Mathematics and Art:

Making Beautiful Music Together

D.N. Seppala-Holtzman
St. Joseph’s College
Math & Art: the Connection
 Many people think that mathematics
and art are poles apart, the first cold
and precise, the second emotional and
imprecisely defined. In fact, the two
come together more as a collaboration
than as a collision.
Math & Art: Common Themes
 Proportions
 Patterns
 Perspective
 Projections
 Impossible Objects
 Infinity and Limits
The Divine Proportion
 The Divine Proportion, better known as
the Golden Ratio, is usually denoted by
the Greek letter Phi: .
  is defined to be the ratio obtained by
dividing a line segment into two
unequal pieces such that the entire
segment is to the longer piece as the
longer piece is to the shorter.
A Line Segment in Golden Ratio
: The Quadratic Equation
 The definition of  leads to the
following equation, if the line is divided
into segments of lengths a and b:

ab a

a b
The Golden Quadratic II
 Cross multiplication yields:

a  ab  b
2 2
The Golden Quadratic III
 Setting  equal to the quotient a/b
and manipulating this equation shows
that  satisfies the quadratic equation:

   1  0
2
The Golden Quadratic IV
 Applying the quadratic formula to this
simple equation and taking  to be the
positive solution yields:

1 5
  1.618
2
Properties of 
  is irrational
 Its reciprocal, 1/ , is one less than 
 Its square, 2, is one more than 
  Is an Infinite Square Root

  1  1  1  1  .....
Φ is an Infinite Continued Fraction

1
  1
1
1
1
1
1
1  ...
1
Constructing 
 Begin with a 2 by 2 square. Connect
the midpoint of one side of the square
to a corner. Rotate this line segment
until it provides an extension of the side
of the square which was bisected. The
result is called a Golden Rectangle. The
ratio of its width to its height is .
Constructing 

AB=AC

A C
Properties of a Golden
Rectangle
 If one chops off the largest possible
square from a Golden Rectangle, one
gets a smaller Golden Rectangle.
 If one constructs a square on the longer
side of a Golden Rectangle, one gets a
larger Golden Rectangle.
 Both constructions can go on forever.
The Golden Spiral
 In this infinite process of chopping off
squares to get smaller and smaller
Golden Rectangles, if one were to
connect alternate, non-adjacent vertices
of the squares, one gets a Golden
Spiral.
The Golden Spiral
The Golden Spiral II
The Golden Triangle
 An isosceles triangle with two base
angles of 72 degrees and an apex angle
of 36 degrees is called a Golden
Triangle.
 The ratio of the legs to the base is .
 The regular pentagon with its diagonals
is simply filled with golden ratios and
triangles.
The Golden Triangle
A Close Relative:
Ratio of Sides to Base is 1 to Φ
Golden Spirals From Triangles
 As with the Golden Rectangle, Golden
Triangles can be cut to produce an
infinite, nested set of Golden Triangles.
 One does this by repeatedly bisecting
one of the base angles.
 Also, as in the case of the Golden
Rectangle, a Golden Spiral results.
Chopping Golden Triangles
Spirals from Triangles
 In Nature
 There are physical reasons that  and
all things golden frequently appear in
nature.
 Golden Spirals are common in many
plants and a few animals, as well.
Sunflowers
Pinecones
Pineapples
The Chambered Nautilus
Angel Fish
Tiger
Human Face I
Human Face II
Le Corbusier’s Man
A Golden Solar System?
 In Art & Architecture
 For centuries, people seem to have
found  to have a natural, nearly
universal, aesthetic appeal.
 Indeed, it has had near religious
significance to some.
 Occurrences of  abound in art and
architecture throughout the ages.
The Pyramids of Giza
The Pyramids and 
The Pyramids were laid out in
a Golden Spiral
The Parthenon
The Parthenon II
The Parthenon III
Cathedral of Chartres
Cathedral of Notre Dame
Michelangelo’s David
Michelangelo’s Holy Family
Rafael’s The Crucifixion
Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa II
Da Vinci’s Study of Facial
Proportions
Da Vinci’s St. Jerome
Da Vinci’s The Annunciation
Da Vinci’s Study of Human
Proportions
Rembrandt’s Self Portrait
Seurat’s Parade
Seurat’s Bathers
Turner’s Norham Castle at
Sunrise
Mondriaan’s Broadway Boogie-
Woogie
Hopper’s Early Sunday
Morning
Dali’s The Sacrament of the
Last Supper
Literally an (Almost) Golden
Rectangle
Patterns
 Another subject common to art and
mathematics is patterns.
 These usually take the form of a tiling
or tessellation of the plane.
 Many artists have been fascinated by
tilings, perhaps none more than M.C.
Escher.
Patterns & Other Mathematical
Objects
 In addition to tilings, other
mathematical connections with art
include fractals, infinity and impossible
objects.
 Real fractals are infinitely self-similar
objects with a fractional dimension.
 Quasi-fractals approximate real ones.
Fractals
 Some art is actually created by
mathematics.
 Fractals and related objects are
infinitely complex pictures created by
mathematical formulae.
The Koch Snowflake (real fractal)
The Mandelbrot Set (Quasi)
Blow-up 1
Blow-up 2
Blow-up 3
Blow-up 4
Blow-up 5
Blow-up 6
Blow-up 7
Fractals Occur in Nature (the
coastline)
Another Quasi-Fractal
Yet Another Quasi-Fractal
And Another Quasi-Fractal
Tessellations
 There are many ways to tile the plane.
 One can use identical tiles, each being a
regular polygon: triangles, squares and
hexagons.
 Regular tilings beget new ones by
making identical substitutions on
corresponding edges.
Regular Tilings
New Tiling From Old
Maurits Cornelis Escher
(1898-1972)
 Escher is nearly every mathematician’s
favorite artist.
 Although, he himself, knew very little formal
mathematics, he seemed fascinated by many
of the same things which traditionally interest
mathematicians: tilings, geometry,impossible
objects and infinity.
 Indeed, several famous mathematicians have
sought him out.
M.C. Escher
 A visit to the Alhambra in Granada
(Spain) in 1922 made a major
impression on the young Escher.
 He found the tilings fascinating.
The Alhambra
An Escher Tiling
Escher’s Butterflies
Escher’s Lizards
Escher’s Sky & Water
M.C. Escher
 Escher produced many, many different
types of tilings.
 He was also fascinated by impossible
objects, self reference and infinity.
Escher’s Hands
Escher’s Circle Limit
Escher’s Waterfall
Escher’s Ascending &
Descending
Escher’s Belvedere
Escher’s Impossible Box
Penrose’s Impossible Triangle
Roger Penrose
 Roger Penrose is a mathematical
physicist at Oxford University.
 His interests are many and they include
cosmology (he is an expert on black
holes), mathematics and the nature of
comprehension.
 He is the author of The Emperor’s New
Mind.
Penrose Tiles
 In 1974, Penrose solved a difficult
outstanding problem in mathematics
that had to do with producing tilings of
the plane that had 5-fold symmetry and
were non-periodic.
 There are two roughly equivalent
forms: the kite and dart model and the
dual rhombus model.
Dual Rhombus Model
Kite and Dart Model
Kites & Darts II
 Kites & Darts III

Kite 144 Dart 72

72
72

216

36 36
72
Kite & Dart Tilings
Rhombus Tiling
Rhombus Tiling II
Rhombus Tiling III
Penrose Tilings
 There are infinitely many ways to tile
the plane with kites and darts.
 None of these are periodic.
 Every finite region in any kite-dart tiling
sits somewhere inside every other
infinite tiling.
 In every kite-dart tiling of the plane, the
ratio of kites to darts is .
Luca Pacioli (1445-1514)
 Pacioli was a Franciscan monk and a
mathematician.
 He published De Divina Proportione in
which he called Φ the Divine Proportion.
 Pacioli: “Without mathematics, there is
no art.”
Jacopo de Barbari’s Pacioli
In Conclusion
 Although one might argue that Pacioli
somewhat overstated his case when he
said that “without mathematics, there is
no art,” it should, nevertheless, be quite
clear that art and mathematics are
intimately intertwined.