Drawn

Since March 31, an online symposium in the form of a blog has been going on, about how evolution has been pictured in the past and where it’s going in the future. It is hosted by the National Academy of Science, and artists, illustrators, and scientists have been contributing. There are interviews and podcasts too.

It’s aimed at an academic audience, and there are, strangely enough, very few images. But if you have any serious interest in art and science coming together, this series of very lengthy blog entries is important reading.

Image: In the blog entries for April 9th on Art and Visual Culture leading up to the 20th century, Barbara Larson writes,

To give a sense of how popular evolution had become in France alone, the winning grand prize at the official salon exhibition of 1880 was Cormon’s Cain, a recasting the biblical history in which the murderous brother is a kind of missing link, hulking stoop shouldered and permanently bent at the knee, seeming to run from his own barely dawning conscience (just where and how human guilt and self-awareness factored into evolution was of much interest in France at the time).