Natura, czyli plastyczność. Mikrofotografia i sztuka abstrakcyjna
Nature Means Plasticity. Microphotography and Abstract Art

Summary/Abstract: The text discusses the use of microphotography in art publications in the early decades of the twentieth century and the parallels established between microphotography and abstract art. As the author argues, the photographic trend of “New Vision” contributed to the growing presence of microphotography in the popular visual culture of the time, but artists’ concern preceded this popularity. Microphotography brought interest both as a manifestation of an invisible, hidden reality, and for purely aesthetic reasons, as a source of infinite variety of decorative patterns. For artists like Klee and Kandinsky scientific images proved instructive with regard to the elementary structures of design and formative forces of living organisms. Viewed in light of the Monist philosophy of Haeckel, Driesch and Francé, microscopic images were recognized as a demonstration of the infinite plasticity of matter – a document of nature’s universal creative potential that art searched to parallel.

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