The Oakes Twins Ode to Oakes

LA Book Review Jan 07, 2015

ARISTOTLE ENVISIONED a celestial universe of 55 crystalline spheres concentrically organized around the earth, each carrying a planet along its orbit by the angular momentum of the outermost ring, the Prime Mover, made of nothing but divine motion. Ptolemy advanced the notion of epicycles and deferents, the planets revolving like gears along a universe still cycling, like clockwork cranked on the axle of our planet. Copernicus took his last leave of the earth in 1543 looking on the pages of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, espousing a universe oriented on the sun, the heliocentrism that Galileo would suffer his final nine years under house arrest to defend. Against the linear progression of astronomy, artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes have returned the universe to the glory of spheres, centering it not merely on the earth, but on the eye.

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