Picturing DNA
An Interview with Ellen K. Levy

[Ellen K. Levy paintings reflect a lifetime appreciation of the interconnectedness of science and art. She enjoys visual puns, which she frequently inserts in her work, and when she uses the theme of particular museums, she captures science as it has been understood in the past through the lens of the present.]

Q: You have evolved as an artist and a scientist. Which came first?

Levy: Well, I'm certainly foremost an artist, and I remain an artist. But I've always found science inspirational. In addition, science has provided a means of support for my art over many years. While I was getting my graduate degree in art at the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston, I was working as a researcher at Harvard, in a department where I found work on the visual system inspirational. But if I go back to the roots of this, it probably began by visits to the American Museum of Natural History from childhood on.

Q: So, you were doing graduate work in art while working at a lab?

Levy: While working at a lab as a research assistant, and also as a medical illustrator.

Q: Where did you get your science training?

Levy: I majored in science [as an undergraduate] in the absence of [my college] having a visual arts department. I thought my time would be better spent studying zoology. They had a wonderful science department.

Q: And your interest in zoology dovetailed with your interest in art?

Levy: Yes, very much. I would also go on to say that even the idea of the link, or correlation, between biological and architectural forms really interested me from the beginning. [I came across] a remarkable book, namely D'Arcy Thompson's book On Growth and Form, when I was in junior high school. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the text. The book was published in 1917, [and] was quite influential [among artists]. It's really a text on the architecture of biological systems. For me, it confirmed a relationship and a link between the visible and the invisible. Many of the diagrams and illustrations accompanying this book are quite remarkable. But the message was that the often invisible processes that govern growth would result in a particular form. Now, D'Arcy Thompson actually showed that organisms could be related through a series of topological deformations, which led for me to the idea that there was correlation, which is implicit in his writing, between biological form and architectural structure. Some of the very earliest drawings that I exhibited, in New York, were based upon this group of transformations. I was using his method in order to set up a hypothetical evolutionary link between a skull and a shell. And I used his idea very loosely, and sort of tongue and cheek. I liked the idea of combining something that was a very rigorous kind of structure with an unpredictable aesthetic outcome. And then there are other ideas that are architectural and biological in terms of structure. The idea of constraints [interested me]-that building and engineering involve top-down decisions that you would consider organizational, as well as bottom-up, having to do with local response and continual adjustments while you make something.

Q: What, specifically, about the genome project caught your attention?

Levy: In the genome project, you have inherent in it the idea that DNA has multiple visual expressions and multiple meanings. In a way, it also links to architecture, in that the genome provides a blueprint for the body's architecture. It's also the ultimate encyclopedic act. I'm very interested in ideas pertaining to classification and categorization in my work. I mean, the human genome project was undertaken in order to understand the structure of the genome. One thing of interest about it is that part of the genome, a large part of it, that does not code for protein, has been previously thought to be composed of junk. But in fact, there's a fair amount of speculation in recent years that this "junk" may provide the regions for evolutionary change to take place. I think of these regions of the genome almost like art, because if it does not code for a protein, perhaps it can shed some light on the coding process itself. I think of art in a similar way. The value of art is not in its utility, but in its casting light on the creative process. Its ability not to have to provide a useful function gives you a chance to look at it with respect to other things.

Q. Do you think that first you have some kind of scientific advance, which in this case is visual, and then as an artist are able to look at it and bring fresh light to it?

Levy: Well, yes; I would say that. But I think that there are numerous examples of artists who are also scientists, and vice versa. Whether one is foremost or the other obviously can vary. The most obvious example may be Leonardo. But Galileo, even in his own work as an artist in his moon drawings, would never have been able to interpret correctly the irregularities of the moon's surface if he hadn't been familiar with chiaroscuro. And a cognitive psychologist today would not be able to cast light on how the mind can turn things around if he did not have a very acute visual sense. So I would say that creativity is certainly in both professions.

Q: In the past, as you said, we have people like Galileo or Leonardo who were at the same time artists and scientists, although today we remember each of them differently. Would you say that that holds true through the twentieth century? Do you see people doing both things simultaneously?

Levy: This is probably harder the more specialized we are. And the reality is that there are misunderstandings on both sides, because I often see very sophisticated scientists really not quite understanding the language when it comes to art in our own time. And I'm sure that the reverse holds true. I, personally, would like to avoid the dichotomy of seeing science as totally objective and art as totally subjective. I think that there are common desires for beauty, for elegance. And certainly both are forms of knowledge that complement each other but are not identical.

Q: There have been theories of science that say that what is right is most parsimonious and beautiful.

Levy: Yes. That's the idea of elegance.

Q: Do you think this still holds true?

Levy: Not for art, I don't. I think for mathematicians it probably still holds true. And I think in many instances, for scientists also, elegance is defined as the least that will satisfy the most-a theory of everything. Even superstring theory is an attempt to explain as much as possible by the fewest means and have it true across the board.

Q: Do you think that applies to biology as well, particularly genetics?

Levy: I think that there are attempts to find this in biology which have partially succeeded. However, the reason why I believe culture works somewhat differently-specifically the visual arts-is because there is a history of taste and style. For example, minimalism would be one aspect [of taste and style] which really leads directly, as far as I'm concerned, to what my own work is about, which is the idea of finding correlations and parallels among biological evolution, aesthetic evolution, and technological invention. I mean, it's tongue and cheek, but it's also meant to show-for example, in art I might use different styles. I might reference minimalism, or abstract expressionism, or the kind of streamlining we had with a designer like Raymond Loewy, with forms that are constructed, like planes, or even paper clips, or technological artifacts. And then, on the other hand, by portraying the interiors of natural history museums and juxtaposing animals and technological artifacts, I'm suggesting visually that animals are subject to manipulation, today, just as we manipulate our industrial products.

Q: What do you think is the didactic responsibility of art or an artist, if any?

Levy: The responsibility of the artist? For me, I'd have to answer that I really want to communicate. And I think that a good part of art is about communication. For it's on a one-to-one basis and beyond that; it's really the desire to have a discourse with a larger audience. And for me, science offers more than content and subject; it can also offer a method for producing an artwork. One of the things I think [science] is valuable for is that it has a shared subject that many people can understand-just like a Madonna was a shared frame of reference in Renaissance times. I think that science can and does provide that today. And I think it keeps art from being totally hermetic. It can also air social issues. Q: Have you gotten much feedback from scientists about your work? Levy: Well, I have, because I've exhibited at a fair number of science institutions, including the New York and National Academies of Science. And I had a commission from NASA, where I spent a great deal of time, actually, with engineers. I've met scientists in all of the places that I've exhibited, including France, at a genetics institute. And most of them do have comments pertaining to what I'm dealing with, like my work "Constable's Cladistics," that includes a DNA-based chart of relationships among fossil birds superimposed over an interior space based on the Grand Gallery at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. It's very vibrant in color. People have commented on the aspect of juxtaposing both diagrams of birds and more fully rendered birds. And usually when information is given diagrammatically, it is seen as more scientific-by comparison, for example, with the deeper pictorial space that I have. And that's why, in fact, I entitled the painting "Constable's Cladistics." It's to show that you could merge, basically, the idea of an informational chart with something more pictorial. Often during research experiments, scientists will find several ways to amass information. In art, the relationship of information to content is considerably less specific, because what really counts as much as the information is the way it is given, the way it is delivered. And I think that this painting is about information and reading information in different ways.

Q: What's your scientific-philosophical take on the genome project? Do you think that this is, as some people have described it, the greatest revolution since the Periodic Table of the Elements?

Levy: Well, that's true. But I would say that there are some differences between them. The Periodic Table was particularly fascinating in that it was predictive. I mean, when Mendeleyev plotted this, he didn't know all of it. But he could figure out what parts to leave blank, because of the repeating units of eight and eighteen. And obviously, I think that the hope for the human genome project is that it will offer enough patterns to be fairly predictive of what is zoned for what, and where this takes place-the alleles specifically responsible for defects-therefore offering hope for improvement. I mean, obviously, in any kind of practical sense, we're running into a tremendous number of difficulties with this for medical purposes. So I don't think that this is something that is going to be very quickly realized. But it is an extraordinary thing to embark on.

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Picturing DNA by Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles & Marilyn Nissenson
Copyright © 2000 Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles & Marilyn Nissenson
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