By publishing the manifesto of an artistic movement inspired by a mathematical approach, our magazine helped bring vector art to wider attention (see Tangente 144, pages 18–20, 2012). Avant-garde yet traditional, this movement—represented notably by the Scowcza collective—puts the line back at the heart of the composition. Resolutely linear in character, it combines arrangements of lines with the gestural and surface-based marks of painting to convey (in the vector sense of the term) the meaning of works known as vector paintings.
The primary aim of vector art is quite simply… to draw vectors! Its origins lie in "computer drawing on a plotter," which emerged in the 1960s and whose artistic applications at the time generally fell within geometric abstraction or conceptual figuration. In vector art, surface and volume exist only as extensions of the line.
Since 2012, Dominique Owczarski and Pierre Schmitt, who make up Scowcza, have created a vector-art sculpture awarded to the winner of the Bernard-Novelli Prize, an annual competition organized by Tangente for computer projects centered on games.
