diemut

MASTERPIECE

Masterpiece

2024

Crayon on Slate

by Diemut and Alan Guth

The artwork is on display at MIT in the Center of Theoretical Physics

This art project has been sponsored by Paola Pardini Marcucci.

Masterpiece presents a pandemonium of equations that have played a crucial role in the scientific career of physicist Alan Guth, MIT, one of the masterminds of theoretical physics. Some first appeared in Guth’s papers, while others stem from the background of physics literature which has been essential to Guth’s thinking.

There is a widely approved tradition in philosophical thinking about the special and superior position of the artist genius with respect to creativity comparing it to
that of the scientist that is presumed to be distinctly differently rooted. Nevertheless, when looking at certain ideas in physics as to how the universe came into being and how space and time are evolving, those theories shine as both extremely counterintuitive, and among the most creative concepts man has ever conceived.

The blackboard hung for many years in the conference room of the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics, where it served as a communication tool in many historic physics discussions, including presumably Steven Weinberg’s first presentations of his calculations on the unification of the weak and electromagnetic forces between elementary particles, which won him the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Close up Masterpiece