Art and Science

To most people art and science are completely different topics, but in my mind there are similarities.  Both rely heavily on observation and both rely on experimentation.  A difference is science has an obligation to stick to the truth whereas art can fudge reality and make it into what they wish.  I remember BPJ in one of his lectures telling us that we as artists need to lie to our viewers and fool them into thinking that 2D space actually has 3D depth.               Perhaps it is cliche to bring Leonardo da Vinci into a discussion of art and science.  He never wanted to be a painter.  He wanted to be a man of science, he wanted to be a medical doctor.  Unfortunately for him the way Italian society worked at that point in time a male had to have noble lineage on both sides to be a doctor.  Leonardo's father was noble, but his mother was a peasant.  A painting apprenticeship was the best Leonardo's father could do for him.  Really I think it should be stated that history owes Leonardo's father a debt of gratitude.  It would have been easy for him to be a dead beat dad, but he wasn't.  He took him into his household and saw to it he was educated.  I don't know what sort of education he would have received as a peasant.  Although he did not know Latin, which was required in advanced studies.  Anyways his desire to be a medical doctor was what fueled his anatomical studies of cadavers.  He believed his powers of observation he had gained as an artist were better than the rote memorization of misinformation going on in medical training at that time.  His work predates Vesalius, the doctor who first published an observation based anatomy book.  Galen was still the rule of the medical land at that time.  In other words his anatomical drawings were his fuck you to the medical establishment of that time.