What happens to us
Is irrelevant to the world’s geology
But what happens to the world’s geology
Is not irrelevant to us.
We must reconcile ourselves to the stones,
Not the stones to us.
[…]
- Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid, one of
the leading poets of the Scottish Renaissance, had an intellectual fascination
for geology. Born in the burgh of
Langholm in 1892, MacDiarmid often celebrated the aesthetical and conceptual
beauty of geological objects. This aspect fiercely emerged in his volume Stony
Limits (1934), where he described dense geological landscapes:
All is lithogenesis—or
lochia,
Carpolite fruit of the
forbidden tree,
Stones blacker than any
in the Caaba,
Cream-coloured
caen-stone, chatoyant pieces,
Celadon and corbeau,
bistre and beige,
Glaucous, hoar,
enfouldered, cyathiform,
[…]
- Hugh MacDiarmid, On a Raised Beach (to James H. Whyte)
 |
| Shetland Islands. Photo by Dave Wheeler. |
Probably MacDiarmid’s ‘metaphorical geology’
derived from his long travel to Shetland Islands.
As Lyall (2006) says: “The poem [On a Raised Beach] drew genuine sustenance
from the 1933 geological survey of Shetland conducted by GV Wilson, whose
five-strong team included Thomas Robertson, with whom MacDiarmid became
friends”.
Despite his poetic uniqueness, MacDiarmid is
not the only poet fascinated by geology. From Wolfgang Goethe to May Kendall, literature had been populated by geologic
imagery since remote times. Still nowadays, poetry finds successful application
in mineralogical teaching: “A high school earth science teacher and a college
education professor team-taught a lesson to ninth graders on using poetry to
learn about minerals” (Rule et al., 2004).
Visual arts particularly register the aesthetic
recognition of minerals, prized objects of beauty. This aesthetic fascination
is wonderfully represented by the Mineralogical Record Museum of Art, a remarkable
example of the relationship between mineralogy and art. I interviewed Wendell
Wilson, editor-in-chief of the Mineralogical Record and curator of the museum.
1. Tell us about your professional and
scientific background.
I carried a double major of Art and Geology for
my undergraduate (B.S.) degree at the University of Minnesota.
I had always been an artist while growing up, and had been a mineral collector
since age 10, so I loved both fields. I finally decided that it would be easier
to earn a regular income as a geologist than as an artist, so I went on the get
my PhD in Mineralogy. When the offer to take over editorship of the Mineralogical Record magazine came in
1976, I jumped at it because a good science magazine is both an artwork and a
scientific document; so I’ve been able to follow both of my passions. In my
spare time I do mineral and mining-related artwork, primarily to please myself,
and it sells very well, but I don’t have to do it to put food on the table. The
artist Peter Max called that “creating from purity.”
2. How was the Mineralogical Record
Art Museum born? What was
the catalyst?
The Mineralogical
Record Art
Museum is entirely virtual. When we expanded our
website about 10 years ago I wanted to add various kinds of free content, so I
had our webmaster design the Art Museum section. It is wonderful to be able to
add unlimited content at no cost. Of course, I have daydreams about a real,
physical museum like the one facetiously pictured on the Art Museum home page –
but that’s actually a picture of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
3. How is the museum organized on an
architectural and logistical level?
The Art Museum has two departments: Mineral Art
and Mining Art. Both are of interest to mineral collectors (our main
constituency at the Mineralogical Record), especially field collectors who have
the experience of collecting in mines and underground workings. The mineral art
(the primary focus of the Art Museum) consists almost entirely of portraits of
individual specimens. The mining art consists of various mining scenes. Each department
has a drop-down menu allowing you to select a particular artist. That takes you
to the artist’s first page, containing a brief biography of the artist, and the
first eight of his artworks. By clicking to successive pages you can seen more
of his artworks, eight at a time. In the case of my own section, a total of 111
of my own artworks are pictured. If you click on the small thumbnail version of
an artwork you can see a larger image.
 |
| The Mineralogical
Record Museum of Art provides extensive resources about mining art. The image shows a fired-clay tablet (ca. 575 B.C.) depicting miners at work. The tablet was excavated at Penteskuphia
(near Corinth, Greece), |
 |
| Der Mineraloge [the Mineralogist] by Raphael Ritz. |
4. How many people make up your staff?
Just myself and our webmaster, at least as far
as the Art Museum is concerned. The magazine has a larger staff.
5. How did you select the artists involved?
The standard is that artworks depicted must be
of sufficiently high quality that they could hang in a real museum of fine art
and not look amateurish or out of place. Although I certainly encourage the
work of beginning and intermediate artists, the Art Museum is only for artists
who have achieved a professional level of skill.
6. What do you think is the commonality between
the artists represented and what is the main differentiating quality?
All of the (mineral) artists have a personal
passion for minerals, and this is what seems to drive their creative process.
Art is all about selecting, emphasizing and showing the rest of the world the
particular kind of beauty that appeals to the artist. Mineral artists come in
two types: scientific illustrators and fine artists – the second type being
rarer. Scientific illustrators strive for a kind of photographic accuracy, sometimes
insisting on a reproduction scale of 1:1, but one in which the important
physical aspects of the subject are subtly made easiest to see and understand.
Fine artists take it to another level, using mineral specimens to create
fine-art compositions and effects; sometimes the minerals they depict are
actually fictitious specimens.
7. Can you walk us through some of the museum's
highlights?
Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) produced the first
series of engraved illustrations of mineral specimens in a book published in
the last year of his life. We have that book, in pristine condition, in the
Mineralogical Record Library, and it is a thrill to page through it looking at
the oldest surviving mineral illustrations. For me, one of the highlights of
the Art Museum is the work of Leroy de Barde (1777-1828). He painted a highly
detailed representation of an 18th-century mineral cabinet. The painting is
accurate enough for scientific illustration but transcends that genre to become
first-rate fine art. More recently, Claus Caspari (1911-1980) published a fine
series of color mineral specimen portraits that really brought more public
recognition of mineral art. Among the living artists, Eberhard Equit and
Hildegard Könighofer rank among the best; both are hard-core scientific illustrators
of tremendous skill.
8. What is one of your favorite pieces in the
museum and why?
That’s a tough question, because I love so many
of them. And it is somtimes hard to separate one’s appreciation of the art from
one’s attraction to the specimen itself. But one of my favorites is Eberhard
Equit’s painting of a cluster of brilliant blue sapphire crystals. I like the depiction of the gemminess -- and
the specimen itself is exactly the kind of thing I like to collect.
 |
| Ebherard Equit's sapphire. |
9. Let us consider the path between the oldest
and the most recent painting in the Mineralogical
Record Art
Museum. How would you say that mineralogical art
has evolved over time?
Mineral art has not really evolved much, if at
all, since the 16th century. The goals have always been the same, and it was
just a matter of the medium chosen by the artist (engraving, watercolor, oil,
etc.) in combination with the artist’s skill and the selection of subjects
available to depict. Mineral enthuiasts 400 years ago loved minerals for most
of the same reasons we do today.
10. According to your experience with the
Mineralogical Record Art Museum, is there an audience for Geologic Art?
Well, there is certainly a market for it,
primarily among well-funded mineral collectors. The best artists working today
get plenty of commissions, and their work sells for good money, in the
thousands of dollars per painting. One painting by a living mineral artist
recently changed hands between a couple of collectors for $35,000, so there is
a genuine appreciation of mineral art as real fine art.
11. Where to next for you? How do you think the Mineralogical Record Art Museum
will evolve in the future?
I don’t expect that it will change much. We’ll
continue to add new artists who are good enough, but they don’t come along too
often. The Art Museum’s primary benefit is that it provides a focus for the
widespread community of mineral artists, and a place where interested viewers
can get a sense of perspective on the history and breadth of the subject. We’re
satified with that accomplishment, as formerly there was no place, no book, no
website, where a person could go to learn about mineral art in detail.
12. Why are minerals beautiful?
The question of what constitutes beauty has
tantalized philosophers for a long time. There is really no explaining it,
because it is such a deeply human thing. I think some minerals showing fresh,
clean colors and rich transparency tap into an ancient mental program for
seeking out fresh fruit to eat, but then how do you explain the beauty of black
minerals? The appreciation probably comes from many directions. Mineral
crystals have an architectural quality based on their crystal structure at the
atomic level, and it is wonderful to see all the ways that structure can
manifest itself in shape and appearance. To those of us who love minerals and
are fascinated by them, and have been since the first time we saw one, it seems
to be an appreciation that we were born with.
REFERENCES
Lyall, S.
(2006). Hugh MacDiarmid's poetry and politics of place: imagining a Scottish
republic. Edinburgh
University Press p. 200
Rule A.C.,
Carnicelli, L.A.,
Kane S.S. (2004). Using Poetry to Teach about Minerals in Earth Science Class.
Journal of Geoscience Education, v. 52, n. 1, January, p. 10-14
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