Geometry, Counter-Disciplinarity, and the Path to Cubism and Relativity in Buenos Aires, 1895–1918

The Argentine embrace of modern art and modern physics was pre-figured in indifferently-received lessons by two university professors active in the Rio de La Plata region during first decades of the twentieth century, the geometer-architect Claro Cornelio Dassen (1873–1941) in Buenos Aires and the artist-geometer Emilio (Emile Bonnet) Coutaret (1863–1949) in La Plata. The demands of Technology suppressed interest in their Non-Euclidean geometry, even with the recognition that Technology made use of geometry. Successful engineers and designers in Argentina resisted purchasing avant-garde painting, and until popularization of the eclipse results of 1919 the bourgeoisie there scarcely acknowledged a universe of curved space. During the early decades of the twentieth century, artists and mathematicians in Argentina engaged counter-disciplinary enterprise at the expense of cultivating their field of expertise, unlike the specialist dedication that guided Picasso’s easel-painting and Einstein’s theoretical physics. My aim is to clarify the counter-disciplinary currents that were inhospitable to Cubism and Relativity.