“Homage in the Squares”

I have found that artists often think that scientists believe art to be useless. As a former scientist turned artist, I wanted to use this double fallacy as the basis for a piece of work.

Superficially, this periodic table is unchanged. The element symbols atomic numbers, groups, and period numbers are all as they should be, but each group represents some new class of artistic endeavour, examples of which have been chosen to match the original symbols.

Atomic weights have been replaced with a piece of information about the new "element". The piece is inspired by Simon Patterson's The Great Bear, which appears as element 32 in the "great works" group. Its symbol is in white, because it borrows from other work, as do all other white "elements"

There are many other references and connections throughout the piece.