Shakespearean Equations

As you might have guessed from some of the images these surfaces have provided inspiration for artists, especially the modern movements of constructivism and surrealism. It is debatable however how much these artists engaged with the mathematics or simply regarded used surfaces as objet trouvé (a term which Duchamp himself found in the writings of Poincaré, which used it to describe mathematical theorems). For Man Ray this is almost certainly the case. He photographed the collection of the Poincaré Institute in Paris and went on to produce a series of painting entitled Shakespearean Equations. Using someone else’s words he described these:

At the beginning of my career I once classed myself amongst the photometrographers. My works are purely photometric. Take … the Shakespearean Equations, you will notice that no plastic idea entered these works, it is scientific thought which dominates.