truth
I too like the music analogy. I once answered the question "What is that? given to me by an elderly classical musician referring to an abstract painting in my house with "It's visual music". He repsonded with a simple "Oh...yes." The only problem with the analogy is that it must not go too far. A painting does not HAVE to have the same strict adherence to rhythm characteristic of music (at least until recently), and music does not have to evoke images.
That's absolutely right, J. L. but I do find some abstract paintings do have rhythm. It goes back, I guess, to Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogy." I also guess it's the temporal action of the artist's gestures that can produce a sense of rhythm even though it's not a word generally associated with a painting. A ballet is dance that is really a moving painting for me.
Any wonder that Philip Glass developed minimal music alongside minimal art? That impressionistic painting developed alongside impressionistic music? There are undeniable correlations.
I think it may have been John Cage who ascribed musical notes to certain colours in abstract compositions.....He, of course, was a "musician"
following in the footsteps of the Dadaist Duchamp......
truth
LW, I find ballet--particularly duets--a source of wonderful lyrical images similar to those of some kinds of painting and sculpture. Yes, undenial correlations, which I've never thought about.
SP, I appreciate how you put JC's role of musician in quotes.
Lightwizard wrote:It's straight out of music and Bach. Abstract art is the closest the visual arts have come to music, especially jazz because of its improvisational nature. No accident that it developed along with jazz right up to the progressive and acid jazz movements.
lightW; can you imagine the Goldberg Variations as a series on canvas?
wouldn't you love to light it?
shepaints wrote:I think it may have been John Cage who ascribed musical notes to certain colours in abstract compositions.....He, of course, was a "musician"
following in the footsteps of the Dadaist Duchamp......
one can 'hear' "nude ascending a staircase" by Duchamp!
Re: truth
JLNobody wrote:.....SP, I appreciate how you put JC's role of musician in quotes.
John Cage heralded the beginning of 'conceptual music'!
Well I suppose JC was to classical music, what
a tank of sharks and formaldehyde is to traditional
art!
good place to put "tradition"!
(into a tank of sharks and formaldehyde!)
art is (if anything) about the future!
....except that the minute it is created, it belongs
to the past!
True, but obviously there was an audience for it.
BoGoWo picked up on the genre of art which relied on a visual rhythm -- futurism.
lightW; you are too kind; unfamiliar with 'futurism' i agree with your previous allussions to the musicality of visual art, and i see all such art as being about 'rythm' as much as colour, and composition.
truth
As I said somewhere else, a noted composer and violinist, Raul Vidas, once told me that conceptual (the newest of "new") music is o.k. to read (i.e., intellectually interesting) but lousy to hear. How many people, do you think, are willing to "listen" to Cage's silent piano sonata (name?) more than once. Once they have gotten the point of the soundless piano work, there's no point in a return "hearing." One can listen to birds singing and trucks passing by any time. John Cage was a theorist who could not be a musician. Duchamp was a decent painter who morphed into a silly theorist.
BoGoWo, to me art belongs to the present. Futurism was a gimmick.
Duchamp was instrumental in the development of Futurism. Here's a brief review of the genre:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/f/futurism.html
jlN; i agree that Cage's 'silent' pieces do not require constant listening, and would not add greatly to the content of a CD.
But they do mark a point of transitional thinking in the emotional voyage of remaking art to reflect that 'present' of yours, and thereby haul us (kicking and screaming) into the future.
Yes, Duchamp was indulging in some silliness (Ayn Rand also come to mind in drifting from their mindset and philosophy into that direction) but he contributed more to modern art than nearly any other artist of the 20th century. Rauschenberg and Johns both come out of Duchamp. Christo comes out of Duchamp. I could go on but try to name artists influenced by PIcasso(aside from those aping his art like the young girl artist whose name thankfully escapes me now), Dali, Chagall, and on and on. Hans Hoffman and perhaps Jackson Pollock are the only ones I can think of. Duchamp was a visual satirist in some works and explored futurism and optical art as well.
thanks for the link lightW;
some of those works were indeed interesting from a energetic point of view, and i couldn't help thinking of many sculptures such as Calder's, where movement is not only present by design, but also random in nature creating a transitoriness in all views of the works.
Calder use form and motion but I'm not sure one could find a true rhythm to the work. Maybe if you put one of his mobiles into a tradewind.
depends on what you're willing to 'trade' for :wink:
