Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel Before Macro Photography, This Scientist Used to Illustrate His Microscopic Findings. “Kunstformen der Natur” (1904), plate 85 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain]) This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase, My Modern Met may earn an affiliate commission. Please read our disclosure for more info. Made during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his brilliantly colorful and highly stylized drawings, watercolors, and sketches reveal how different forms of plant life appear under the microscope. Although each hand-drawn organism looks like something from a science fiction book, Haeckel’s body of work sheds light on the incredible hidden intricacies of real, natural forms that inhabit the Earth. Who was Ernst Haeckel? Ernst Haeckel, 1860 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain]) In 1859, when Haeckel was 25, he traveled to Italy where he spent time in Napoli discovering his artistic talent. In the same year, he went to Messina where he studied the structures of radiolarians (microscopic protozoa that produce intricate mineral skeletons). He published 59 scientific illustrations between 1860 and 1862, along with the original microscope slides. The Marriage of Art and Science. “Kunstformen der Natur” (1904), plate 49 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain]) In 1864, Haeckel sent Charles Darwin, two folio volumes on radiolarians. His gothic, white on black drawings impressed Darwin so much that he wrote back to Haeckel to express his gratitude. He said, “[They] were the most magnificent works which I have ever seen, and I am proud to possess a copy from the author.” “Kunstformen der Natur” (1904), plate 71: Stephoidea (Photo: Wikimedia Commons [Public domain]) Perhaps his most famous publication is his multi-volume series Kunstformen Der Natur (Artforms in Nature) from 1904, which includes hundreds of highly detailed drawings that became known as a “visual encyclopedia” of living things. In celebration of this series, Taschen recently published a 704-page book, titled The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel . It features 450 drawings, watercolors, sketches from his research, and a collection of 100 prints of varying organisms originally published between 1899 and 1904. Haeckel died in 1908 at the age of 85, but his legendary portfolio is still relevant in scientific and artistic worlds today. His work continues to influence scientific research, but it also inspired the art, design, and architecture of the early 20th century. Today, Haeckel’s botanical illustrations continue to inspire and remind us that the natural world is full of beauty and surprising discoveries. Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel. Ernst Haeckel – philosopher, professor, physician, naturalist, biologist and artist. The pinnacle of his work – Art Forms of Nature - began publication in 1899 and is still an astonishing record of life on earth. When art and science combine, something sublime can come to pass. Science and art – a gap, some might say a yawning chasm, has always existed between the two. Then occasionally, just every now and then, someone comes along who attempts (and succeeds) in closing the gap between the two. So it was with the German Ernst Haeckel. In 1899 he began to publish Art Forms of Nature ( Kunstformen der Natur in his native German). A contemporary of Darwin, Haeckel would, through his lithographic prints, change the way that many considered the relationship between art and science. Haeckel produced illustrations that people could take in and understand, images that glowed with color and brought the exotic and remote in to the libraries of the world. Really, there had not been anything like these extraordinary prints before. They were the culmination of decades of works for Haeckel, a contemporary of Darwin and he did much to popularize the work of the English naturalist - although their ideas did diverge at several important points, as we shall later discover. The above is the 89th plate from Art Forms of Nature and shows a variety of turtle species. From the Leatherback at the top left to the Common Snapping Turtle (bottom right), Haeckel captures them marvelously. This was no attempt at photorealism, however. Note how sea and land (seamlessly) merge in the picture. His images, did, however, encapsulate his sense of order. They still look like something out of a science fiction novel, so imagine how they must have seemed to their late Victorian audience. The central medusa is Desmonema annasethe which was first categorized by the man himself. It was named after his wife, Anna Sethe, who had died the previous year. A mistake commonly held is that Darwin’s tome, the On The Origins of the Species was massively illustrated. In fact it was not a work of popular science, it was a technical book. Although the sales belied the fact, many if not most people would have been immediately confused by much of Darwin’s language. In fact he was the Steven Hawking of his day. Many people bought On The Origin of the Species , much as a century later they would buy A Brief History of Time . Few would get to the end of either. Haeckel looked at the Origin of the Species and realized that it would not be completely understood by the literate class. Origin was hugely difficult, plus it was long and had only few illustrations. So in 1868 he published Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (published in English as The History of Creation ). It was a hugely provocative title for the time (Haeckel was not an ingénue, he knew this) and it was massively successful, being reprinted many times over the next few decades. Art Forms of Nature , from which the print of spiders above is taken, would be the pinnacle of his attempts to marry art and science. There was a method behind the choices that Haeckel used for publication. His world view – politically as well as naturally – was one of order, organization and symmetry. The subjects of each lithographic plate were carefully selected so that they would encapsulate the organization of organisms – with symmetry of paramount importance. Each image of each plate was carefully arranged to maximize their visual impact and to drive home Haeckel’s world view. The illustration below made up the first plate of the second volume of Art Forms of Nature and shows radiolarians – classified as Discoidea . They would help promote and encourage one of the fads of the time – that of parlor microscopy. Although his art is somewhat exaggerated there is no denying its beauty. We have the advantage of television and video, where the wings of the hummingbirds above can be slowed down to a fraction of their normal speed. Of course in the early twentieth century no such technology existed but the lithos of Haeckel enabled people to see the exquisite creatures in flight – and without the necessity of visiting them in taxidermic form in museums. It is no surprise, then, to learn that a large amount of art nouveau artists and architects found his work inspirational. His influence can be seen in the works of the likes of Hans Christiansen, Karl Blossfeldt and Hendrik Petrus Berlage. As in his art, so in life. This carefully composed photograph shows Haeckel ( left ) and his then assistant Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai in the Canaries in 1866 when he was thirty two years of age. He was no stay at home biologist and naturalist. Throughout his lengthy career he discovered several thousand new species. He also coined many biological terms that we use today, the most notable being the word ecology . A variety of moss species, then classified as Muscinae . We now classify them as Bryophyta which includes not only mosses but hornworts and liverworts as well. This was the seventy fourth plate in the Art Forms of Nature series. During his career Haeckel produced over a thousand engravings based on the watercolors and sketches he had made on his travels. Of these one hundred of the best were put together to create the ten volumes of Art Forms of Nature . The first volume came out in 1899 and the final in 1904 (when they also became available as a complete work). Many of the organisms included in the tome were first described and classified by Haeckel himself. It must be noted here the contribution of Adolf Gilitsch, the lithographer who translated them from sketch to print. The forty ninth plate shows a variety of sea anemones. Although his accomplishments as an artist cannot be denied – and many of his ideas are important to evolutionary theories there are several large and outstanding buts . Some of his ideas around microorganisms leading to humanity have been disproved. He also took some rather large leaps in the dark, albeit leaps available from evidence which existed at the time. He sent a pair of his students to Indonesia on a wild goose chase, in pursuit of the human ancestor (no remains of which had then been found) that he had decided would most definitely be found there. Needless to say it wasn’t. Somewhat more frightening was his belief in the superiority of some types of human over others. A depiction of a variety of lizards makes up the seventy ninth lithograph. The eight lizards pictured were chosen to demonstrate the diverse examples extant in the Lacertilia suborder. Some of the colors and certainly the spatial composition of the print are an aesthetic choice much more than a true reproduction of nature. The chameleon in the top is shown in comparison to the flying dragon and Texas Horned Lizard of the second. We have the Flying Gecko on the third and on the bottom the Thorny Devil. In the little more than a hundred years since this print was produced the suborder here has been replaced by a bewildering array of new infraorders and suborders. The seventy fourth plate shows a variety of orchids, resplendent when shown all together and showing the huge variety of the species in just a few examples. Although a huge supporter of Darwin, Haeckel did not believe in Natural Selection . Instead he believed in Lamarckism. Put simply this is the belief that the efforts of an individual organism during its lifetime in terms of acquired characteristics can be passed on biologically to its offspring. Otherwise known as soft inheritance , this theory has been abandoned now but it is still of some use. Certainly, an examination of the evolution of human ideas and cultures could be placed within the idea boundaries of Lamarcksim and it is in fact related to memetics – the study of self-replicating units of culture. Frogs classified as Batrachia make up plate number sixty eight. Top left can be seen the pouch frog of Venezuela. The females have a back pouch in which the eggs develop until they are ready to hatch as tadpoles. Also shown is the Flying Frog of Borneo – the one leaping through mid air, with its widened foot webbings. These webbings are used as a form of parachute which enables the frog to leap from tree to tree without falling from the canopy. Segmented worms! Haeckel would also be proved wrong in his ideas about the evolution of man. He took a linguistic approach which he then developed in to a multi-regional hypothesis that various species of Homo sapiens had evolved in isolation of each other. This was very much against Darwin’s Out of Africa theory and remained very much the main competition until the 1990s. Darwin’s theory has been shown to be correct since the human genome was finally deciphered. Ascidiacea or as we know them more commonly, sea squirts, is the eighty fifth plate and the black background contrasts beautifully with the colors of the squirts. Although many of his theories were disproved Haeckel did show prescience in another field – modern history. He was the first person to use the term First World War . In a letter to a newspaper he wrote “ There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared "European War". will become the first world war in the full sense of the word ”. This was in September 1914. Although he made many mistakes which to our modern sensibilities are somewhat shocking, Haeckel was very much of his own time. He will probably in the future be remembered more for his exquisite representation of life on earth and his ability to transport people from the comfort of their homes to see places and lives unimagined than some of his more outlandish ideas which will be quietly buried in the shifting sands of history. Give a Gift. If you enjoyed this article, please consider making a gift to help Kuriositas to continue to bring you fascinating features, photographs and videos. Thank you! Art Forms in Nature. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919) was renowned as one of the foremost early exponents of Darwinism. His work was credited with having caused the acceptance of Darwinism in Europe, and his popular studies ― preaching the continuity of all life, organic and inorganic, from prehistoric time to the present ― converted tens of thousands of readers all over the world. Today, although no one is greatly interested in Haeckel the biologist-philosopher, his work is increasingly prized for something he himself would probably have considered secondary. These are the remarkable plates with which his work was illustrated, particularly his famous Kunstformen. The Kunstformen contains 100 beautiful lithographic plates which show a multitude of unusual life forms: Radiolaria, Foraminifera, and other forms of microscopic life; jellyfishes, starfishes, calcareous sponges, star corals, barnacles, and other sea life; mosses, lichens, red algae, ferns, fungi, orchids, and other plants; and turtles, moths, spiders, bats, frogs, lizards, hummingbirds, and antelope. With many drawings on each plate, each carefully drawn from nature, the subtle details of nature's art forms are easily compared and appreciated. In addition to being marvelous renderings, these plates have long been noted for the peculiar emotional appeal that they have for most viewers, a premonition of surrealism with exotic organic life forms stretching back to their roots in the inorganic, and individual details drawn with awareness of subtle evolutionary changes and millennia-long developments. Artists, illustrators, and others will find them still powerful as one of the landmarks of applied art. Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature. Kunstformen der Natur (known in English as Art Forms in Nature ) is a book of lithographic and halftone prints by German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Originally published in sets of ten between 1899 and 1904 and collectively in two volumes in 1904, it consists of 100 prints of various organisms, many of which were first described by Haeckel himself. Over the course of his career, over 1000 engravings were produced based on Haeckel’s sketches and watercolors; many of the best of these were chosen for Kunstformen der Natur, translated from sketch to print by lithographer Adolf Giltsch. A second edition of Kunstformen, containing only 30 prints, was produced in 1924. According to Haeckel scholar Olaf Breidbach, the work was “not just a book of illustrations but also the summation of his view of the world.” The over-riding themes of the Kunstformen plates are symmetry and level of organization. The subjects were selected to embody these to the full, from the scale patterns of boxfishes to the spirals of ammonites to the perfect symmetries of jellies and microorganisms, while images composing each plate are arranged for maximum visual impact. Among the notable prints are numerous radiolarians, which Haeckel helped to popularize among amateur microscopists; at least one example is found in almost every set of 10. Cnidaria also feature prominently throughout the book, including sea anemones as well as Siphonophorae, Semaeostomeae, and other medusae. The first set included Desmonema annasethe (now Cyanea annasethe), a particularly striking jellyfish that Haeckel observed and described shortly after the death of his wife Anna Sethe. Kunstformen der Natur was influential in early 20th-century art, architecture, and design, bridging the gap between science and art. In particular, many artists associated with Art Nouveau were influenced by Haeckel’s images, including René Binet, Karl Blossfeldt, Hans Christiansen, and Émile Gallé. One prominent example is the Amsterdam Commodities Exchange designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage: it was in part inspired by Kunstformen illustrations. 1. Phaeodaria 2. Thalamphora 3. Ciliata 4. Diatomea 5. Calcispongiae 6. Tubulariae 7. Siphonophorae 8. Discomedusae 9. Hexacoralla 10. Ophiodea 11. Discoidea 12. Thalamophora 13. Flagellata 14. Peridinea 15. Fucoideae 16. Narcomedusae 17. Siphonophorae 18. Discomedusae 19. Pennatulida 20. Crinoidea 21. Acanthometra 22. Spyroidea 23. Bryozoa 24. Desmidiea 25. Sertulariae 26. Trachomedusae 27. Ctenophorae 28. Discomedusae 29. Tetracoralla 30. Echinidea 31. Cyrtoidea 32. Rotatoria 33. Bryozoa 34. Melethallia 35. Hexactinellae 36. Leptomedusae 37. Siphonophorae 38. Peromedusae 39. Gorgonida 40. Asteridea 41. Acanthophracta 42. Ostraciontes 43. Nudibranchia 44. Ammonitida 45. Campanariae 46. Anthomedusae 47. Aspidonia 48. Stauromedusae 49. Actiniae 50. Thuroidea 51. Polycyttaria 52. Filicinae 53. Prosobranchia 54. Gamochonia 55. Acephala 56. Copepoda 57. Cirripedia 58. Tineida 59. Siphonophorae 60. Echinidea 61. Phaeodaria 62. Nepenthaceae 63. Basimycetes 64. Siphoneae 65. Florideae 66. Arachnida 67. Chiroptera 68. Batrachia 69. Hexacoralla 70. Ophiodea 71. Stephoidea 72. Muscinae 73. Ascomycetes 74. Orchidae 75. Platodes 76. Thoracostraca 77. Siphonophorae 78. Cubomedusae 79. Lacertilia 80. Blastoidea 81. Thalamophora 82. Hepaticae 83. Lichenes 84. Diatomea 85. Ascidiae 86. Decapoda 87. Teleostei 88. Discomedusae 89. Chelonia 90. Cystoidea 91. Spumellaria 92. Filicinae 93. Mycetozoa 94. Coniferae 95. Amphoridea 96. Chaetopoda 97. Spirobranchia 98. Discomedusae 99. Trochilidae 100. Antilopina. [PDF] [EPUB] Art Forms in Nature Download. [PDF] [EPUB] Art Forms in Nature Download by Ernst Haeckel . Download Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel in PDF EPUB format complete free. Brief Summary of Book: Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel. Here is a quick description and cover image of book Art Forms in Nature written by Ernst Haeckel which was published in 1974– . You can read this before Art Forms in Nature PDF EPUB full Download at the bottom. Multitude of strangely beautiful natural forms: Radiolaria, Foraminifera, Ciliata, diatoms, calcareous sponges, Siphonophora, star corals, starfishes, Protozoa, flagellates, brown seaweed, jellyfishes, sea-lilies, moss animals, sea-urchins, glass sponges, leptomedusae, horny corals, trunkfishes, true sea slugs, anthomedusae horseshoe crabs, sea-cucumbers, octopuses, bats, orchids, sea wasps, seahorse, a dragonfish, a frogfish, much more. All images in black and white. Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel – eBook Details. Before you start Complete Art Forms in Nature PDF EPUB by Ernst Haeckel Download, you can read below technical ebook details: Full Book Name: Art Forms in Nature Author Name: Ernst Haeckel Book Genre: Animals, Art, Art Design, Biology, Design, Environment, Nature, Nonfiction, Reference, Science ISBN # B00A735Y8S Edition Language: English Date of Publication: 1974– PDF / EPUB File Name: Art_Forms_in_Nature_-_Ernst_Haeckel.pdf, Art_Forms_in_Nature_-_Ernst_Haeckel.epub PDF File Size: 35 MB EPUB File Size: 34 MB. [PDF] [EPUB] Art Forms in Nature Download. If you are still wondering how to get free PDF EPUB of book Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel. Click on below buttons to start Download Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel PDF EPUB without registration. This is free download Art Forms in Nature by Ernst Haeckel complete book soft copy.