Stellations of
Dodecahedrons in Art and Culture
Regular star polyhedra first
appear in Renaissance art. A small stellated dodecahedron is depicted in a
marble tarsia on the floor of St. Mark's Basilica, Venice, Italy, dating from
ca. 1430 and sometimes attributed to Paulo Ucello. Wenzel Jamnitzer published
his book of woodcuts Perspectiva Corporum Regularium in 1568. He depicts
the great dodecahedron and the great stellated dodecahedron - this second is
slightly distorted, probably through errors in method rather than ignorance of
the form. However there is no evidence that these artists understood the
regularity of such figures.
In the 20th Century, Artist
M. C. Escher's interest in geometric forms often led to works based on or
including regular solids; Gravitation is based on a small stellated
dodecahedron.
A dissection of the great dodecahedron was
used for the 1980s puzzle Alexander's Star. It is a great dodecahedron with 30
moving pieces in the style of a magic polyhedron, (the most famous of which is the
Rubik's Cube) which rotate in star-shaped groups of five around the outermost
vertices. The challenge of the puzzle is to get it to a state in which each
star is surrounded by five faces of the same color, and opposite stars are
surrounded by the same color; this is equivalent to solving just the edges of a
six-color Megaminx.
There are 29!×2^13 positions, or 7.2×1034
ALEXANDER’S STAR
Norwegian artist Vebjorn
Sands sculpture "The Kepler Star" is displayed at Oslo Airport,
Gardermoen. The star spans 14 meters, and consists of an icosahedron and a
dodecahedron inside a great stellated dodecahedron.