Friday 3 October 2008

Richter - Painting by Numbers



Tomorrow I am giving a talk at the Serpentine Gallery about the new Gerhard Richter exhibition 4900 Colours. I must say that this exhibition has started to obsess me somewhat. The pictures consist of 96 25x25 colour girds. In this exhibition, he puts 4 together to make 49 10x10 colour grids in what he calls Version II. Richter produces the 25x25 colour paintings by randomly picking from a selection of 25 colours. I'll be considering questions tomorrow like: how many possible paintings are there? If they were laid out end to end how far would all the possibilities stretch? What is the chance that you get two colours together? three colours together? How many other versions are possible? (Richter details 11 possible variations.) In how many paintings will a colour be missing?

The exhibition is related to Richter's design for the stain glass windows at Koln cathedral except there he mirrors the random choice making something rather like a Rorschach ink-blot.

The intriguing thing is that when you look at these paintings you are searching out structure. It almost begs a mathematical viewpoint to appreciate them.

Serpentine Website

Thursday 2 October 2008

The Story of Maths



My new series THE STORY OF MATHS starts on Monday 6th October on BBC4 at 9pm. There are 4 episodes which chart the history of mathematics from Ancient Egypt to modern day.

To find out more visit THE STORY OF MATHS

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Sexy Maths




I've started writing a new column in The Times newspaper every Wednesday that will appear in T2 under the slightly embarrassing name of Sexy Maths. The first piece is about the new record big prime that was found a few weeks ago.

Primes of Passion