Art and science are not such strange bedfellows. And they are attempting a marriage nowadays, amid applause, shrugs and speculation.

An international exhibition entitled "Art and Science," which opened last week in Beijing, has attracted huge numbers of visitors. Even Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the exhibition, which will run until June 17 at the China National Art Museum.

Initiated by one of China's best known artists, Wu Guanzhong, and Nobel laureate Tsung-dao Lee, an American-Chinese physicist, the exhibition is said to be the first of its kind in China.

Showing 566 works of art by artists and scientists from 16 countries, the exhibition intends to create a dialogue between art and science, thus exploring new spaces for the seemingly insulated fields so they can collaborate and develop. Among the exhibits, 73 were created by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences with the rest being made by artists from both home and abroad.

The exhibition features a wide range of popular genres including painting, sculpting, photography and even hybrids of two or three genres. Visitors are treated to sights and sounds emanating from the various devices arranged around the four sections of the exhibition hall. Yet it is the two sculptures at the entrance that probably bring visitors closest to the theme of the exhibition.

A hard subject

The pieces were created by the two men who initiated the event. One called "The Tao of All Matter" was Lee's idea. He has been involved in experimental physics research for decades. According to him, the work represents his understanding of science and art as "the two sides of a coin," he said.

The piece was inspired by the core structure of the electron-positron collider, a gigantic apparatus commonly used by physicists to detect the innermost particles that constitute matter. As a physicist brought up in a traditional Chinese family, Lee has maintained a keen interest in traditional Chinese art and philosophy.

He has worked for years in collaboration with his Chinese friends trying to bridge art and science, which are generally thought of as far apart, in creative forms. "The Tao of All Matter" is the fruit of such effort, he said.

The sculpture, made of stainless steel, takes the form of double spirals imitating the coils within the electron-positron colliders, which Lee has been dealing with for decades. The double spirals in symmetry form a traditional Chinese pattern - taiji, a key concept in China's ancient philosophy, used to interpret the basic existence of all matter.

The taiji symbol consists of a circle with s-shaped dividing line between white or yang and black or yin halves. It represents the basic perspective of Chinese looking at nature, whose variation they believe is caused by the conflict and compromise between yin and yang.

One spiral is concave at the centre, another convex, representing yin and yang, according to Lu Xinhua, a sculptor who worked with Lee to create the piece.

The yin and yang patterns are joined at the centre and make up a whirlpool-like pattern to interpret the "Tao," the ultimate source of all matter. Yin and yang are regarded by Chinese philosophy as being the medium between "Tao" and all matter. "'Tao' creates all matter - all matter generates 'Tao'," Lee thus explained.

This theory sounds a bit bizarre to the scientific mind but it inspired Lee in his decades of exploration into the basics of matter, he admitted. And in this process, he said, the beauty of nature began to unfold before his eyes.

Another piece, "Desire for Life," was created by Wu Guanzhong, a renowned Chinese artist and a friend of Lee's for years.

Whereas Lee's interest in Chinese art originates from his family background, Wu was a college student in electronic engineering studies before turning to art. His "Desire for Life," set side by side with "The Tao of All Matter" in the entrance hall, is "a representation of the rhythm of life," Wu said.

Borrowing ideas from Chinese calligraphy, Wu uses coloured lines to depict the protein structure, the basic components of life. Unlike "The Tao of All Matter," this piece is highly asymmetric, with complex twists and a crossing of lines to "reflect the complexity of life and human nature," he said.

Conflicting ideas

In the exhibition hall science and art are depicted by both domestic and foreign artists from various perspectives, some of which are even conflicting in ideas.

The articles on display are dominated by those created by domestic artists, who generally tend to take science in a generic concept in their creations that avoid touching on a specific area in scientific research. This inevitably results in pieces with multi-layering, if not a fuzzy, understanding of science.

While Lee and Wu's works tend to pursue the "truth and beauty of science", as they noted, most of the works in the hall, ironically, seem to treat science as negative. For example, the cloned animals, which have aroused concerns about biological safety and ethics worldwide, have become the subject of many a piece.

Li Yanzu's "Dolly Vase," a sculpture which combines the image of a cloned sheep and a Chinese vase, exemplifies the approaches widely employed to interpret the subject. Dolly, a sheep created by British scientists in 1996, was the first cloned animal in the world.

Li created his work in the form of a well-known Chinese ancient bronze vase, "Square Vase with Four Sheep Heads."

"By adding new decorations such as integrated circuits and metal gadgets, the sculptor tried successfully to make his work a metaphor of modern science," said a review published in the magazine "Art Observation". Some exhibits are much more straightforward than Li's.

Scientific research subjects such as the DNA model, human neuron cells and metal surfaces are used directly by the artists, with titles that let the imagination run wild.

This is typical of works by French artists who participated in the exhibition.

Many of them use microscopy technology to magnify the metal surface or human cells, which results in unusual patterns and colours. In fact, many artists has tried new materials and approaches in their creations, some of which are quite inspiring.

Li Tianyuan's "The Portrait of Li Tianyuan" may be the most sensational, if not the most inspiring. It consists of three portraits, all of Li standing on top of the Great Wall mourning his deceased father. To create the piece, satellites, cameras and microscopes were employed. Li created the piece in co-operation with the Institute of Remote Sensing and the Institute of Chemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who provided the necessary technological assistance. The first picture was shot through a satellite 800 kilometres above the Earth on the morning of January 11 this year, the second by an ordinary camera. The last one was shot with a microscope that enlarges by 500 times the tears of grief on his face, Li said. By putting the three pictures together, Li said he intends to convey a sense of concern about the frailty of humans compared to nature.

Despite the critical acclaim for the diversity in artistic genres in the exhibition, some artists have also noted the lack of understanding of science reflected in many pieces.

"Some are just equal to illustrations for popular scientific magazines or superficial replica of laboratory apparatus without artistic taste," said a critic who declined to be named. He noted that many Chinese artists lack a science education. Therefore, in their works science is often portrayed in a distorted, if not ignorant, manner. Some pieces, such as some oil paintings on display, have little to do with science. "Science may not be an easy subject for artistic creation," he said. "You do not have to be a scientist. Yet it's crucial to try to have respect for and an understanding of science when doing the job."

(China Daily)