Promenade

Promenade, 1917-18
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) French, b. Russia
oil on canvas
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Image: royalacademy-Fron Russia

A scan of my art shelves brought me across a new book of mine, a bible illustrated by Chagall. While today's art is not from that work it got me searching for a Chagall. Another artist whose work didn't interest me until recently, Chagall is beginning to grab my eye. His figures float through the canvas. Promenade caught my eye with its color and the figure of the woman who looks as if she may float out of the scene at any point. Take note of what the man holds down as his lady floats up. The man is Chagall and the woman, his wife Bella, who appears in many of his paintings.

Love is a significant theme in much Chagall's work, and is evident here. The painting makes me smile. Chagall is insanely popular (I had much trouble sifting through the oodles of links to sites selling reproductions) and to see his work, this popularity can be understood. The beauty, whimsy and passion for life in his work is a little hard to resit. I went to the Chagall Museum when I was in Nice some years ago and what has stayed with me is his stained glass, the infusion of light in these beautiful compositions is an experience.

This is only tangentially related but Chagall recently came up in my world through the book, The World to Come, by Dara Horn. Developed around a Chagall drawing and some his history but not about Chagall, it is a wonderful story and I highly recommend it.

Music

Composition 8 July 1923
Vasily Kandinsky
55 1/8 x 79 1/8 inches
Image: Guggenheim.org 37.262

My choice of Kandinsky today stems from a head full of music. Hmm... what artist could I choose to represent my musical thoughts? Well, Kandinsky of course! If you are not familiar with Kandinsky's work, though many are due to his place at the forefront of modern abstraction and his incredibly popular colorful compositions, his work not only stems from his own musical background but the paintings themselves exude a wonderful musicality. My search for a specific work for today actually introduced me to a lot of work by Kandinsky I was unaware of. He underwent very specific changes over the years of his career, shifting from elements of more direct representation to variations on geometry. The composition in the upper right hand corner

This painting, Composition, a take on both the composition of music as well as painting, the lines and forms can be seen and heard as musical elements. This can be viewed resembles a musical staff. One's eyes initially dart around a Kandinsky painting but then settle in various areas, experiencing something new wherever their gaze falls. The thin dran lines aid in navigating the painting as a whole. The concentration of color and line can allude to differentiations in tone in music. "Kandinsky's use of color is Kandinsky, himself an accomplished musician, once said Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. The concept that color and musical harmony are linked has a long history, intriguing scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton. Kandinsky used color in a highly theoretical way associating tone with timbre (the sound's character), hue with pitch, and saturation with the volume of sound. He even claimed that when he saw color he heard music." (webmuseum)

Spend some time with the next Kandinsky you come across, its a dual cultural experience.