Colors and music

100 years have gone by since a memorable concert took place in Vienna and this commemoration makes the exhibition at the Kampa Museum in Prague timely: "Abstraction and Atonality" presents three artists, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). It is a low key but powerful event. Small, early works from Kandinsky have been assembled, and it is a delight to look at his woodcuts, watercolors from 1911, 1913, with themes of his natal Russia, fairytales, horses running in the countryside, peasants and noblewomen. The progression to abstract culminates by the end of the exhibition with Impression V, 1911, a colorful oil painting.


Paintings from Schoenberg, the composer, occupy a whole room, self-portraits, hands and eyes, fascinating, bulging, like thoughts and brain were trying to escape the skull through the sockets. His paintings are dark, somber, romantic, with a flavor of Edward Munch. Schoenberg himself decided to curtail his painting and concentrate on his musical career.

Colors always stayed his subject when composing music and he created a musical scale of colors. This is well documented with scores of music like "Yellow Sound". The historical significance of these little pieces of paper cannot be enough emphasized. Schoenberg and Kandinsky's work cristallize the research in synesthesia.
How does Kupka fit in the exhibition? His works are on permanent display at the museum and this exhibition provides the occasion to show his paintings in a different light. Born in eastern Bohemia, he was trained at the Prague Art Academy and later at the Ecole des Beaux-Art in Paris, where he moved in his early twenties. He spent most of his productive life in Paris.

He was interested in using colors and free them from shapes, and his search for abstract develops in front of our eyes, with his colorwheels displayed at the exhibition. The guard, a very persuasive older lady "invited me" (pulled a chair and ordered me to sit) and brought a book in English about Kupka. Full of pride she pointed out to pages about the painter, photographs, and more. Kupka is one more artist brought back home, the Czech Republic is claiming its artists.

The exhibition assembled works from private collections, the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Kampa Museum which contains more than 200 paintings from Kupka.

Kampa Museum, photograph by the author

"Self-Portrait", Arnold Schoenberg, 1910

"The Kathedrala", Frantisek Kupka, 1912-1913

"Impression V", Wassily Kandinsky, 1911

dissonance and abstraction

At the NOMA's (New Orleans Museum of Art) bookstore, I came upon another treasure for a few dollars. My latest find is a book titled Schoenberg, Kandinsky , and the Blue Rider, published for the exhibition of the same name which took place at the Jewish Museum in NYC from October 24, 2003 till February 12, 2004.

Paintings from Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky and artists from the Blue Rider were exposed together, recreating the group's exhibitions before WWI.

One century ago, the 2Nd of January 1911, new compositions from Schoenberg were played in Munich. In the audience, Kandinsky and Franz Marc were listening...and Kandinsky was drawing. At the time, he was exploring synaesthesia ( the idea that senses were interrelated) and translated the music with colors in Composition III.

The 2Nd of January was followed by a fruitful relationship between the painter and the composer, who first exchanged letters and eventually met.

Along the five essays written by different authors, the reader will learn about the birth of abstraction in that part of the world, the personal lives of Schoenberg and Kandinsky and their inspirations.
Schoenberg himself was a painter. Trained by Gerstl, he was selling portraits at times to supplement his income. He produced oils and drawings for several years before WWI and after a few exhibitions decided that he was just an amateur. He concentrated on his musical career. Kandinsky was an admirer of his works and was painting the music of Schoenberg , who brought discordance, generating energy, creating thoughts, movements. A new era was born: abstraction and dissonance.

The book also describes the birth of the Blue Rider movement, its first exhibition and the publication of the Almanac.

The intellectual effervescence of the time and place was abruptly interrupted by four years of a brutish war. Franz Marc joined the Imperial Army and was killed in 1916, Kandinsky moved back to Russia and Schoenberg to Austria where shortly after the war, he was exposed to the anti- Jewish atmosphere. He moved to the States and Kandinsky eventually to Paris.

The two artists exchanges were very fertile. The book is a testimony to this. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of the relationship and its lasting influence on the art in the 20Th century, bringing a synergy, a simultaneous musical and visual revolution.

The book includes 61 plates reproducing the works presented at the exhibition in NYC, a detailed biography of Schoenberg and Kandinsky, numerous references, and a CD with the entire pieces played at the concert the 2Nd of January 1911, including Second String Quartet in F-Sharp Minor, op.10, Three Piano Pieces, 0p 11, Lieder, opp. 2 and 6.

The Centre Pompidou had a major retrospective of Kandinsky's works in 2009.
Schoenberg's concert? I listened to the recording and discovered that I could see colors too.

Link to the recording of one of the "Three Piano Pieces, op.11" played that evening in Munich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrjg3jzP2uI
1."Der Blue Rider", Kandinsky, 1903

2."Composition VII", 1913

3."Impression III" (Concert), 1911

(1 and 2 public domaine, 3 Flickr sharing)