the influence of music on contemporary painting

        Timothy B. Layden     2007       

To understand the influence of music on painting, it is necessary to acknowledge a range of diverse associations that have developed between the two. As a painter I am primarily interested in how hearing has influenced painting. Nonetheless, I hope to give a holistic view of associations between music and painting. To do this, I will look at artistic, scientific, poetic and philosophical perspectives on the relationships between music and painting. Furthermore, I will explain some of the origins of sound/colour associations, how they have developed historically, how they are used in contemporary painting and how synesthesia and emotional experience are subjectively linked to artistic expression.

Some of the first records of sound/colour theories date back to ancient Greece. The way colour and sound could be measured in harmonious intervals fascinated ancient Greeks. Some believed colour was but a visual manifestation of sound. In the 4^th century BC, Archytas de Tarentum, introduced a semitone chromatic scale, suggesting it was a colouration of neighbouring scales (Gage J 1995: 227). Perhaps the most enduring musical scale is Pythagoras’s cycle of fifths and a diatonic scale with 8 notes. Based on his music theory, Aristotle developed a colour-music scale of balanced mixtures of black and white (Gage J 1993: 228). Despite a decline in interest in sound/colour theories during the middle ages[1] Aristotle’s system was widely recognized until the 17th century. During the Renaissance an enthusiasm for colour/music theories reappeared. At this time, music was admired as a supreme art, seeming to influence the spirit more immediately than any other. This inspired musical themes in painting, e.g. in 1563 Paolo Veronese painted The Feast at Cana, wherein he depicted himself and other painters as musicians for the feast. In 1558, Gioseffo Zarlino transferred musical consonances to colors (Jewanski J 1999: 163-169), and in 1613 François de Aguilon published his Opticom Libri Sex, explaining colour harmonies based on this diagram. Around 1580, Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted harmonic color combinations on a sheet of paper and let a musician play them (Jewanski J 1999: 170-179), and in 1650, Marin Cureau de la Chambre adopted Aristotle’s color system and transferred it to fifths, fourths and octaves in music (Jewanski J 1999: 222-227).

In the last third of the 17th century[2] Isaac Newton established a new color theory, which was based on a purely physical manifestations. In a darkened room he used a prism to bend a single stream of light coming though a pinprick hole, and causing it to cast a rainbow colour spectrum of light on a dark screen. In 1670/72 he devided the spectrum in five colors, in 1672 even in eleven colors. To make the proportions of the colors more elegant and balanced, he went back to five colors and enlarged them to seven. He then devided these seven colors into the spectrum as the seven tones would devide the octave. In 1675 he transferred, inside a dorian scale, the syllables solmisation sol–la–fa–sol–la–mi–fa–sol on the spectrum, and with this he could compare not single tones and single colors, but tone intervals and widths of colours (Jewanski J 1999: 229-264). Newton’s theory on a combination of colours and musical tones, along with other similar theories of the 17th century, inspired Louis-Bertrand Castel to design the clavecin oculaire, an ocular harpsichord to project coloured light with musical notes; a huge technical feat, as well as a fire hazard, Castel struggled for decades with no apparent success beyond design[3]. After Castel efforts to create coloured music persisted, including in the work of Erasmus Darwin, who in 1789 wrote on  "luminous music". However, the projection of coloured light as an extra-musical[4] wasn’t feasible until after the invention of the electric light bulb, after which a progression of techniques has lead us to the impressive laser light shows we now take for granted[5]. 

Despite Newton’s efforts, the subjective experiences of artists tended to differ not only from Newton’s assertions, but also from one another’s, as Guy Murchie noted in The Seven Mysteries of Life:

“…Bach saw E flat as a grey tone and B flat as greenish yellow, while Shubert saw E flat as a reddish gold and B flat as simply green..” (Murchie G., 1975:195 – 196).

Or the British psychologist Myers who wrote on a conversation with Scriabin:

“…whereas to him [Scriabin] the key of F# major appears violet, to Rimsky Korsakov it appears green…” (Myers, 1914, p.7).

In contrast to Newton, in 1799, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published The Temperament Vane, which was a colour wheel comparing colours to emotional temperaments: choleric, Red to orange; Melancholic, Red to Purple; Sanguine: Yellow to Green; Phlegmatic, blue to Purple.  In 1808, Philipp Otto Runge published a colour sphere  with its bottom pole black and its top pole white, between which he showed a slow gradations of the colour spectrum in various “octaves”, associating darkness with lower octaves and lightness with higher octaves. These associations more closely reflect the subjective experience of art than previous assertions, and have been greatly influential since the romantic era.

Also from the romantic era of the 19^th century, two romantic poems, known for their synesthetic themes and influence were Baudelaire’s Universal Analogies, which remarked that all senses could be translated through one universal sense:

“…Beyond the dawn of day or dead of night,

All scents, all sounds and colours correlate.”  (Baudelaire, 1997: 19)

and Rimbaud’s Vowels, which compared vowel sounds to colours and emotional states:

“One day, you vowels, how you come to be and whence.

A, black, the glittering of flies that form a dense,

Velvety corset round some foul and cruel smell…” (Bernstein J. M. 1993: 238)

The end of the 19^th century saw a booming interest in theosophy; a school of philosophy founded under the principle that “there is no religion higher than truth” [6]. One method of Theosophy is to find links between different kinds of “knowledge”, e.g. Newton’s colour scale, Pythagoras’s harmony of the sphere’s, Hindu coloured chakras[7] and the myth of Prometheus[8], the rebellious Greek god revered and punished for giving fire to humanity. In homage of Prometheus and based on theosophical associations between colour, sound and spiritual truths, The composer Scriabin, wrote Poem of Fire, Opus 60 (1910/11), which, in New York City in 1915, became the first successful coloured-music performance ever done for a large audience[9]. Speaking on Scriabin in his award wining book Colour and Culture, John Gage mentioned Scriabin’s awakening to coloured-music associations with Rimski-Korsakov[10]:

“Scriabin was something of a Synesthete and had discovered this gift at a concert in the company of Rimsky-Korsakov when they agreed that a piece in D major appeared yellow.” (Cage 1995: 243)

While Scriabin composed Poem of Fire, the Czech painter, Frântiçec Kupka was experimenting with music in painting. Inspired colour theory from Herman von Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics (1867) he Painted Piano/Keyboard Lake (1909). In this he painted a major third being played on a piano keyboard, fragmenting into light shimmering on the surface of a lake, which  is dominated by the colour of the note being played. Kupka was probably aware of Poincaré’s Homoclic Tangle[11] (1892); an early geometrical interpretation of chaos theory. Based on a series of studies of dynamic movements of his stepdaughter playing with a red-and-blue ball in the garden of their home he developed the first modern abstract painting, Amorpha Fugue in Two Colours (1910), initiating a new era of pure painting, absent of objective theme, where the laws of colour and form could be more closely related to the rhythm and harmony of music. Kupka titled this painting with the musical theme Amorpha, Fugue in Tow Colours.   He later wrote wrote:

“By using a form in various dimensions and arranging it according to rhythmical considerations, I will achieve a ‘symphony’ which develops in space as a symphony does in time.” (Maur K., 1999: 46)

This move to abstraction was directly linked to ancient Greece. After Amorpha Fugue in Two Colours was exhibited in 1912, Kupka was declared the head of a new movement known as Orphism. Orphism comes from the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, who used music to convince Hades[12] to free his wife, Euripides, from the underworld. The only condition was that Orpheus was not to look behind to see if his wife was following as he lead her out of the underworld or she would not be allowed to return with him. Tragically, Orpheus looked, and lost Euripides forever. He expressed his sorrow of this through beautiful music he played as he wandered aimlessly. In his wanderings he came across frenzied worshippers of Dionysus, or maenads[13], who, lost in intoxication and enthralled by Orpheus’s music, tore his body limb from limb and cast his head, still singing, into a river. This is a metaphor for the integration of music and nature.  The ancient orphic sect, to which Pythagoras belonged, taught that sound and music are the origin of all things. Modern orphic painting is based on geometric rhythms and bold colour harmonies representing pure creative energy. Two important modern orphic painters were the French artists, Sonia and Robert Delauney. Sonia’s

Electric Prism (1914) is a prime example of orphic painting:  a kaleidoscope of harmonious colours circle series of central points, representing the inspiring force of creative energy. Robert painted similar themes and furthered his ideas of musical harmony in painting with the principle of simultaneity[14]. He stated:

“The Laws of Painting are based on transparencies of colour that can be compared to the musical tones.”

 (Moszynska A., 1990: 38)

In the 1910’s, musical analogies in abstract painting appeared first in Europe and later in America; especially with the Armory Show in  New York in 1913. Perhaps the most renowned for this was Wassily Kandinsky, who believed music is carried within everyone and all human activity is based on an inner harmony. He propounded his beliefs in his influential publication On the Spiritual in Art (1912). He was greatly inspired in Goethe, theosophy and music, particularly that of  Arnold Schönberg, with whom he developed a strong friendship and correspondence regarding art theory. In 1911 he wrote to Schönberg stating:

“In your compositions you carry that which I, in uncertain terms,  have longed for …your composition is precisely what I am looking for in my painting“ (Moszynska A., 1990: 43).

Kandinsky prolifically collaborated in interdisciplinary art projects: from 1908 to 1911 he worked with Thomas von Hartmann on the theatrical performance The Yellow Sound; In 1928 he painted set designs for Mussorgsky’s 1874 piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. In 1912 he collaborated in Der Blaue Reiter, with Arnold Schönberg and members of the New Association of Artists of Munich; a publication which stated new theories in art referring to cross sensory experience and expression. These mutual efforts were fundamental in broadening the use of cross sensory associations in the arts which could be linked to synesthetic experience. Regarding synesthetic experiences, Kandinsky described felling ecstatic emotion and seeing vividly moving colours while listening to Wagner’s Lohengrin.

 Kandinsky was probably not a synesthete, as recently pointed out by the art historian Gottdang (Gottdang A 2005: 371-390), and music historian Jorg Jewanski (Jewanski J, 2006: 202-208). Nonetheless, what is most interesting about the reported case of Kandinsky’s synesthetic experience was its occurrence coinciding with a state of emotional ecstasy provoked through his involved perception of art. In his 1993 account of researching synesthesia the neuropsychologist R. E. Cytowic stated:

“The emotion and sense of certitude that accompany synesthetic experience made me think of that transitory change in self-awareness that is known as ecstasy. Ecstasy is any passion by which the thoughts are absorbed and in which the mind is, for a time, lost.” (Cytowic, 1993: 78)

Such ecstatic experience was what Kandinsky and his colleagues wanted to find in their work. They were driven by a desire for a new age when art could express pure, immaterial, spirit. Pure sensory experience and expression was thought of as a path to divine ecstasy.

At the same time, The futurist movement also sought ecstatic synesthetic force in abstract painting. In addition to their  spiritual influences, they were inspired in a new mechanical age. They affirmed:

“…PAINTING OF SOUNDS, NOISES AND OUDORS DEINIES…Greys, browns…The right angle…The cube [and] WANTS…Reds, Reeeds that screeeeeeeam…greeeeeens the shrieeek…”  (Cassidy D. M. 1997: 42)

Futurist painting is strong in visual symbols used to represent sound:

Giacomo Balla translated sounds of automobiles into visual symbols; futurist musician, painter and  founder of The Art of Noise, Luigi Russolo [15] painted a work entitled Music, wherein serpentine lines represent flowing music, and colourful faces flying towards its centre, the ecstatic emotions of listeners.

The English movement Vorticism, visualized music through abstract representations of dance.

The spokesperson for the vorticists, Ezra Pound declared:

“The vorticists use form as a musician uses sound” (Moszynska A., 1990: 95).

At the dawn of western abstract painting, Picasso and Braque developed the ground breaking movement Cubism. Cubism was based on recent theories of physics and harmony[16] at the beginning of the 20^th century. Furthermore music was a common theme in Cubism, often represented in still-life images of musical instruments. Speaking on music in cubism, the art historian Jean Laude stated:

painting

 “A [visual] sign does not disclose itself without its specific hue, configuration, or material character – it cannot be abstracted form the context in which it is inscribed, or better, in which it is ‘scored’.” (Maur K.1999: 61)

I also see a correlation between Cubism and synesthesia in their unifying nature, which may be compared with the way in which a newborn might see the world, blending perceptions and forms into one whole. This could also be related to childlike creativity, which does not yet recognize many of the boundaries between perceptions laid out through learned cultural references.  It is curious to note that Picasso saw childlike creativity[17] as superior to that of academic practice. A soft spoken, yet informed intellect, in this, Picasso was possibly resounding sentiments of the prominent 20^th century psychologist, C. G. Jung who stated that:

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves” (Cameron J., 1992, 19)

A major obstacle in painting music was visualising its progression through time. To surpass this painter’s often used rhythmic patterns the eye could follow, like a musical score. In 1920 the abstract expressionist, Rodchenko stated that rhythm determines all structure and spatial relations (Maur K. 1999: 82). Miró was deeply influenced by music, and developed a series of rhythmic sound symbols he encrypted into his paintings, (Corbella,1993:26-27). Inspired in European movements, American artists developed unique styles and techniques for painting rhythm. The Synchromists used contrasting combinations of complimentary colours to create rhythm and transitional harmony.

They believed if they liberated themselves from compositional constraints they could create paintings as intensely experiential as music. Inspired in what they saw as the music of the modern American city,

John Marin and Joseph Stella created images they described as urban polyphony based on rhythms of modern American architecture.

Shortly after the advent of abstract painting, came a music that would have an effect like no other before: jazz. Though jazz is now seen as a sophisticated art, in its beginnings it was often seen as primitive, rebellious, uncivilized and irrational. The palatable, physical sensuality of Jazz contested intellectual theory. It became part of a revolution against authority, convictions and tradition, and offered an escape from the suffering of the wars and economic depression. In contrast, it seemed to carry the rhythm of modern life. The roots of jazz are in black America, and jazz has been a conduit for black American identity and success.

Two painters who worked from this standpoint were Aaron Douglas and Romare Bearden, who lead the way in creating rhythmic images of Jazz environments that black American’s could relate to. Though, inclusively,  jazz became an international art, beyond race, creed and nationality. The European dadaist painter, Francis Picabia was Inspired in early Jazz to paint Cansón Negro (1913), which he exhibited in New York,  bringing European musical analogy in painting to America. In doing this he inspired much American abstract painting

. Another important European abstract painter who found inspiration in jazz was Piet Mondrian. A theosophist, Mondrian felt artists were instruments for natural creativity to work through. Spiritually driven by the rhythms of jazz, he painted a series based on the foxtrot dance  while working with De Stijl in Europe. He spent the last two years of his life (1941-2) in New York, where he frequented jazz clubs and painted representations of Boogie Woogie jazz and blues.

In post WWII America, Abstract Expressionism and jazz music broke down old, and evolved entirely new, values of aesthetics almost simultaneously, thereafter allowing artists a new sense of freedom of expression through improvisation. Miles Davis declared there were no mistakes in improvisational jazz, rather just new notes. The American abstract expressionist, Jackson Pollock gave us unique visual representations of sound through improvised painting. He often listened to improvisational jazz while dancing around and dribbling paint over canvases to create naturally rhythmic lines.

The American composer Earle Brown said Pollock’s work brought him to discover musical forms at random, allowing him to create more accessible compositions.

 By exploring musical experience in painting, improvisation and  free form creativity, painters have succeeded in visualizing not only their experiences of music, but also their basic, subjective, multi-sensory and synesthetic experiences. The number of painters and movements that have gone beyond single sensory experience, into synesthetic expression is too numerous to go into here. Nevertheless, with  the large quantity of research into synesthesia that has taken place over the past thirty years hitherto, we now recognize the differences between Synesthetes who consistently experience acute synesthesia, and non-synesthetes who, though might have an intellectual understanding of cross sensory associations, do not experience do not regularly experience acute synesthesia[18]. Considering this, it is fair to say that the majority of artists who develop synesthetic art are non-synesthetes. Nonetheless, I see the abundance of diverse, cross sensory associations in contemporary art as evidence of the fundamental, subjectively synesthetic aspect of the human experience. Inspired in Kandinsky’s On the Spiritual in Art , Georgia O’Keefe painted a series musical paintings. In her book on Synesthesia, Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens (2001), Patricia Duffy wrote her views on O’Keefe’s musical painting saying:

“O’Keefe…was moved to translate music into ‘something for the eye’. While I’ve found no evidence to suggest that O’Keefe was a synesthete, her colour-paintings suggest a wish to explore music in the context of her own visual medium of colour, shape and texture.”  (Duffy, P.L., 2001: 100)

Speaking of her musical paintings O’Keefe  stated:

“I didn’t paint it listening to music, It’s my own tune…what I wanted to express was the wonderful feeling music gives me.” (Cassidy D. M., 1997: 42)

Finding the words to describe the differences between what something ‘is’, and how one ‘experiences’ it, can be difficult. Writing on hearing in A Natural History of the Senses (1990) Diana Ackerman suggests that:

“We need words to corral what we feel and think; they allow us to reveal our inner lives to one another, as well as exchange goods and services. But music is a controlled outcry from the quarry of emotions all humans share. Though most foreign words must be translated to be understood, we instinctively understand whimpering, crying, shrieking, joy, cooing, sighing and the rest of our caravanning cries and calls.”  (Ackerman D 1990: 213-214)

Comparing Ackerman’s thoughts on music to painting, I believe while figurative painting shows clear representations of objects and people in set situations, cultural references in painting, i.e. iconography or symbolism, can be easily misunderstood from one cultural standpoint to another. Though, if we disregard preconceived ideas, the emotional intensity of an abstract painting can be instinctively felt (understood). 

The difference in emotional reactions from one person to another to any given thing (artwork, situation, idea, etc) is what makes one unique, and puts subjectivity at the apex of what defines one’s experiences. As synesthesia is linked to emotional experience as much as it is to physical perception, art inspired in synesthesia is equally so, and, therefore, strongly subjective. The sense of the beauty attained in intensely emotional experiences can be felt when a work of art is ultimately successful. In contemporary painting, this can be seen in abstract paintings on synesthetic experience, like those of Mark Safan or Carol Steen, as well as in figurative paintings by synesthetic painters, like David Hockney’s. This can also be seen in work by non-synesthetic artists who may not be consciously attempting to paint from a synesthetic stance, but are rather exploring a pure and free experience of painting; as in the brightly coloured cacophonies of organic forms in the paintings by Beatriz Milhazes, the exploding superimposed currents of human life depicted by Julie Mehretu or the abstract rhythms of contrasting colours and geometrical patterns by Udomsak Krisanamis.

In my own painting, I am often inspired in the rhythms (patterns) of life, as well as,  sensations aroused in me through listening to, and playing, music. By loosening my mind of set ideas of form and sound, these become one in the same. When I am painting I often feel as if I am moving within a physical form of sound and colour. The paint I apply to a canvas appears to me as tracks I leave behind on my journey. I realize these are subjective sensations resulting from bringing my personal emotional experience out of myself and into the physical world through art. Though it may be difficult for on viewers to fully understand my subjective experience as an artist, for it is somewhat ineffable, I hope they are able to find connections between my work and their own personal emotional experience.  Reflecting on this, I agree with David Hockney in his response to Richard Cytowic, when asked to comment on his experience of synesthesia with music while painting:

“you’re asking me to describe verbally feelings which in art you sometimes don’t have to bother. You feel it. Verbalizing them is often impossible and unnecessary.”  (Cytowic R E, 2003: 316)

Hence why artists avail of the non-verbal means they have developed to express themselves. At the same time, there is no one way right way to interpret a work of art. Also, much of our experience of art evades intellectual interpretations and resides within inexplicable, yet innate, understanding.  Reflecting on the subjective nature of art and synesthesia

Cytowic stated:

“Satisfying art is a product of deep knowledge and understanding within the artist. It is true that art is informed by the intellect and with acquired technique. But the function of the artists is to penetrate the visible world and illuminate the mystery behind it. That mystery is a ground of universal truth that supports the human condition. If successful, the artist’s expression resonates within the inner life of the reader, viewer, or listener who experiences what I have called an intuitive recognition. ” (Cytowic, 1993: 217)

Though I have focussed this paper on associations between seeing and hearing in music and painting, I feel that

to speak of any sensory experience in isolation from the other senses can distort our understanding of it by removing it from its context. Though we have five distinct senses, they all come together as one in our experience of feeling. On that note, I will leave you with the words of the Chilean painter Roberto Matta, whose paintings, for me, express synesthetic realities found deep in the subconscious:

“The heart is an eye!

… form cannot be explained, it is created.

If the universe is alone, a web must exist that entwines all phenomena, that, at the same time, are entwined with the elements which make up the human body. Whomever feels his own body, feels the world, its dissonance and harmony

... Art can reanimate the reality of nature in human nature… If humans have evolved from monkeys than they will become grace…

A Musical system of astonishing relationships of a new humanism”  (Amasatevi, 1991: 4)

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