Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
tion of chemical 'still lifes' with the grotesque is expressed only implic-
itly through the negative associations that chemicals often elicit from the
public.
18
Tony Cragg was schooled as a chemical laboratory technician and we
can assume that he was exposed to illustrations of chemical apparatuses
in chemistry textbooks. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that his work
reveals an intimate conceptual parallel to the long historical tradition of
scientific textbook illustrations. Nevertheless, although Cragg's paintings
are representational in so far as they depict actual chemical glassware,
they are also unmistakably symbolic rather than didactic. Taken as scien-
tific illustrations, his paintings would provide no guidance for perform-
ing an actual experiment. His images emblematize chemistry itself rather
than depicting its processes.
Such depictions of chemical glassware, both in contemporary photo-
graphs and fine art, assume their emblematic and symbolic function
through their historical lineage. From ancient Alexandrian manuscripts to
medieval alchemical treatises, images of chemical apparatus were fre-
quently interspersed with the text to illustrate the specific shape or con-
struction required for an experiment (Obrist 2003). In Renaissance text-
books of distillation and metallurgy, such illustrations sometimes con-
sumed larger parts of the volume, as in Biringuccio's
Pirotechnia
(1540).
During the eighteenth
century such drawings gained in popularity, cul-
minating in the inclusion of numerous detailed illustrations of distillation
apparatus in one of the grand symbols of the Enlightenment, Diderot's
Dictionary of Science, Arts, and Trades
(Greenburg 2003, pp. 150-4) -
ostensibly providing information to the educated reader on instrumental
details. Starting with Lavoiser and continuing into the nineteenth cen-
tury, illustrations of apparatus became more accurate and gradually in-
cluded some drawings that attempted to depict dynamic chemical proc-
esses, in alliance with the drive to legitimize and popularize chemistry
(Golinski 1992). Illustrations in chemical textbooks and manuals some-
times showed apparatus with disembodied hands manipulating the glass-
ware, which in theory could be used as guides for performing an actual
experiment (Knight 2003). These drawings live on in chemistry labora-
tory textbooks today and effectively communicate how to set up or man-
ually manipulate a particular piece of glassware (
e.g.
, Williamson 2003).
