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  • Mathematical Paintings of Crockett Johnson
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Mathematical Paintings of Crockett Johnson

Resources

American History Museum

Selected Works of David Crockett Johnson

Barnaby, New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1943.

Barnaby and Mr. O’Malley, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1944.

Harold and the Purple Crayon, New York: Harper 7 Row, 1955.

“A Geometrical Look at vp,” Mathematical Gazette, 54 (Feb 1970): 59-60.

“On the Mathematics of Geometry in My Abstract Paintings,” Leonardo, 5 (1972): 97-101.

“A construction for a regular heptagon,” Mathematical Gazette, 17 (March 1975): 17-21.

Papers of Crockett Johnson, Mathematics Collections, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

Correspondence in the Harley Flanders Papers, Mathematics Collections, National Museum of American History.

Correspondence in the Ad Reinhardt Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Selected Works about Crockett Johnson

Stephanie Cawthorne and Judy Green, “Cubes, Conic Sections, and Crockett Johnson,” Convergence, vol. 11, 2014. https://old.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/cubes-conic-sections-and-crockett-johnson-introduction

Stephanie Crawthorne and Judy Green, “Harold and the Purple Heptagon,” Math Horizons (September 2009): 5-9.

Philip Nel, “Crockett Johnson and the Purple Crayon: A Life in Art,” Comic Art, 5 (2004): 2-18.

Philip Nel. Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: A Biography, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, in preparation.

James B. Stroud, “Crockett Johnson's Geometric Paintings,” Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, 2 #2 (June 2008): 77-99.

For a more detailed bibliography and further information, see the Crockett Johnson Web site created and maintained by Philip Nel.

Credits

This introduction and the accounts of Crockett Johnson paintings given below have benefited from insights of Uta C. Merzbach, Judy Green, J. B. Stroud, Philip Nel, Mark Kidwell, Emmy Scandling, and Joan Krammer.


Painting - Problem of Delos Constructed from a Solution by Isaac Newton (Arithmetica Universalis)

Painting - Division of the Square by Conic Rectangles

Painting - Aligned Triangles (Desargues)

Painting - Golden Rectangle

Painting - Geometric Mean (Archytas)

Painting - Square Roots of One, Two and Three

Painting - Squared Lunes (Hippocrates Of Chios)

Painting - Squared Lunes (Hippocrates Of Chios)

Painting - Cross Ratio in an Ellipse (Poncelet)

Painting -Seventeen Sides (Gauss)

Painting - Law of Motion (Galileo)

Painting - Rotated Triangle and Reflections

Painting - Morley Triangle

Painting - Nine-Point Circle

Painting -Law of Orbiting Velocity (Kepler)

Painting - Numbers in a Spiral

Painting - Parabolic Triangles (Archimedes)

Painting - Duality (Pascal-Brianchon)

Painting - Pi Squared and Its Square Root

Painting - Doubled Cube (Newton)

Painting - Equal Triangles

Painting - Squares of 2, 4, 16 from Square Root of x

Painting - Square Root of Pi

Painting - Equal Areas, Their Triangular Square Root and Pi

Painting - Square Root Of Pi - 0.00001

Painting - Biblical Squared Circles

Painting - Squared Rectangle and Euler Line

Painting - Area and Perimeter of a Squared Circle

Painting - Velocities and Right Triangles (Galileo)

Painting - Squares of 1, 2, 3, 4 and Square Roots to 8

Painting - Law of Orbiting Velocities

Painting - Square Root of Pi

Painting -Approximation of Pi to .0001

Painting - Euclidian Values of a Squared Circle

Painting - Star Construction


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