arthipstory

I’m about to connect some weird dots, but GO WITH ME on this. It’s like Chopped: In this post, you must use The Golden Ratio, the Mona Lisa, and Jay Z.

• Golden Ratio: First, a quick math (!!!) lesson: The golden ratio is a special number found by diving a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is aso equal to the whole length divided by the longer part…For all those that need a good variable set, that’s a/b = (a +b) / a = 1.618You know who liked this Golden Ratio? Leonardo da Vinci.

   
Illustration of golden ratio, obviously.

• Leonardo da Vinci: No surprise that da Vinci loved math and was familiar with the Golden Ratio. There’s a lot of scholarship that looks at the Mona Lisa as a distinguished, mathematically-accurate artwork. If I show you, do I have to talk about it?

• Jay Z: Maybe my most favorite secret ingredient! So, Jay Z has a song called “Picasso Baby” on Holy Grail (ugh, I KNOW, I barely knew it too). He creates a pretty creative…but mainly expensive…laundry list of artworks in the song. But, just as Yonce has Parisians screaming at her in a car, Hova appropriates his own French conversation:

WOMAN: I have given and shown you everything, with nothing to hide. There you are, Ivy, like the nombre d’or… Jay, how do you say nombre d’or?

JAY: “The golden number.”

Boom, Hov, LOVE IT. Your daughter is sooo perfect, she imitates immaculate proportions! Take that, Iron Chef Guarnaschelli — I am your new Chopped Champion! I’ll be around to collect my 10K this week.