Endless forms is the title of the exhibition in Cambridge for the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. It is collocated within the Fitzwilliam Museum, the second most important museum in England, after London, that contains a plenty of wonderful paintings from Italian, Spanish, French and Flemish painters from the XVI to the XX century and arts from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Near and the Far East.
Charles Darwin was the most famous and significant natural scientist of his century. His theories about evolution and the origins of the human race profoundly affected the intellectual, cultural, and social lives of his contemporaries .
ReplyDeleteDarwin began his career as a naturalist in the field of geology and was impressed by emerging theories about the age of the earth and forces that had shaped its crust. For Darwin, the great age of the earth had made possible the slow evolution of species by "natural selection." This could only happen through an endless "struggle for existence" among animals and humans. Many artists of the nineteenth century shared Darwin's fascination with the idea of struggle, and they were increasingly influenced by Darwin's vision of the complex interplay among all living things. a lot of artists take inspiration from the works of Darwin so a wealth of paintings, drawings, and sculpture will explore the way Darwin's ideas of man's relation to animals, particularly apes, shook religious belief and redefined man's place in the natural world.
Infact "Endless forms" brings together a remarkable variety of nearly two hundred objects and works of art, including paintings, drawings, sculpture, early photographs, caricatures and a spectacular range of natural history specimens. An important feature of the exhibition will be the telling juxtaposition of art works and scientific material. It’s fantastic … I hope to see its one day and I can watch the union of the artistic elegance with the cool and wonderful scientific reality.
by chiara t