THE ARTIST AND THE ATOM — BLANC 439 



Indeed, in the final analysis, the truth may -well be that forces com- 

 mon to the age and still too close to permit precise identification in- 

 fluenced scientist and artist alike and led both in independence 

 of each other to conceptions of the universe that have a startling 

 correspondence. 



Today some complain that modern art is incomprehensible and 

 confusing, cold and detached, devoid of human warmth and as clin- 

 ically aloof as the laboratory. This is to attribute to the artist ex- 

 clusively qualities that man has in fact learned to be intrinsic in the 

 universe. Art has become abstract only to the extent to which the 

 world itself has become abstract. By comparison, the material uni- 

 verse of the nineteenth century was a comfortable and cozy environ- 

 ment for man. But this security did not last. The concept of the 

 limitless space of the atom was only the first of a series of shocks 

 which twentieth-century man was to endure. Today nothing is left 

 of matter, and every aspect of solidity seems to have become illusion. 

 Rocks, trees, houses, men and women, all are mere ghosts of their 

 former selves. All that is left is energy and the void. It is not spirit- 

 ual confusion, lack of humanity, or morbid preoccupation that leads 

 the artist to face these facts of life and produce works of art that take 

 them into account. On the contrary, it would be a cowardly evasion 

 to ignore them and turn blindly to the past for more reassuring sub- 

 ject matter. It is the paradox of art today that what is still known as 

 realism is actually an escape from reality. 



The artists, like the scientists, are seeking to find the hidden order 

 and equilibrium that must exist in this new and ominous world — 

 different though it may be from our previous comfortable concep- 

 tions. Man may never be restored to his old position of central im- 

 portance and security. His relationship with the universe may never 

 be more intimate than the austere and semireligious acceptance of 

 mystery which characterizes the thought of so many artists and 

 scientists today. But scientist and artist alike must continue to 

 scrutinize and evaluate this awesome spectacle, the one with his 

 measurements and mathematics, the other with his intuition and imag- 

 ination, until a solution has been reached. 



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