Why Geometry has played a central part in Painting Essay

Why Geometry has played a central part in Painting - Essay Example My main aim in this text, however, is to explore the relationships and importance of geometry in painting. In order to better understand these relationships we need to look back in time into the â€Å"science of space†. I will aim to include three chapters in this text, the first dealing with the study of geometry, symmetry and their basic, most important properties and its uses in earlier movements of art in order to present the most relevant examples of works into the second chapter which will deal with analysis of works of art (mainly paintings). The third and final chapter will deal with answering the question; â€Å"Why geometry has played a central part in painting?† â€Å"It was then that all these kinds of things thus established receive the shapes of the ordering one, through the action of ideas and numbers†- Plato. Plato’s philosophy of the universe was centered on the Deity. He believed that the universe is built out of four elements; earth, fire, water and air (as Empedocles before him), which takes a form of geometrical solids (earth- cube, fire- tetrahedron, water- icosahedron, air- octahedron) which then can brake further into triangles.As mentioned above geometry means earth measure. As we shall see the journey is from the single point into the line, out to the plane, to the third dimension and beyond eventually returning to the point again. Like the elements of its sister subject music, it is an aspect of revelation in a creation myth in itself. Number, music, geometry and cosmology are the four art.