Martin Kemp

Professor Martin Kemp was trained in Natural Sciences and Art History at Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute, London. He was British Academy Wolfson Research Professor (1993-98) and is currently Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford, having spent most of his previous career in Scotland (Universities of Glasgow and St. Andrews). He has researched the art, science and technology of Leonardo on an extensive basis, resulting in his first monograph, Leonardo da Vinci. The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (1981 and 1989, winner of the Mitchell Prize), and in the major exhibition, Leonardo da Vinci, at the Hayward gallery, London, in 1989. His most recent book on Leonardo was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press. He is the moving spirit behind the Universal Leonardo in 2006, which involves events and exhibitions across Europe. The continuing theme of his research has been the relationship between scientific models of nature and the theory and practice of art. This has primarily involved the sciences of optics, anatomy and natural history in various key episodes in the history of artistic naturalism from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Increasingly, it has concerned issues of visualization, modelling and representation in science and art. The culmination of the optical researches is The Science of Art. Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (Yale University Press, 1990 and 1992). Related topics from natural history and from natural history and the "hard" sciences are being explored in a book written during his five years as British Academy Wolfson Research Professor, Seen and Unseen. Visual Angles on Art and Science (OUP). His main period researches have involved the Renaissance, summarised in Behind the Picture. Art and Evidence in the Italian Renaissance (1997), with ancillary areas of research in British and French art c. 1750-1830, in early photography and contemporary art. He writes regularly about living artists as well and is also editor and part-author of The Oxford History of Western Art. The broad thrust of his more recent work is devoted to a "New History of the Visual," which embraces the wide range of artefacts from science, technology,and the fine and applied arts that have been devised to create models of nature and to articulate human relationships with the physical world. A scientific diagram or computer graphic model of a molecule is as relevant to this new history as a painting by Michelangelo. Direct expressions of this vision are to be found in the Centre for Visual Studies founded in Oxford and in the series on Art and Science, Science and Image, and Science in Culture in his regular columns in Nature, the first two years of which were published in book form as Visualizations. The 'Nature' Book of Science and Art. With Marina Wallace he has founded Artakt, which undertakes exhibition work and consultancy. They have worked together on many projects including curating a major exhibition in 2000-1, Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now, at the Hayward Gallery, London, with an accompanying book, and a follow-up show in 2006 on representations of sex. He has broadcast extensively in various public media, including major exhibitions, radio (interviews with artists, "Today", "Night Waves", etc.), television (programmes on Piero della Francesca, Leonardo, etc.), and via the new technologies (e.g., a video for the National Gallery, Washington, and a Leonardo CD-ROM for Bill Gates).