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<\/a>Bright days. The grape harvest<\/strong>. Francisco Goya 1786<\/p><\/div>\n Trying times.The Repentant Saint Peter<\/strong>. Francisco Goya 1823<\/p><\/div>\n The guiding question in\u00a0our ten weeks together will be, “What is<\/span>\u00a0a virus?<\/em>”<\/p>\n Is\u00a0this a valid question? \u00a0How might we answer it?<\/p>\n Relying as we do on our senses, we may try to turn the question into something along the lines of “What does a virus look like?” or “What does a virus feel like to the touch?” \u00a0After all, our first\u00a0answer to the\u00a0question, “What is a tree?”\u00a0would be to give our\u00a0visual description of the trunk, limbs and leaves, or perhaps we might answer with\u00a0our\u00a0feeling and impression of the shade cast by a\u00a0tree on a sunny day.<\/p>\n But how can we use\u00a0our senses to\u00a0answer “What is a virus?” when an individual particle is too small to be seen by the naked eye, and the protein molecules of the capsid are tinier yet? \u00a0Sure, scientists commonly sketch pictures of viruses, but\u00a0aren’t the\u00a0rules that are typically\u00a0used to\u00a0depict molecular scale objects nothing more than\u00a0arbitrary choices, such as the convention\u00a0that carbon atoms are painted\u00a0black, oxygen atoms red, and so on? \u00a0How would you pick the “color” of virus that is physically too small to have any color?<\/p>\n If we\u00a0turn\u00a0the question\u00a0into a bulkier “What does a big\u00a0collection of viruses look like?”, then we may as well be asking, “What does a virus factory look like,” since the way to make a big collection of viruses is to have one of them infect a living cell and subvert its mechanisms toward rampant viral manufacture. \u00a0Is the art of a virus, therefore, the art of the infection? \u00a0Or for that matter, the art of the inoculation against the infection? \u00a0Gilbray showed us so in 1802 in his famous cartoon of early methods of vaccination.<\/p>\n The cow pock. James Gilbray 1802<\/p><\/div>\n There are many reasons for wanting to artistically depict a\u00a0virus.\u00a0Art meets science each time we are curious about the latest virus arriving on the world stage. We clearly need to know whether this year’s coronavirus “looks” like the SARS virus from the 2003 epidemic. \u00a0We need to know whether the proteins projecting from the surface of a virus are positioned in such away that they might serve as triggers for the body to fight off the infection because antibody molecules raised in the blood might bind to those surface proteins and interfere with the life cycle of the virus. \u00a0How can artistry and illustration best depict the details of those surface features to give a comprehensive “scientific view” of the invisible? \u00a0A similar need comes in needing to know the internal layout of a virus. \u00a0How is the lengthy RNA of the coronavirus so tightly packaged within a small diameter capsid?<\/p>\n Covid-19 virus. Watercolor. David Goodsell in the Sunday Washington Post (March 22), with commentary by Philip Kennicott<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n Could the devil, and a cure for the devil, be found in such intimate details.\u00a0What does it take to kill a virus? Soap? \u00a0Sunlight? Soap and water and sunlight?<\/p>\n The artist Angel Gilmour says, “The sciences and the arts are asking the same questions: who, and what, are we?” \u00a0Gilmour wants \u201cto make the viewer aware of the hidden imagery and architecture that exists all around them.” Can art help to unleash an awareness of the hidden details of the situation we are in, inspiring new ideas?<\/p>\n Boolean Logic.<\/a>a contemporary painting by Angela Gilmour.<\/p><\/div>\n Thanks to science, we know a lot about viruses. Let’s now go forward in this pandemic year to expand our understanding of the very human question of what a virus is<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The artistry challenge of 2020 This year as protein artists we will take up the challenge of making art inspired by viruses. \u00a0What could be more timely? \u00a0Art has always been inspired by both the joy and the turmoil in … Continue reading <\/a>Our main question this year<\/h1>\n
<\/a>Can we turn viruses into artwork?<\/h2>\n