alt Hacker NewsI visited this and several other Gaudi buildings about 15 years ago in Barcelona, and many of them are truly breathtaking, or at least dramatically original and unique. I went to the Gaudi museum as well and found it fascinating that the architect himself was not a professional mathematician - he did not use hyperbolic cosine to calculate the dimensions of the catenary curves, he traced the outline of hanging chains. Really interesting to hear about how he also heavily used ratios and symmetry. I love how artistic taste can be partially derived from math (but the math itself isn't sufficient to develop artistic taste)
> I love how artistic taste can be partially derived from math [...] the math itself isn't sufficient to develop artistic taste
Strictly speaking, it isn't "math" as math is the science of quantity and structure, both of which are objective features of reality. We all perceive structure and quantity as it is instantiated in concrete things and ensembles of concrete things and so on. We all respond to and reason about quantifiable and structural properties of reality at varying depths all the time. All math does is pursue them intentionally and methodically. It isn't surprising, then, that a competent artist should intuit various mathematical truths. Indeed, quantity and structure as essential to art. The artist is therefore closer to a domain-specific application where such properties are understood in relation to the subject matter. This introduces a domain-specific aesthetic dimension that is not present in abstracted properties, though one can certainly make aesthetic judgements about abstracted properties.