Paul Klee,Himself a practicing violist and a very good judge of musical performance, Klee could take the idea of music by the hand and lead it onto terrain that art had never explored before. In paintings like ''Scherzo With 13,'' lent to Stuttgart by the Museum of Modern Art, and ''Tannhauser,'' lent by the Philadelphia Museum, music and art are truly one. We look at the painting and, exceptionally, we seem to hear the music, just as we do when we look at the Titian ''Concert'' in the Louvre, or when Antoine Watteau occupies himself with the specifics of musical performance. It was not affectation that led an English critic, the late Robin Ironside, to write in 1941 that ''the art of Paul Klee is heard before it is seen.''
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Ye s I was also wondering about the name "Painting Music' and after you asked me i went on the net to find out something more ....
In the past 100 years music has played a
tremendously important role in the stylistic
development of visual art. It has created
impetus and inspiration for those artists
wishing to produce a pure and transcendental
art form. Music has also been used as an
analogy or metaphor in artistic expression.
By listening to music and emulating it in their
work, artists have discovered unconventional
techniques in their art-making approach.
The music and art connection can best be
described in the late 19
th century concept ofsynaesthesia
or the blending of senses. The ideameans that sensory perception of one kind
can manifest itself as a sensory experience of
another. Color was considered a core element
in sensory perception and in seeing color it has
been asserted that one hears certain sounds.
As with music, color can act directly upon the
emotions.
The Swiss artist Paul Klee explored the laws
of color harmony in relation to musical
harmony. An accomplished violinist, Klee used
polyphony
or harmonized multiple voices, as amodel for painting. Using a small format Klee
rendered nature by using gradations of color
and repetitions of shapes to give a sense of
unfolding parallel to music.
Paul Klee,Himself a practicing violist and a very good judge of musical performance, Klee could take the idea of music by the hand and lead it onto terrain that art had never explored before. In paintings like ''Scherzo With 13,'' lent to Stuttgart by the Museum of Modern Art, and ''Tannhauser,'' lent by the Philadelphia Museum, music and art are truly one. We look at the painting and, exceptionally, we seem to hear the music, just as we do when we look at the Titian ''Concert'' in the Louvre, or when Antoine Watteau occupies himself with the specifics of musical performance. It was not affectation that led an English critic, the late Robin Ironside, to write in 1941 that ''the art of Paul Klee is heard before it is seen.''