received well. One work, “Natural selection is looking at you” was proclaimed best of show, whereas the other one, “Evolution is looking at you” was selected for the on-line exhibition. The show will be accessible from today onwards, Darwin Day, February 12, 2013.

The competition is an initiative of “Science Art-Nature”. This is a non-profit organization, founded in 2009 by scientists at Stanford University.

Evolution is looking at you 2012,
watercolour (39 x 27 cm)

Evolution gave animals the ability of seeing by eyes. When experiencing the visual arts, looking is essential. That is why it went almost without saying that “seeing/looking” had to be the focal theme for my entries in this “Science Art-Nature” contest. Art itself is challenged by evolution, as the latter drew delusory eyes on butterfly wings. This is nature as well as illusion, and exactly this triggered my imagination.

I like to thank the jury of “Science Art-Nature”. As science and art merge here, I am pleased with this award, as I was back then with the Rakow Grant for Glass Research (1995) and the assignment by  the “Centraal Museum”(i.e. Utrecht City Museum), to write a chapter for the book NEO (2003). 

Links:

http://www.scienceart-nature.org

http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/SAN/Darwin/T/WindowsOnEvolution/Awards.html

http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/SAN/Darwin/T/html/Reiling/Reiling1.html

http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/SAN/Darwin/T/html/Reiling/Reiling2.html

http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/SAN/Darwin/T/ArtistMode40.html

Evolution is looking at you

Evolution was at work when eyespots eventually appeared on the wings of butterflies and moths. This trick was so successful, that it was repeated over and over again. Eyespots are a form of mimicry in which a spot on an animal body resembles an eye of a different animal, helping to deceive potential predators. This is evolution following evolution: eyespots developed only when the evolution of eyes themselves was well underway. Depicted is a selection of eye-spotted Lepidoptera. They sit on an ancient oak tree that, as a symbol of the evolutionary tree, was borrowed from Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s ardent German propagandist.

Evolution is looking at you
   2012, watercolour (39 x 27 cm)

 Images of butterflies and moths are based on:
1 (Upper) Common Buckeye / Junonia coenia 
2 (Centre, left) Io moth / Automeris io 
3 (Centre, right) ( A Saturnid)  / Automeris egeus
4 (Bottom, left) Owl butterfly / Caligo teucer
5 (Bottom, right) Polyphemus Moth / Antheraea polyphemus

Natural selection is looking at you

The succession of species, their "blooming" periods and extinctions, puzzled 19th Century naturalists.  Then, Charles Darwin identified natural selection as the key mechanism of evolutionary change. In this  image, Darwin's "fancy" eyes are the eyespots on moth wings that mimic the eyes of predators, an iconic  example of change through natural selection. The bowler hat is a reference to the surrealist painter,  René Magritte, for whom it was a symbol of the bourgeois. Indeed, in the typically narrow mindset of  Darwin’s day, even hinting at procreation was not done. So it certainly marks his genius that he opened  his eyes to the vistas offered by natural selection -- despite his hat..

Natural selection is looking at you I

Natural selection is looking at you II

The image is based on a well-known photographic portrait of Charles Darwin and stylizeded renderings of  Io moth (Automeris io) and an unidentified Owl moth
Media: Acrylic spraypaint/stencil, watercolour; Dimensions: DIN A4 ;  Production date: 2012

(In my previous Blog-message, I presented the plain spay-paint version of this worrk)

Windows on Evolution

Charles Darwin, 212 stencil /acrylic  (Din A4)

Science-Art-Nature organises a virtual exhibit “Windows on Evolution: An Artistic Celebration of Chares Darwin”  commemorating coming Darwin Day, February 12, 2013.

I decided to participate in this on-line exhibition. To get in the mood and to kick my entry off,  I made a stencil of the portrait of Charles Darwin, looking through evolutionary eyes. Then I made prints with acrylic spray paint.

 It is is not yet my entry. There is more to come in the near future.