Posted on 06/19/2006 7:27:51 AM PDT by Republicanprofessor
A new exhibition of Wassily Kandinsky's work shows how the artist used his synaesthesia - the capacity to see sound and hear colour - to create the world's first truly abstract paintings.
Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky is widely credited with making the world's first truly abstract paintings, but his artistic ambition went even further. He wanted to evoke sound through sight and create the painterly equivalent of a symphony that would stimulate not just the eyes but the ears as well. A new exhibition at Tate Modern, Kandinsky: Path to Abstraction, shows not only how he removed all recognisable subjects and objects from Western art around 1911, but how he achieved a new pictorial form of music.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
That's always intrigued me: the fact that artists and others have such different ideas on what colors should sound like and what sounds might look like. Kandinsky felt that yellow was a 'sharp' color like a triangle, but I always see yellow as round like a sun.
Then again, if you think about other issues in life, we all see the same event from multiple perspectives: politically, in relationships. Think of the variances in divorce alone.
So maybe the fact that we might 'see' or 'hear' some senses differently transferred to other senses shouldn't surprise us.
Looks like someone slammed a stained glass ball into the sidewalk.
I suggest that a great piece of art is self evident.
Okay, I acknowledge that my knowledge of abstract artwork is limited. So, let me just come right out and ask the obvious question. Is the black square supposed to be the boy, and the smaller red square the knapsack? Please let me know, 'cause I don't feel an "Ah hah" coming on.
No, I'm not trying to be sarcastic. Well, not entirely. :-) I do appreciate some abstract work that I've seen, but this is *way* out there. 
Overhead view of cubist rendering, I guess.
"I suggest that a great piece of art is self evident."
OK. I have no problem with that. A small image of a painting on the internet is not the piece of art. Further, the definition of what is "a great piece of art" is very subjective.
I have not seen "The Black Square," so I don't know what its impact is on the viewer. It might actually surprise you. I know that a number of paintings I wouldn't have given a second thought to, after seeing them reproduced in a book, had a very strong impact when seen in person.
Art is a subjective thing. Few generalizations apply.
but I could just be nitpicking too...
I often wonder if these big dollar "art" transactions aren't simply a cover for large dope deals.
Give the artist lots of dope and he will paint for you a triangle and a square, slightly off kilter. Yup, definitely a cover for large dope deals.
hehehe
What the robotic one says to me is that the light source illuminating the neck up comes from the left, and the light from the shoulders down comes from the right. It's a contradiction that, sadly for me, points to nothing in particular.
Cacophonies.
Couple of spotlights? But it looks like it's under an open sky.
"I suggest that a great piece of art is self evident.'
Yes, well, then I won't point out the plinth and support piece mistaken for art in the absence of the missing sculpture that was intended to be there. Mistaken by art museum curators themselves. Self-evident?
This pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question, "What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn't He have rested on that day too?"
This is especially true with people possessing relative or, as I have - perfect pitch.
When I write music that is happy or playful I usually write it in D-Major, because the overtones of D give it a bright quality like vivid blue or bright yellow. B, on the other hand, tends to be more solemn and lifeless, like a dull black while E tends to be unremarkable, like grey. B-flat is a key that's good for most anything, like white.
One of the best examples of key-coloring is the 4th movement of Beethoven's 9th. It's one of the reasons the work is so highly regarded by hardcore musicians. As Beethoven worked through his variations on the "Ode to Joy" theme, he modulated the composition to the key that best complimented the flavor of the variation: moving from the joyful, vivid F-sharp major in the initial exposition, to the key best suited for portraying contradictory feelings - B-flat major - in the tenor solo, which is a goofy musical joke at the start, but changes to serious power when the tenor and eventually, the male half of the chorus, comes in.
While I won't totally discount people seeing "musical color", I think it's probably far more rare than this article implies and I'm inclined to categorize this writing as the overblown mental masturbation that art reviewers usually engage in.
I will never, nor do I want to ever, appreciate modern "art".
___________
Why on earth would one express pride in intentionally keeping one's mind closed to something new?
The word appreciate, in this context, is not synonymous with "like", as in liking modern art.
I don't particularly care for "free jazz", a la Ornette Coleman, but I can certainly appreciate it for what it is - a musical movement that evolved out of something that came before.
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