The Minimalist Beauty of a Renaissance-Era Geometry Book | Hacker News Reader

The Minimalist Beauty of a Renaissance-Era Geometry Book

hyperallergic.com

174 pointsmisnamed17 comments

These are the sorts of forms that fill the empty spaces in my notes for work and school.

Getting the shading and proportions exactly right is an exercise of both aesthetics and calculative reasoning, and so I find it's uniquely delightful.

Half seriously, have you considered a career as a GPU interface? Architecture and engineering offices frequently employ them under titles such as ''rendering technician''.

There is some beauty in the progression of the shapes. Something that feels organic and mechanic at the same time.

If it weren't for the yellowish tinge in the figures these could totally pass for images in a contemporary geometry processing paper.

(He drew soft shadows!)

I believe Janmitzer would have loved playing with Mathematica

I was thinking Solidworks, or Povray. Basically anything exploring constructive solid geometry.

What is "minimalist" about this book?

From the text of the article: "Jamnitzer’s studies possess a captivating artistic merit. With the manipulation, repetition, and layering of basic shapes, they seem like distant precursors to Minimalism and its concerns."

'60 Minimalism in sculpture, that is. e.g. Tony Smith, or Gego.

To be honest, the author seems to be talking more about a more recent idea of minimal sculpture, like polyhedra made out of wire. A google image search for "minimal geometric sculpture" (no quotes in the search) will show a lot of that work.

Thank's for the reply, I didn't know about Tony Smith.

Cool, a thread about the headline.

Minimalist is defined in Websters as

> of, relating to, or following a style in art, literature, or music that is very simple and uses a small number of colors, parts, materials.

This book clearly violates the spirit of that even though the first use of the phrase as in 1929. One could argue that the use of monochrome woodcuts is minimalist but it is doubtful it was a deliberate artistic choice.

One could argue it is not even about geometry but actually concerns itself with perspective as representation.

Black and white.

A casual glance shows pictures reminiscent of fractal solids.

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Somebody's got a talent for writing clickbaity titles - and I mean that as a compliment. They're compelling, yet much more subtle than the typical BuzzFeed or listicle piece

Very nice Lambert shading plus rudimentary shadow map.

This is before printing presses could produce images or diagrams - so they all had to be hand drawn in each copy.

_"...hand drawn in each copy."_

?? Printed engraving[1] was available contemporay with the publishing of this book (1568). What do you mean?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engraving

Nothing, really.. It's not detailed, textured, shaded, intricate.

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