Synopses & Reviews
This thoughtful and provocative book explores the relationship between music and the visual arts in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the modernist period. Reassessing the work of composers and artists such as Richard Wagner, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Josef Matthias Hauer, and John Cage, Simon Shaw-Miller argues that despite modernism's advocacy of media purity and separation, the boundaries between art and music were permeable at this time, as they have been throughout history.
Shaw-Miller begins by discussing the place of Wagner's music and ideas at the time of the birth of modernism, presenting Wagner's aesthetic of the Gesamtkunstwerk as an alternative paradigm for modernist art. He goes on to analyze Picasso's use of musical subjects in his cubist works and Klee's adoption of music and the issue of temporality in his paintings and drawings. He concludes with the radical aesthetic of Cage, the silencing of sound, and the promotion of intermediality in the work of Fluxus artists. Through these fascinating examples, Shaw-Miller raises questions about both art and music history that will be of interest to students of both disciplines.
Synopsis
This provocative book explores the cross-fertilization between music and the visual arts in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reassessing the work of a wide range of composers and artists including Richard Wagner, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and John Cage, Simon Shaw-Miller demonstrates how the boundaries between art and music were permeable at this time, enabling each to enrich the other.
Synopsis
A fascinating study of the relationship between music and visual art in a variety of media from around the world
Synopsis
This handsomely illustrated, interdisciplinary book on the mutual influence between visual art and music highlights key themes and presents new scholarship on under-studied artists and traditions from around the world.and#160;
Synopsis
The Art of Music is a handsomely illustrated and rich interdisciplinary look at the mutual influence between music and the visual arts across cultures and eras. The book sheds new light on more familiar artists at the intersection of the visual and the musical, such as Wassily Kandinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, and presents new scholarship on less well-known examples in the arts of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, from antique pottery to contemporary video and sound art. Essays consider key works and themes such as synesthesia and other formal and theoretical crossovers, motifs of musicians, and performative and ritual functions of music, musical instruments, and art. With more than 250 color images illustrating works of art in diverse traditions, The Art of Music offers enriching reading for scholars and general audiences alike.
About the Author
Patrick Coleman is an independent scholar.