Action at a Distance: Did Physicist Thomas Young’s 1807 Lectures Inspire Some of the Earliest Examples of Abstract Art?

Abstract

Swedish artist Hilma af Klint is known to have been influenced by scientific developments at the turn of the twentieth century. However, many of her paintings from 1914 to 1916 exhibit similarities to diagrams published much earlier in the English polymath Thomas Young’s 1807 A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts. Key elements and themes in af Klint’s The Dove, The Swan, Parsifal, and Altarpieces series suggest Young’s Lectures may have been a major source for her work. The author explores this idea and other parallels between the lives and legacies of the visionary scientist and the abstract art pioneer.