Visual Music. Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900

This groundbreaking new book and the exhibition it accompanies trace the history of a revolutionary idea: that fine art should attain the abstract purity of music.

Music has inspired some of the most progressive art of our time ? from the abstract painting of Wassily Kandinsky and Frantisek Kupka to the mid-century experimental films of Oskar Fischinger and Harry Smith, and contemporary installations by Jennifer Steinkamp and Jim Hodges. While early abstract paintings tended to approach music by association, the colour organs, films, light shows and installations from the mid-twentieth century to the present day engage a range of perceptual faculties simultaneously to create a plethora of sensations in the viewer.

The most complete examination of this phenomenon to date, Visual Music features ninety major works of art plus related documentation, focusing on abstract and mixed-media art forms and their connections to musical forms as varied as classical, jazz and electronics.

The book includes three scholarly essays, each discussing a distinct art historical period in depth, and an additional essay by Olivia Mattis that approaches the subject from a musicologist?s perspective, as well as a chronology, artist biographies and a selected bibliography.

CONTENIDO:

Foreword (Ned Rifkin, Jeremy Strick)
Preface and Acknowledgments
- Visual Music (Jeremy Strick)
- Music for the Eyes: Abstract Painting and Light Art (Judith Zilczer)
- Visual-Music Culture (Kerry Brougher)
- Expanding the Synaesthetic Paradigm (Ari Wiseman)
- Scriabin to Gershwin: Color Music from a Musical Perspective (Olivia Mattis)

Checklist of the Exhibition
Chronology
Biographies
Selected Bibliography