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art and atoms 292 ABSTRACT LEONARDO, Vol. 52, No.3,pp.292–299, 2019 tific primacy [4]. For and artists the [4]. periodic For the chemists primacy tific and artists table’s the scien of appreciation our expanded have artists ,reducibletois itself) (andtable periodic the whether debated have science of philosophers While substance. and symbols its of contemplation a into object intervention they have transmuted the popular status of this inventionand aesthetic table’sthrough power,and cultural the by captivated been have Artists manifestations. artistic its of discussion critical little been has there DNA unlike although [3], helix double the to only second is table odic of work whose artists, asurvey visual is my focus. tions spring from the inspiration its subject material providesincarna- recent more while [2], symbols elemental the and words between link acronymic the and power emblematic its of exploitation naive the on rely table the of uses Such etables) and systems (the Periodic Table of World Religions). TableVegPeriodic of (the - objects common with elements chemical the substitute that posters of multitude a as ing includ commodified, been has that nostalgia of object an classroom into adulthood [1]. Theperiodic table hasbecome nor the power with which it would carry its imprint from the sustain, would itinterest popular the surmised have would its scientific content, ontothe minds ofschoolchildren; none not if form, its imprint would it how predicted have could first hung in myriad chemistry classrooms inthe 1920s, none Hubbard’s Henry When Atoms” the of “Periodic Chart was visuality, qualitiesandsemioticresonances. formal illuminatetheperiodictable’sartists cataloginginnovation,memorable criticismthatfocusesonthespecificways modelofart cross-disciplinary employsa a contemplationofitssymbolsandsubstance.Thisarticle transmutethetableinto visualartists icons, numerouscontemporary Captivated bytheperiodictable’s culturalpowerasoneofthescientific ofthePeriodic TableThe Art with thisissue. See www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/52/3 forsupplementalfilesassociated Email: [email protected]. San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117-1080, U.S.A. Tami I. Spector (, educator), Department of Chemistry, University of Among scientific icons appropriated by artists, the peri the artists, appropriated by icons scientific Among T a i m I S . p e T C o r

- - - ings of the thing, create a world within a grain of sand [11], sand of grain a within world a create thing, the of ings mean the diversify explorationsfreedom—multifarious of kind new a available makes constraint formal that reveals producing pathos; any survey of such readymades, however, readymade, the of limits the within imprison art sequences for certain aesthetic decisions” [10]. Morris believes that such algorithm or rule for sequences, which nullifiesthe freedom “as a self-enclosed and self-completing mechanism, or as an (0–9), digits yellowish-white-grey stenciled of grid a with Johns’sof metaphor.andwritesMorris schema Robert object, artistic icon; and artifact pedagogical [9], tool, scientific knows” concurrently already mind the “things the among words, magnet “for memories and associations” [8]. It lies, in Johns’s Johns’sof purpose the a becomingnumerals, andalphabets serves table periodic the context, mundane from stripped Duchamp’surinal, like than, rather Appropriated object). (object/not simultaneity referential and novelty contextual their of because resonatetable, aesthetically periodic the or a whether objects, iconic Repurposed [7]. JohnsJasper of vein the “readymade,”in therefore is art table Periodic meaning. of layers accrues time over and youth in minds our onimprinted is that object an nostalgia: with miliarity thatis it art appropriates thatpopular a object combines fa- The common denominatorthat runs through table periodic Re sideways at science, and forward into art. ists’ hands the table looks backward at school and childhood, unknown”towards- art work Inthe directing for[6]. guide tional structure “for collecting the known” and as a “practical mathematical] [or expression,”linguistic to but “reducible instead not serves asis an table organiza periodic The ness: table’s unique the constitutive exposed thereby have They reverberations. semiotic and qualities formal resonances, visual innovation, cataloging its into delve to which from terrain as form mechanical prequantum its exploit to ring artists ignore the inner structure of the table’sMost atoms, prefer[5]. schematic generative a but entity inert an not is a dym a (1958), a canvas filled to the edge the to filled canvasWhiteNumbers a (1958), de doi:10.1162/LEON_a_01444 ©2019 ISAST - - - - art and atoms

Fig. 1. Erich Füllgrabe, elemental board, collage, acrylic paint, India ink on paper, mounted on wooden plates, 160 × 240 cm, 1997. (© Erich Füllgrabe)

as demonstrated by Johns’s multiple renderings of targets, blocks of the material world; for Johns, “any relationship of flags, alphabets and numbers, and, analogously, by the vari- lexical sense to the work in question is arbitrary or coinciden- ous ways artists exploit the table. tal,” while for Bradshaw and other contemporary artists, the Among the artists who work with the periodic table, periodic table’s cultural associations, linguistic connotations Blair Bradshaw paints works that most overtly reference and form are the focus [17]. aesthetic readymades. For example, like Johns’s Alphabets (1956), Bradshaw’s Periodic Table (Color Plate B) grids the Form entire canvas and fills virtually every grid box with stenciled notes that for chemists “there is no one ‘best’ pe- atomic symbols overlaid on a ghostly background [12]. De- riodic table and that one’s choice depends on what particular spite their formal similarities, the distinct subject materials aspect of periodicity of the elements one is most interested in of these two artists highlight the precise cultural currency depicting” [18]. Formal analyses of artists’ renderings of the the table holds for artists. Johns used numbers and letters be- periodic table, however, indicate that they adhere predomi- cause they provide manifolds that he didn’t have to “design,” nately to the medium-long form of the table, also the most ostensibly to give him “room to work on other levels” [13]. commonly used scientific form. The medium-long form fore- As Johns narrates his motivations, his choice of subject was shortens the table by placing the f- elements 57–70 and secondary to other concerns, including materiality, formal- 89–102 in separate rows below the rest of the table rather than ity and objectivity [14]. He was, he recounts, “interested in inserting them according to their atomic numbers, yielding the . . . play between thinking, seeing, saying and nothing” a table with 18 columns. Scientists validate this foreshorten- [15]. Obversely, Bradshaw’s iconic subject material lies among ing of the table based on , but the ac- his primary concerns. He is “inspired by the organizing lan- tual explanation is likely pedagogical: The long form is more guages created by scientists” and transfixed by the “ability “cumbersome” and adapts less well to wall charts [19]. Thus, of the periodic table to represent such complicated ideas in as we shift our attention from the formal constraints of the such simple form” [16]. While Johns sought to obliterate the readymade to the form of the table itself, we find artistic or- semiotic associations of his sequential alphabets and num- thodoxy conferred on the medium-long form. bers, often submerging them in grey and white paint almost Erich Füllgrabe’s Elemental Board (Fig. 1) and Keith Wil- to the point of illegibility, Bradshaw elevates the iconography son’s Periodic Table (Fig. 2) exemplify this orthodoxy in two of the periodic table, using its form to create visual-linguistic renditions of the table that at first glance appear disparate: connections and rearranging and isolating the elements into Füllgrabe renders each element of his periodic table as an clever wordplay. He foregrounds the elements through de- abstract painting in his examination of the means by which viation, using recursion to reproduce the semantic building both chemists and artists “translate their individual experi-

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Fig. 2. Keith Wilson, Periodic Table, 109 galvanized cubes and various objects, 4 × 9 × 9 m, 2004. (© Keith Wilson)

ences and experiments into visual presentations of results a hortus botanicus of forms, a legerdemain that reaches into that considerably differ from their starting points” [20]; the very roots from which the periodic table springs. In her Wilson’s massive three-dimensional grid of galvanized steel words, she transforms “chemistry’s Periodic Table, a chart boxes “set[s] up connections between an extensive range of of letters and numbers, into a garden of sculptural elements collected objects, from redundant machinery to logs and based on geometry and ” with a metaphys- empty beer cases” [21]. Yet despite the material and symbolic ics that fittingly places atoms at the center and origin of the dissimilarities of these two renditions, their forms reiterate universe [27]. the medium-long form table. Although artists occasionally veer from the table’s iconic Collecting and Cataloging form [22], to my knowledge, only Rebecca Kamen’s installa- Tales of how schematized the elements tion art piece Divining : An Elemental Garden (Fig. 3) vary in their details, but at their core they are stories of col- wholly eschews its ready visuality [23]. lecting and cataloging [28]. In sum, Mendeleev collected to- Initially animated by the cosmology of Buddhist mandalas gether the physical properties of the 63 known elements and and stupas, seventeenth-century alchemical texts [24] and cataloged them by their atomic weights. The result was an Erdmann’s 1902 spiral periodic table [25], Kamen’s installa- organized system that revealed the periodicity of elemental tion is in part made up of 83 elemental sculptures inspired properties, disclosed errors in existent atomic weights and, by Boy Boer’s AtomFlowers [26]. Boer’s unique version of presciently, left spaces for elements yet to be discovered. Men- the periodic table provides a two-dimensional, helicopter deleev’s elemental catalogue preserves an empirical tradition perspective of the electron shells of the atoms, built in chemistry of tabulating and reducing empirical data into up like buttercups from each of the element’s overlapping a coherent sign system [29]. Although conceptually linked orbitals—innovative, but still clinging in general outline to to this tradition, Mendeleev’s table was revolutionary: His the medium-long form. Kamen transforms Boer’s elemental periodic table became the enduring epitome of classification images into ethereal three-dimensional Mylar petals held up, in science, innovative because it simultaneously classified petal above petal, on fiberglass wands. Kamen’s dimensional known elements and constituted those not yet uncovered. transformation illuminates Boer’s distinctive contribution to Most ingenious, then, was not his classification system per periodic table art, while departing altogether from the ortho- se but the conceptual space he inserted, which discovery doxy of the medium-long form table: For this table’s form, would fill with the accumulated data of a shifting, maturing Kamen depends upon the Fibonacci Spiral. She thereby radi- science—while generating layers of cultural associations for cally reinterprets the distribution of the elements, her table artists to excavate.

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Fig. 3. Rebecca Kamen, Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden, installation, Mylar and fiberglass rods, 2009, STEAM Exhibition at ArtsWestchester. (© Rebecca Kamen. Photo: Margaret Fox Photography.)

Notwithstanding the periodic table’s interdisciplinary no previous formal classification:Periodic Table exports into reputation as the emblematic masterpiece of scientific or- the public domain the associative inspiration found in the ganizational structures, and even given the fact that “con- clutter of Wilson’s studio and privacy of his mind, thereby temporary artists find particular empathy with the notion instantiating memory. that we ceaselessly recreate our own classification systems” Unlike Wilson’s act of unintended recollection, Sonya [30], artists who use collection and classification to explore Rapoport and Rick Rinehart abjure the narrative of psycho- the underlying assumptions of scientific categorization tend logical dis-association, using approaches that overtly place to neglect chemistry’s iconology. More typically, artists such themselves or their audience at the center of the table. For as Mark Dion have plumbed the backroom riches of natural Objects on My Dresser: Displacing Elements on the Periodic history museums to disrupt assumptions underlying taxo- Table (Fig. 4) [34], Rapoport augments a found periodic nomic conventions [31]. For example, Dion has curated and table to engage with a “psychological analysis that focused installed Curiosity Cabinets from the collections of many on image-to-image and image-to-word associations as an museums, with the goal of presenting “objects in arbitrary art process” [35]. Objects on My Dresser involves an itera- arrangements that are free of the rational, pedagogical struc- tive process through which Rapoport correlates 29 objects tures that dictate the display of such objects in a modern from her dresser with images, correlates those images with natural history museum” [32]. words, and those words with elements on the table. Thus, in Dion’s work alludes to the ways a natural history museum’s a chain of private associations initiated by the death of her typical forms of display influence the choice and juxtaposi- mother, a toy steel bank becomes the word death; the image tion of content. The sturdy Victoriana of typical history mu- of a casket, the word coffin; the image of a coffin, Co on the seum vitrines communicate an authoritative aesthetic stance, periodic table. The signifier coffin occludes the metonymic one that commands attention while simultaneously saying chain that produces the signifier Co from a series of visual “don’t touch”; yet even artists such as Dion who exploit this and linguistic displacements, effectually banning the viewer authority succumb to the subtle power of their structure to from its “real” meaning and forcing viewers to interpret the dictate content. Form and content intertwine in an aesthetic displaced table on their own equally private terms. that demands that the cases be filled with three-dimensional While Rapoport’s table is an aesthetic expression of the objects in precise, relative arrangements. Among the artistic psychological associations triggered by her private domestic works cited in this essay, only Keith Wilson’s Periodic Table , Rinehart’s installation A Periodic Table of Experience employs a conceptual strategy similar to that of artists like engages the public by providing “[a] self-organizing database Dion. As described earlier, Wilson formed his table from gal- of human experience using an instantly recognized organiza- vanized steel boxes arranged into a three-dimensional grid tional interface—the periodic table of the elements” [36]. In (see Fig. 2). The articulation of its form, like the shelves of a this interactive artwork, visitors input an experience into a museum vitrine, invites the user to fill the boxes with tangible computer terminal, rating it along various quantitative axes; stuff. Wilson chose to fill them with objects that have accu- meanwhile, a vaguely sinister clandestine step incorporated mulated in his studio, to make manifest, in his words, “the by Rinehart deploys. The computer gave the visitor the op- imaginative discoveries to be made in accident and intercon- tion of clicking either “collect” or “create.” Those who clicked nectedness” and, like Dion, to “subvert received systems of “collect” unwittingly deleted another user’s experience from ordering” [33]. A closer look at Wilson’s Periodic Table, how- the database. Finally, a computer algorithm correlated the ever, reveals how his work differs from Dion’s; while Dion remaining experience data with an “atomic weight” and tends to reclassify objects that were previously classified by placed it into the appropriate place in the table. Perhaps the museum staff, Wilson randomly “orders” objects that had cleverest aspect of the installation was that, if a sequence

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Fig. 4. Sonya Rapoport, Objects on My Dresser: Displacing Elements on the Periodic Table, modified found periodic table of the elements, 1979. (© Sonya Rapoport. Photo: Dana Davis.)

of visitors chose “collect” rather than “create,” that element Dorothy Nelkin and Suzanne Anker show that, within the could be permanently removed from the table, potentially lexicon of genetic art (gen-art), we can parse artworks into giving a user the power to destroy the artwork. As it was, the Peirce’s sign categories, where images and sculptures of the foreclosure of the installation’s process yielded a 10 × 20 ft DNA serve as icons, autoradiographs enact indices, wall-mounted periodic table. Unlike other artists, Rinehart and gene sequences, symbols [38]. We see gen-art exemplars replaced all the elemental symbols with other alphanumerics. of Peirce’s tripartite semiotic system in Tony Cragg’s Code Some of these coincidently corresponded with the elemental Noah, a bronze sculpture of spiral teddy bears modeled on symbols, although not in their usual location. These impos- the DNA-helix (iconic) [39]; Geraldine Ondrizek’s Chromo- ture elements were linked to a series of psycho-emotive in- some 17, an embroidered cloth panel of a genetic autoradio- scriptions like the one for “element” 18 (Torturing; Pain:18), graph (indexical) [40]; and Eduardo Kac’s Encryption Stones, which then pointed to “other experiences with atomic weight a diptych of granite tablets etched with a bible verse that has 18” and “other experiences in pain” in an infinite loop- been translated into a DNA sequence (symbolic) [41]. ing chain of signs and interpretants that gain signification In contrast to genetic iconography, the periodic table through the process of semiosis. unfolds more like a , simultaneously iconic in its vi- sual representation of (for example, elec- Semiotics tron configuration and reactivity), indexical in pointing Of all means by which the periodic table lures artists, semiot- to “simple substances” with physical similarities (like the ics has proven the most ineluctable. Even when discussing alkali earths, noble gases and ) and symbolic in an artist’s work in terms of classification, as in Rapoport’s using atomic symbols with shared cultural meaning [42]. Objects on My Dresser, or readymades, as in Bradshaw’s Peri- The periodic table does not permit unequivocal separation odic Table, we cannot escape semiotic terminology, for what of semiotic categories and fits more smoothly into the tradi- is the periodic table but a set of ordered conventional signs? tion of incorporating words and letters into art; it is best un- According to semiotician Charles Peirce, who reintroduced derstood within the complex semiotics of such art. Among Saussure’s system of signifiers (acoustic images) and art that falls within the word-art tradition, the signifiers of signifieds, signs can be classified into three categories: icon, the periodic table align most closely with Robert Indiana’s index and symbol. In this system, icons “serve to convey ideas “sign paintings” and Christopher Wool’s “text-paintings.” As of the things they represent simply by imitating them”; indi- Susan Elizabeth Ryan writes, in Indiana’s LOVE “the visual ces “show something about things, on account of their being and verbal are virtually coextensive and we perceive them physically connected with them”; and symbols, like Saussure’s almost simultaneously” [43]. Materially, the painting LOVE acoustic images, “become associated with their meanings by and the word love are both objects, as Augustine of Hippo usage” [37]. In The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age, noted in the fourth century: “Thus every sign is also a thing,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01444 by guest on 25 September 2021 for that which is not a thing is nothing at all” [44]. LOVE, art and atoms like the signs of the periodic table, embodies the intersec- tion of icon, index and symbol because words are not merely acoustic images, but singular and complex things. Augustine himself explains that the word love can never be merely a sign for love, since as thing it exists also in the register of icon and symbol. Signs have special meaning because of their appeal to the eye—they are not merely insubstantial reverberations that bring images into the mind [45]. The re- lation between atomic signatures and language extends this Fig. 5. Simon Patterson, Rex Reason: Solid, Gaseous, Liquid, Synthetic, further: The letters (phonemes) that make up the names of art book (London: Book Works, 1994). (© Book Works) the elements are part of the basic set of sounds out of which we build words; similarly, the simple substances (like or gas) are the building blocks of matter, and elements, once combined, are not simple substances but ab- stract elements (such as sodium chloride); unlike phonemes, however, the elemental symbols have a variety of explicit symbolic meanings. They abbreviate words that reference real-world things, form syntactic elements in Berzelian for-

mulas (e.g. H2O) [46] and have meaning for chemists as signifiers of simple substances and abstract elements. More importantly, though, like Indiana’s LOVE, they gain linguis- tic and cultural significance once we decode the acoustic images. The artists Simon Patterson and David Clark explicitly interrogate the semiotic nature of the periodic table. For his art-book Rex Reason [47], Patterson playfully renames and thus reinscribes the atomic symbols (with the exception of the radioactive elements) with the proper names of actors, directors, writers, artists and mythological gods, creating a private, self-consistent set of cultural associations (Fig. 5); in so doing he exposes the essential fact that the associations between atomic symbols and names of the elements are arbi- trary, albeit conventional among chemists. Patterson’s reasso- ciation of the for (Ag) with the actor Alec Guinness exemplifies this point: The elemental symbol Ag is not itself silver, nor is it Alec Guinness, while silver is itself iconic (as is Alec Guinness), with multiple meanings that range from the thing itself, to allusion, to metaphor. In the case of silver, Patterson’s acronymic displacement also calls attention to the fact that, unlike the names of most of the elements in the table, which are phonically linked to their atomic symbols, the Teutonic word silver is not. In- stead Ag comes from the word argentum, which like its elemental cousins (e.g. Au for ) derive from the names Fig. 6. David Clark, Braille, paint, wood and vinyl, 2000. (© David Clark) and colors of the heavenly bodies known at the time of their discovery. In this alchemical system argentum was associated with the , creating a sustaining metaphor (silver moon) that signs can be ascribed to all things; and those things, that joins the moon’s color to love. suspended in the proper order of differences and similarities, For Patterson the periodic table provides a mnemonic can be used as the building blocks of our picture of the world” framework for the use of proper names, a key element in all [49]. With this in mind, Clark created the large-scale instal- of his work. Proper names hold a special place in semiotics, lation piece Chemical Vision, which transcribes the periodic serving, in Peirce’s terms, as both index and symbol; in Pat- table onto an eye chart and, in an ironic double entendre terson’s words, “the spaces in between the associations and for the sighted, a braille eye chart, which, unlike Patterson’s sounds become as important as the names themselves” [48]. relatively pure semiotic wordplay, creates hybrid codes that In contrast, David Clark views the periodic table as a “pin- imbue these symbolic systems with scientific significance nacle of modernism . . . which sustains the atomist’s hope (Fig. 6) [50].

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01444 by guest on 25 September 2021 art and atoms Conclusion the multiplicities of meaning embedded in artists’ versions of Like Berzelian , which preserve their original func- the table. Thus, for example, set in the art-historical context tion while accumulating additional reference and meaning of the readymade, the periodic table stands alongside Jasper [51], the periodic table has been conceptually and formally Johns’s renditions of the alphabet as an object rich with scho- overlaid with new content since its inception. Looking for- lastic nostalgia, while a semiotic perspective veers away from ward from Mendeleev’s remarkable ordering of the table by remembrance to a contemplation of the complex relationship atomic weight, the table has been reinscribed to accommo- between sign, signifier and signified implicit in all artisticand date new elements, atomic numbers, electron configurations scientific renderings of the table. In sum, the periodic table is and quantum mechanics while maintaining its essential peri- the immutable nexus of chemical discovery and knowledge; odicity. To this chain of inscription we can now add artistic a constant, universally recognized accumulation of experi- renditions of the table that extend its cultural significance ments and history, the meaning of which varies depending “beyond the constraints of the present to imagine alternative on who looks at it. Thus, a chemist understands the periodic possibilities” and reveal the dynamic capacity of this supple table differently than a nonchemist. Generally, practicing scientific code to accrue new meanings [52]. chemists look to the table for experimental data, such as As demonstrated by this paper, for artists, as for chem- atomic weight or elemental properties; nonchemists more ists, “there is no one ‘best’ periodic table” [53] and as such likely view the table as pedagogical icon; while philosophers a critical review of the diversity of periodic tables produced of science contemplate its ontological depths and artists by artists demands diverse, cross-theoretical interpretation. transform and reinterpret its cultural richness. Indeed, only a multifaceted perspective can fully illuminate

Acknowledgment 13 “His Heart Belongs to Dada” [9] p. 82. I am grateful to the Djerassi Resident Artists Program for providing 14 J. Yau, A Thing among Things: The Art of (New York: Dis- the time and space for me to complete this manuscript during the 2015 tributed Art Publishers, 2008) pp. 1–58; P. Fuller, “Between Thinking, Scientific Delirium Madness Residency. Seeing, Saying and Nothing,” in Patricia Bickers and Andrew Wilson, eds., Talking Art: Interviews with Artists Since 1976 (London: Riding- house, 2007) p. 105. References and Notes 15 Fuller [14] p. 106. 1 The Chemogenesis Web Book, “Hubbard Periodic Chart of the Atoms”: www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/35_pt24 (accessed 24 16 MFDA Art Collection, “Blair Bradshaw”: www.mfdaart.com September 2015). /featured/7-blair-bradshaw.html (accessed 24 September 2015); “Blair G. Bradshaw, An Interpretation of Elements,” in Chemistry 2 W. Drenttel and J. Helfand, “Culture Is Not Always Popular,” keynote in Art: A Virtual Art Exhibition: www.hyle.org/art/cia (accessed 24 address, AIGA National Design Conference, Vancouver, BC, 25 Oc- September 2015). tober 2003. 17 Weiss [7] p. 21. 3 S. Anker and D. Nelkin, The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 18 Scerri [4] pp. 277–278. 2004). 19 Scerri [4] p. 16. 4 E. Scerri, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance (Oxford: 20 “Eric Füllgrabe, Measuring and Comparison,” in Chemistry in Art Oxford Univ. Press, 2007) p. xviii. [16]. 5 B.R. Cohen, “The Element of the Table: Visual Discourse and the 21 Wellcome Collection, “Fat Man Acquired for Wellcome Collection,” Preperiodic Representation of Chemical Classification,” Configura- Wellcome Trust Press Release (6 June 2006). tions 12, No. 1 (2004) p. 41. 22 See, for example, B. Bradshaw, Periodic Table (Black), oil/paper on 6 Cohen [5] p. 45. board, 2009: www.blairbradshawstudio.com/science-1 (accessed 22 7 J. Weiss, “Painting Bitten by Man,” in J. Weiss, ed., Jasper Johns: An January 2019). Allegory of Painting (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2007) p. 19. 23 Rebecca Kamen, “Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden”: www 8 E. Heartney, Art & Today (London: Phaidon Press, 2013) p. 51. .rebeccakamen.com/gallery/divining-nature/divining-nature-an -elemental-garden/#4 (accessed 1 October 2015). 9 “His Heart Belongs to Dada,” Time 73, No. 18, 58 (1959); reprinted in Kirk Varnedoe, Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews 24 R. Fludd, “The Mirror of the Whole of Nature and the Image of Art,” (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1996) p. 82. in Utriusque cosmi maioris et minoris metaphysica, physica (Oppen- heim, 1617) Plate xviii. 10 R. Morris, “Jasper Johns: The First Decade,” in Weiss [7] p. 217. 25 G.N. Quam and M.B. Quam, “Types of Graphic Classification of the 11 W. Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” in David V. Erdman, ed., The Elements,” Journal of Chemical Education 11, No. 4, 289 (1934). Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Garden City, NY: An- chor Books, 1982) p. 490. 26 “AtomFlowers by Boy Boer,” in The Chemogenesis Web Book: www .meta-synthesis.com/webbook/35_pt/pt_database.php?PT_id=41 12 J. Johns, Gray Alphabets, beeswax and oil on newspaper on canvas, (accessed 24 September 2015); “Chemistry Made Art: Rebecca 1956 (The Menil Collection, Houston): www.artchive.com/artchive/j Kamen’s Elemental Garden,” in Consortium for , /johns/alphabet.jpg.html (accessed 27 September 2015); B. Bradshaw, Technology, and Medicine: www.chstm.org/content/chemistry Your Periodic Table, oil on canvas, 1999: www.blairbradshaw.com -made-art-rebecca-kamen%E2%80%99s-elemental-garden (ac- /site_html/bgb039.html (accessed 24 September 2015). cessed 22 January 2019).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01444 by guest on 25 September 2021 27 Rebecca Kamen, “Divining Nature: Artist Statement”: www.rebec Seattle): https://academic.reed.edu/art/ondrizek (accessed 27 Sep- art and atoms cakamen.com/gallery/divining-nature/divining-nature-artist-state tember 2015). ment (accessed 27 September 2015). 41 E. Kac, “Encryption Stones,” laser-etched granite (diptych), 2001 28 See, for example, E. Scerri, OUPblog, “How Exactly Did Mendeleev (Collection of Richard Langdale, Columbus, OH): www.ekac.org Discover His Periodic Table of 1869?” https://blog.oup.com/2012/08 /genseries.html (accessed 27 September 2015). The stones are etched /how-exactly-did-mendeleev-discover-his-periodic-table-of-1869; with the same bible verse in English and in Morse code. P. Strathern, Mendeleyev’s Dream: The Quest for the Elements (New York: Berkley Books, 2000) pp. 279–288. 42 Scerri [4] p. 118. 29 T.I. Spector, “The Aesthetics of Molecular Representation: From the 43 S.E. Ryan, Robert Indiana: Figures of Speech (New Haven: Yale Univ. Empirical to the Constitutive,” Foundations of Chemistry 5, No. 3, Press, 2000) p. 5; R. Indiana, LOVE, oil on canvas, 1966 (Indianapolis 215–236 (2003). Museum of Art): www.robertindiana.com/works/love-5 (accessed 27 September 2015). 30 S. Ede, Art & Science (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008) p. 22. 44 Saint Augustine, Of Christian Doctrine, D.W. Robertson, Jr., trans. 31 M. Kemp and D. Schultz, “Us and Them, This and That, Here and (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1958) p. 9. There, Now and Then: Collecting, Classifying, Creating,” in S. Ede, ed., Strange and Charmed: Science and the Contemporary Visual Arts 45 Saint Augustine [44] p. 36. (London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2000) p. 89. 46 U. Klein, Experiments, Models and Paper Tools: Cultures of Organic 32 I. Hofmann, “Mark Dion,” in M. Dion et al., Weird Science: A Confla- Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century (Redwood City, CA: Stanford tion of Art and Science (Bloomfield Hills, MI: Cranbrook Art Mu- Univ. Press, 2003). seum, 1999) p. 16. 47 S. Patterson, Rex Reason: Solid, Gaseous, Liquid, Synthetic (London: 33 Axisweb, “Keith Wilson Artist’s Statement”: http://web.archive.org Book Works, 1994). /web/20100116113034/www.axisweb.org/ofSARF.aspx?SELEC 48 A. Pirman, “Names Are the Words for Things,” Sculpture 16, No. 1 TIONID=20064 (accessed 22 January 2019). (1997) p. 21. 34 S. Rapoport, Periodic Table of the Elements, modified found peri- 49 “David Clark, The Science Museum of Metachemistry,” inChemistry odic table of the elements, 1979: www.wikiart.org/en/sonya-rapoport in Art [16]. /periodic-table-1979 (accessed 27 September 2015). 50 D. Clark, Braille, paint, wood and vinyl, 2000: www.dclark643f.my 35 M. Tromble, “The Advent of Chemical Symbolism in the Art of portfolio.com/chemical-vision (accessed 21 January 2019). Son­ya Rapoport,” Foundations of Chemistry 11, No. 1 (2009) p. 54. 51 Klein [46] p. 233. 36 R. Rinehart, A Periodic Table of Experience, interactive computer kiosk and wall installation, 2000: www.coyoteyip.com/rinehart/pe 52 Anker and Nelkin [3] p. 4. riodic_table_of_experience.html (accessed 27 September 2015). 53 Scerri [4] pp. 277–278. 37 Marxists Internet Archive, “C.S. Peirce, What Is a Sign (1894)”: www .marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/peirce1.htm (accessed 22 January 2019). Manuscript received 12 May 2016. 38 Anker and Nelkin [3] pp. 27–33. Tami Spector is a professor of organic chemistry. She 39 T. Cragg, “Code Noah,” bronze, 1988 (Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Ware Travelstead), in D. Nelkin and S. Anker, “The Influence of Ge- has presented and published work on fluorocarbons, netics on Contemporary Art,” Nature Reviews Genetics 3, No. 12, strained ring organics, the computational chemistry of 967–971 (2002) Figure 1. biomolecules, molecular aesthetics, the visual image 40 G. Ondrizek, Chromosome 17, cloth panels, sateen and cotton voile, of chemistry and the intersections of chemistry and hand embroidery, 2009 (University of Washington Medical Center, contemporary visual art.

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Blair Bradshaw, Periodic Table, oil on multiple panels, 30 × 48 in, 2014. (© Blair Bradshaw) (See article in this issue by Tami I. Spector.)

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