THE VISUAL IMAGE OF CHEMISTRY: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE HISTORY OF ART AND SCIENCE - The Public Image of Chemistry - page 238

and popular visual culture, which have shaped both the visual conven-
tions and the cultural meanings of today's chemical stereotypes. It turns
out that, like the split identity of chemistry itself, these images represent
a conflicted public identity for the discipline. All too often, as the chemi-
cal portraiture section of this chapter demonstrates, commercial artists,
who are likely not apprised of the artistic tradition in which they work,
and the chemists who naïvely disseminate their self-representations, un-
intentionally promulgate an image of chemistry based in a satirically de-
basing tradition. Or, as in the case of chemical landscapes, these images
dabble in a tradition that begins in the high art conventions of the sub-
lime landscape but, like those conventions, has the potential to cross the
line into the naïve and unironic aesthetics of kitsch. On the other hand, as
is evident in the section on abstraction where we analyzed the chemical
still life, chemistry and its apparatus can inspire commercial artists to
reach outside of the representational into artistic traditions that have
commanded respect throughout the twentieth century.
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