The first page I visited was that of George W. Hart.

He seems to be heavily inspired by

the platonic solids and alterations on them, notably truncation. Many of his works feel like a 3D
version of a tessellation, using only one shape repeated in a very precise pattern to create an
ornate symmetric object. I really love his use of diverse textures and materials, which really give
each of his pieces a unique identity despite there being many others with a similar structure.
Some of his works, notably Fat and Skinny and Rorschachohedron, have an almost grotesque
feel to them.
MC Escher seemed to love using regularity and mathematical elegance to enhance the
surreal nature of his work, giving the sense that the worlds he depicts have a kind of impossible
perfection that can exist only in the mind. Added to this, many of his works are impossible in the
even more direct sense that the figures in them are nonphysical illusions which literally cannot
exist in 3D space. Combining this geometric impossibility and pristine orderliness with
architecture as he so often did creates an especially compelling effect, as the places in these
works feel like somewhere you can easily imagine visiting and exploring despite their warped
absurdity. While conceiving what it would be like to be in these architectural worlds, one quickly
imagines that gravity there has a smooth irregularity to it, imperceptibly transitioning from
directing objects downwards to sideways to upwards as you move from place to place; more
perplexingly one might imagine that the gravity in a particular location is dependent on which
path you took to get there. Indeed, these are ideas Escher himself explored in his famous work
Relativity. Its a kind of thinking which points to a central theme in Eschers work, the
contemplation of notions which make obvious intuitive sense to the human mind and its internal
preconceptions of physics, and yet which can have no basis in physical reality.

The rug gallery depicts a kind of math-as-art typical of many early civilizations, in which
simple patterns, symmetry, and repetition were employed to depict the world around the artist as
he or she saw it. Here similar motifs can be found across works, cultures, and centuries,
suggesting that they had a symbolic significance that was very important to the people of that
time and place. These works overwhelmingly have a kind of flatness, preferring to depict ideas in
the abstract as opposed to direct scenes from the world, which made the use of mathematical
notions of symmetry and regularity as stand-ins for more tangible objects all the more important.
In many cases the abandonment of symmetry appears to be a deliberate choice by the artist as
well, as if that too may be representative of an idea the artist wanted to communicate. Personally
I was particularly fond of the works from India, which seem to have a particular intricacy and
attention to detail that makes readily apparent the sheer, painstaking dedication it took for artists
to craft these works.
The page on wallpaper patterns was especially interesting, as it showed just how deep the
rabbit hole goes on the math of symmetry and order. As the author mentions this all falls squarely
into group theory, which is in many ways the mathematics of symmetry (and which grounds
other artistic human endeavors as well, notably music and tonality). This collection seemed to be
a kind of encyclopedic attempt at collecting and categorizing the different types of patterns one
can make by regularly repeating a single simple image. Its a humorous notion that so much time
has been spent on the study and classification of these patterns, and yet to many they are seen as
the mundane, rarely-noticed ornamentation of the common household.
One page which to me displays an incredible example of math as art is Akiyoshi
Kitaokas collection of illusions (http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html) which is
both incredibly beautiful and astonishingly exhaustive. Here careful use of patterns and color are

used to create visualizations that fool the mind, creating illusions of motion where there is none,
illusions of difference in color and scale through careful use of context, and illusions of imagery
in the visual periphery which doesnt even exist.
Second, Julian Beevers anamorphic sidewalk art (http://www.julianbeever.net/) is an
excellent example of using math to create beautiful art, particularly the math of perspective.
Notoriously difficult to replicate accurately, perspective is a topic on which each civilization
seemed to have their own unique take, each errant in its own interesting ways. By carefully
replicating the actual curvilinear perspective of the human eye and making use of the brains
context clue system of depth when looking at a scene through a single lens, Julian Beever creates
astounding illusions of seemingly physical objects created by simply applying chalk to sidewalks
and walls. The effect is staggering.
Today I see math anywhere I see symmetry, which is in many ways the core of the human
notion of beauty. I see it anytime I see repetition and order, anytime I see perspective in art,
whether accurate or not, and anytime I see idealized shapes and abstractions used as stand-ins for
the more messy objects and concepts in the everyday world. The challenge it seems is to fail to
see math in art.