#radiolarians

|Radiolarians|

These “snowflakes of the sea” are Radiolarians, a type of microscopic single-celled organism found in ocean waters. There exists a stunning diversity of geometric shapes found among the thousands of living and extinct species (which are easily fossilized). These protrusions are made of silica and are used for buoyancy and protection. 

Radiolarians themselves are not photosynthetic, but they often have symbiotic relationships with algae that live inside of their cells (which can easily be seen as the red/orange/yellow splotches in the cell). The algae provide a boost of energy, and in return the radiolarian provides protection. They’re no harmless vegetarians, though. Radiolarians can ensnare and envelop other plankton, even small crustaceans. The digested prey is also used as fertilizer for the symbiotic algae, and in times of starvation the host radiolarian can digest some of the algae as a last resort. We’d like to think that humans invented agriculture, but these guy have us beat by several hundred million years. 

René Binet took his inspiration for the entrance gate at the Exposition Universal in Paris, 1900, from Haeckel’s radiolarians

A new book by Taschen has gathered the art from Haeckel’s monographs on the taxonomy and anatomy of marine organisms. Both art book and textbook, The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel is coauthored by Rainer Willmann and Julia Voss, specialists in phylogenetics and German art history, respectively.

It was while preparing his research on radiolaria that Ernst Haeckel read On the Origin of Species in translation. In the varying forms and complexities of the radiolarians, Haeckel saw evidence for the diversification of species. His first book, Monographie der Radiolarien, was published in 1862, complete with thirty-five sumptuously engraved plates based on his drawings of 144 new species he had observed on his trip to Italy; with one eye to the microscope and one hand sketching what he saw, the speed and perfectionism of his renderings are extraordinary. The book, published for a mass audience, was a great success in Germany and abroad. The anatomist Max Schultze wrote of Radiolarien, “I find myself undecided as to whether to feel more astonished by nature itself and its capacity to bring forth such diversity and beauty of forms, or by the hand of the draughtsman in his ability to capture such magnificence on paper.”

Art Nouveau is crowded with the natural arabesques and patterns that seduced Ernst Haeckel. The crystalline structures of radiolaria made their way into the architecture of Antoni Gaudí, René Binet, and visibly into Bruno Taut’s Alpine Architecture, which imagined radiant utopian cities built of crystal and glass (one of Haeckel’s weirder treatises postulated that crystals possessed souls). The fluid forms of jellyfish charmed Klimt, whose women seem to swim across the canvas. Ghostly embryos haunt the works of Munch. The Surrealists found inspiration not only in the beauty of Haeckel’s images but in the darkness underlying them; Max Ernst’s biological distortions invoked an evolution toward not beauty but perversion.