The golden section in art


The golden section has been used in art since antiquity. The ground plan of the Parthenon in Athens is a rectangle with the ratio 5 : 1, and the facade is built around a rectangle with the the golden section as the proportion between area and height (the golden rectangle).


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The golden rectangle
Great artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) used the golden section when composing their pictures.
In our own time, Le Corbusier can be mentioned in the field of architecture.
Bartók
A composer such as Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was very taken up by the golden section when writing his music. The golden proportion can be found in the harmonies, in which the structure of the intervals sometimes reflects the principles behind the Fibonacci sequence (see the explanation of this). The harmonies create an acoustic space, but time is also divided according to golden proportions. Very often the culmination of a movement in Bartók's music is not in the middle of the piece, but somewhat past the middle - so that the whole movement is divided according to the golden proportion.

Bartók is not recorded as having spoken about this himself, but the golden section can often be found in his works, and this cannot be a coincidence. Incidentally, this point is explained in Ernö Lendvai's very detailed analyses of Bartók's music. See, for example, Béla Bartók - an analysis of his Music (London 1971).