My Kid Could Paint That

Relating Music and Art

Curated by Becky Reilly

Andy Warhol's 1962 Campbell's Soup Cans and the Buggles' 1979 single "Video Killed the Radio Star" both reflect the rise of consumerism and new technology and cope with their effects.  They reflect the domestic issues of the cold war, away from the international scene.  With the Cold War's ongoing arms race and intervention into other countries, the United States fueled industry over decades to produce a consumer culture of mass-production and rapid change.  Old ideas yielded to new inventions, for better or for worse.  Both pieces seem discontent with American culture but also upbeat on the surface.

Warhol created his Campbell's Soup Cans in a wave of pop art inspiration, recalling that he had had the soup for lunch for more than twenty years.  The painting shows his loyalty to the brand.  In one panel with one soup can, Warhol may have produced a rosy, homey piece between the can's shades of red, gold, and subdued white.  But this repetition of can upon can rejects that feeling for something more mechanical.  The very painting of so many panels mimics the process of mass-production.  He subverts the comfort of the everyday.  The familiarity of a cup of soup becomes an invasion of ideology into the household.  Some critics saw a Marxist message of sameness, while others believed that it praised American industry.  Its banal subject matter was also a source of controversy as critics debated whether art was only in new experience or whether the effect could be achieved by interpreting nontraditional objects.

"Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first music video broadcast on MTV and despite its upbeat rhythm and melody shows an unhappy view of the future.  The lead singer wears sunglasses and a shiny, futuristic suit, apathetic to his surroundings and singing expressionlessly.  He is the embodiment of the song's title, showing how the march of progress tosses aside the old for the new, just as the modernists (as in post 5 ) feared.  The verses sound fairly modern, the minimalist piano and vocals like a contemporary song.  The lyrics illustrate the betrayal of a radio celebrity to television culture as the singer states, "They took the credit for your second symphony/Rewritten by machine and new technology."  The song seems a strange choice to celebrate the music video scene, portraying television's appropriation of music as cold and mechanical.

This is my last post for the art history blog.  It has been wonderful being able to write this year and having such great class… and a greater great audience.  Thank you for reading.

Relating Music and Art

Curated by Becky Reilly

Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist, 1950

Relating Music and Art
Curated by Becky Reilly

World War I was a turning point in modern warfare and international relations that shook both Europe and the United States.  The end of empire loomed and international tensions increased.  But a world a "Jazz age," as F. Scott Fitzgerald would have it, of opulence and new industry followed the war's conclusion.  Countries were forced to undergo rapid scientific change during the war years, rapidly constructing new industries that would dominate the postwar world.  Some, famously Fitzgerald himself and T.S. Eliot, despaired at the modern world, watching traditions die and lower moral standards form around a factory-based society.  But others, like Gershwin, seemed to look toward the future with hope in the face of economic prosperity.  The microcosm displaying both views was in New York City, which had both an active art scene and a geographically close industrial district.  To interpret New York was to interpret the era.

Edward Hopper's Manhattan Bridge Loop shows a lonely figure walking past a building complex, nearly blending into the wall behind him.  The windows on the buildings look empty and dark, and the buildings themselves are either violently red or cast into shadow.  The result is an unrealistic, uncomfortable color palate that increases the painting's tension.  Its conflict is in its isolation.  The person, probably a surrogate for Hopper himself, lives in a populous, thriving city and yet cannot find a single companion.  He suggests that this new postwar New York of material wealth estranges people from one another.

George Gershwin offers praise to this changed city and world.  He thought up every theme for his "Rhapsody in Blue" while on a train ride, hearing the wheels click and turn.  He finished most of the piece except for the piano line, instead writing a note for the conductor to nod to him.  During the premiere, he improvised throughout the missing section and, after the audience applauded, proceeded to write what he had just played.  The music itself shows a mix of classical concepts and jazz infusions.  It modulates through the circle of fifths but in reverse order and is littered with blue notes.  It has passages of both structured ragtime (3:25) and playful rubato (7:11).  Gershwin creates a graceful if not a bit rag-tag transition from classical themes to modern ones and still draws inspiration from the industrial world and New York City.  Hopper and Gershwin differ about whether humanity is preserved in this bold new consumer society.

Relating Music and Art

Curated by Becky Reilly

The concept of Impression, Sunrise is simple enough.  Monet's view of the port at Le Havre could not be called a view, but rather his Impression the scene.  Rather than delineate objects, Monet instead creates tension through his moving, active brushstrokes and the paired complimentary orange and blue.  He was not to first to experiment in impression and unclear technique, as in J.M.W. Turner's murky Slave Ship, but his unrefined style, without attempt to hide technique, sets him apart.  Monet's impression does not convey an image but a perception of an image.

Impressionist ideas influenced all art forms, which "Clair de Lune" and "Gymnopédie No. 1" exemplify.  "Clair de Lune," inspired by a Paul Verlaine poem, is probably Claude Debussy's most famous work, the third movement of his 1905 Suite Bergamasque.  Debussy, whose music is now classified as Classical Impressionism, focuses on atmosphere and gentle tonality.  Including short sections of rubato (like from 2:18 to 2:35) to allow for interpretation and added effect, the piece's tempo ranges greatly throughout, echoing sentimentality and contemplation even through the bittersweet, quickly played sections. "Gymnopédie No. 1" instead holds true to its subtitle, Lent et Doloreux, "slow and painful."  The minimalist, ambient piece seems out of place, only having been published in 1888.  Its broken-up chords and simplicity differ greatly from "Clair de Lune."  Rather than adding extra atmospheric notes like Debussy, Satie strives for ultimate utilitarianism.  Debussy, Monet, and Satie only pursue one goal -- rather than literally depict their subject, they seek to create atmosphere and suggest themes.  They abandon conventional technique to appeal to humanity; rather than relating to a subject, viewers suddenly find themselves in the artist's mind.

Relating Music and Art

Curated by Becky Reilly

I might be biased because I played this piece for a piano recital, but I love Chopin's music.  He searches for technical perfection and yet still conveys the unbridled emotion characteristic of the Romantic period.  His "Op. 10 No. 4 (Étude in #C Minor)" and Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa actually have much in common.  The roiling, disquieting left-hand rolls that begin at 0:18 are the same waves that rock the raft, and both the piece and painting are painstakingly composed but still violent and sweeping.

Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa was inspired by a shipwreck off the coast of Mauritania.  Only fifteen members survived, engaging in cannibalism and shocking the public upon their return.  Géricault shows a moment in which the desperate sailors finally see their savior.  The artist went to great lengths to forge an accurate rendering of the event, speaking with survivors, visiting morgues to learn to paint the dead, verifying the raft's exact dimensions, reading newspaper articles, and attending the captain's trial.  For all his research, he still romanticizes some aspects.  Many of the figures look uncharacteristically healthy, and the poses and chiaroscuro echo earlier movements, almost like a history painting.  But the mix of utter despair and hope are shocking and real.

Chopin's études, like other musician's, were designed for students to study and practice certain techniques -- in this case, velocity.  There are few sustained notes throughout the piece.  He opts instead to write lines of rapid sixteenth notes.  Mastery of an étude means executing it with perfect technique.  The expression comes from the speed, accents, and dynamics.  I find these two works related and interesting because of the intricacies of their creation and careful composition that, opposite the restrained Neoclassical style, instead builds into emotional maelstrom.

Relating Music and Art

Curated by Becky Reilly

The Neoclassical era represented a departure from the supposed frivolity of the Baroque and sought a return to Classical civilization.  Art became more subdued and stately, and Roman and ancient Greek symbolism began to infiltrate architecture, music, and other media.  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Napoleon Bonaparte's contemporary, bedecked his emperor in such in Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne.  He holds Charlemagne's scepter in his right hand, recalling the glory of the Holy Roman Empire, and celebrates the earlier Romans with his golden, Caesar-like laurel wreath.  On the rug, elevated by the step, lies the French Imperial Eagle, Bonaparte's own battle standard.  As Napoleon had seized the art stores of conquered kingdoms and transported them to the Louvre, Ingres had the opportunity to model his paintings on those of the old masters.  But critics disliked his interpretation of Napoleon at his coronation for its seeming confrontation and coldness.

Beethoven initially named his Third Symphony (Eroica, 1804) for Napoleon, believing he embodied the admired tenets of the French Revolution.  But Napoleon realized that stability was more crucial for France than continued pursuit of revolutionary idealism.  When Napoleon established his imperial rule in France, however, Beethoven denounced him as a dictator and destroyed his symphony's title page that carried the dedication.  The lengthy piece displays a large range of emotion, even within each movement.  It portrays the cycle of life, from a heroic march to funereal music and back.  The driving rhythm and incorporation of martial instruments evoke combat and triumphal marches.  The piece testifies to military and ideological heroism, enlightenment in the face of absolute monarchy, an idea it will not relinquish even as its movement in France dissolves.

Beethoven and Ingres present quite different portraits of the emperor.  Ingres, a student of Napoleon's court painter Jacques-Louis David, attempts to portray Napoleon as a new Augustus Caesar, founder of an empire.

Relating Music and Art

Curated by Becky Reilly

Peter Paul Rubens, Garden of Love, 1634

Hey, ladies.

Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Ladies of Avignon) depicts five unconventionally-painted prostitutes, subjects from a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó in Barcelona.  (The title comes from that street name, not the French city.)  The painting has a study of the human form accentuated by a small, central still-life.  Although he completed the first draft in 1907, he repainted the two rightmost heads after a breakup with a lover and did not exhibit the completed piece until 1916.  His display was met with fervent criticism as he was accused of destroying the human and womanly forms, reducing them to crude, unfeminine shapes.

Picasso drew inspiration from various sources of art from across time.  The composition and poses are reminiscent of post-Impressionist Cézanne's The Bathers.  The ladies' confrontational manner is supplanted from Manet's Olympia.  Between 1906 and 1909, after his Rose Period, Picasso modeled many of his works after African indigenous art, such as the mask above from the Dogon people of central Mali.  The faces of the three women on the left are instead interpretations of Iberian masks, with large, triangular noses and almond-shaped eyes.  (As hideous as art critics thought that the Demoiselles d'Avignon were, their facial features actually indicated feminine beauty in different cultures.)  The still-life of fruit is an exercise that many painters performed, but in Picasso's painting, it creates a lush feeling, the curvaceous fruit juxtaposed with the angular, unusually-formed women.

I chose this painting as a blog subject because it demonstrates techniques of early Cubism (proto-Cubism).  Cubist theory stems in part from an assertion by Cézanne that the shapes of natural objects could be reduced to cylinders, spheres, and cones.  New postulations in science about the nature of time, like Einstien's Theory of Relativity, influenced artistic visions.  Cubists often strove to evoke contemporaneity in simultaneous but different perspectives of the same subject.  At the same time, others sought to make their works seem like an incidental, miraculous intersection of many planes, a goal that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon appears to match more closely.  Beyond the techniques that distorted conventional shapes and viewpoints, cubists still wanted a unity across the canvas, as Les Demoiselles does with complimentary colors and neutral shadows and accents.  The painting marked a transition into a new and influential period of modern art that questioned standard perceptions of time, beauty, and form, trying to find the most basic possible representation of humans.

Edward Darley Boit approached Sargent before the Madame X scandal to commission a portrait of his young daughters.  Not only was Sargent one of the most sought-after portraitists of the time, but he, like Boit, was also an American expatriate artist living in Paris.  Perhaps his realization of the Boits' and his common experience led him to commit his own feelings to the canvas, turning a simple commission into something intensely psychological.  In the Boit daughters's portrait, Sargent sees himself and expresses his own uncertainties about the future.

The painting draws inspiration directly from Velázquez's Las Meninas.  Both paintings share similar dimensions (but Daughters is almost exactly square) and use of depth, casting shadows across their subjects.  Each of Boit's daughters poses uniquely, the two youngest in front and the eldest further back.  Two Japanese vases roughly frame the painting, the possessions larger than the girls themselves.  The Boit family donated them along with the painting to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, allowing the viewer to be completely immersed in the scene.

The Daughters maintains a prevailing sense of isolation and unease.  The unconventional composition could be playful in a different execution, but the subdued hues and poses seem to rob the painting of the quiet contentment.  Even the little girl in the foreground looks preoccupied, ignoring her pink doll.  The larger-than-life setting dwarfs the girls, from the strange vases and the tall red divider to the fireplace in the background.  The brushwork is quite good -- look at the light on the leftmost girl's skirt, or the youngest's fine hair -- but the picture seems somehow unsettling.  Perhaps Singer incorporated his own feelings into his art -- uprooted from one's country, the future was too mysterious to contemplate, a dark uncertainty infiltrating the backdrops of his work.

Sargent  entered the painting for the Paris Salon d'Automne in 1883.  Despite some critics accusations that it consisted of "four corners and a void" for its unusual shape and composition, it was well-received.  Would that the Boit daughters had fared so well.  Whatever vague shadows haunted the portrait consumed the sisters later in life.  The younger two remained close, but the older two both developed isolating mental and emotional disturbances.  None of the four ever married.  After a short trip to Madrid to hang alongside its 1656 inspiration in El Prado, the prescient painting was committed to its current museum in Boston, a source of eerie wonder.  The portrait only proves Sargent's deep understanding of his subject and mastery in describing their emotions on the canvas.

All about the etching lies a sentiment of decay.  The neighborhood stands looking empty and desolate, its inhabitants forced to abandon it.  Tall rocks stand like forgotten megaliths by the roadside, helpless in the face of modernity. The living road swarms forth to engulf the edges of the painting with little regard for its victim culture. Paris's citizens and unique form of civilization pale in comparison to the need to renovate and usher in the new.