Art in Music, Music in Art
by Allan L. Edmunds
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875–1961), in his book Man and His Symbols (1964), wrote that everything can assume symbolic significance, whether natural objects, humanmade things or abstract forms. In a similar way, sound can be interpreted as representing an experience, location, or something emotive—feelings, reflections, or imagery.
In music, sounds emanating from a variety of instruments and voices—or a combination of one or both—in a range of notes can be constructed or arranged into well-planned or free-flowing expression. Sounds can help us see and sense the emotion of a moment; their use in film, television, religious practice and other contexts amplifies the visual experience. Music, guided by compositions in which performers may use a variety of sounds, amplification, or even a simple pause to create something distinctive, is not dissimilar to what visual artists do when they construct visual interpretations of their thoughts, experiences, and explore their imaginations. In fact, some artists attribute a significant portion of their inspiration to elements of music that align with their process and aesthetic interests. Many of these artists may have studied and practiced music, while others were influenced by musical theories and correlations between musical and visual expression—i.e., color, lyricism, repetition, rhythm, balance, movement, and space.
In explanatory notes for the exhibition catalog Sam Gilliam: The Music of Color: 1967–1973, reflections on music and painting by authors Jonathan P. Binstock and Josef Helfenstein spoke of the impact of mid-20th-century styles of jazz such as bebop and their broader vocabulary—improvisation, polyrhythm, and atonality—and other guiding principles and aesthetic approaches that found expression in painting, poetry, and philosophy. The influential jazz saxophonist John Coltrane (1926–1967) was a primary source of inspiration for Sam Gilliam (born 1933). Coltrane was noted for transcending the limits of musical notation and structure in ways similar to Gilliam, who invited improvisation into his thinking and the dissolution of traditional physical boundaries in painting. Gilliam’s works on paper (figure 11, Golden Neck) and hanging canvases such as Seahorses (figure 12) pushed, literally, the edge of visual art.
Figure 10: John E. Dowell Jr. and the Visual Music Ensemble, Sound Images, performance on May 26, 1983, Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Several contemporary American artists, especially those, like Gilliam, identified with the Abstract Expressionist school of painting—including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning—attribute exposure to new developments in jazz and its sensual dimensions as having an influence on their working environment and, consequently, on their studio practice. Their art was a response to, or inspired by, what Gilliam described as “the music we were being challenged to see.”
Figure 11: Sam Gilliam, Golden Neck, offset lithograph, stitching at Fabric Workshop, and hand colored acrylic, 43" x 30" 1993–94
Still, others were merely listening to music while creating, giving musical titles to artwork, or using musical symbols in compositions, which were often superficial in demonstrating musical inspirations in the context of visual expression.
As mentioned earlier, contemporary artists were challenging the Western European tradition of art through increased multicultural exposure and opening up to free expression and a more open structure to what music and art could be. Multifaceted and multidimensional approaches to creativity and the performative processes of music and art emerged and flourished.
John Milton Cage Jr. (1912–1992) was an American composer, music theorist, artist, philosopher, and public intellectual. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and nonstandard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-World War II avant-garde and among the foremost practitioners and advocates for changing the paradigm of how we look at art conceptually as well as structurally.
Musician Glenn Kotche (born 1970) attributes Cage by showing us how “music is everything—all sound and silence, too. And he communicated trust. He showed how to trust and learn from the world that we live in: how to trust chance and the subtle cues that surround us every day.”
Musician Chris Carter (born 1953) sees music as a means of communication: “What it communicates is always going to be largely dependent on the subjectivity of the listener irrespective of the presentation and intention of the composer. That’s where the beauty of music/sound lies, it’s an incredible vehicle for opening dialogue.”
Cage believed that music can be the “found” sound of rain hitting surfaces, leaves moved by wind, or the splatter of paint on a canvas. Cage helped change our understanding of music by working with found and nontraditional sounds and, in the words of musician Thomas DeLio (born 1951), “empowering musicians and audiences to find beauty in listening to the noise around them. He advocated that anything is music and the act of presentation can be a vivid realization of the possibility of form Cage often said that for him composing no longer involved making choices, but asking questions, for questions illuminate potential. Ultimately, he became less interested in creating specific forms (answers), than instantiating the possibility of form (questions).”
Figure 12: Sam Gilliam, Seahorses, an installation on the exterior of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1975, courtesy of the David Kordansky Gallery and Sam Gilliam Studios.
Figure 13: John Dowell, L.P.W.S., silkscreen, 30" x 22" 1976
Music in Art found at Artura.org
Among the artworks on Artura.org are portraits of musicians and images that incorporate depictions of musicians and instruments among other elements of their composition. However, this section of the Artura.org Teacher’s Guide presents curriculum connections between visual art and the study of music through the observation and understanding of structural connections between the two art forms. Cage’s theories and use of nontraditional elements in both his music and visual art profoundly influenced artists such as John E. Dowell Jr., a master printmaker-painter and ceramicist. During an almost 10-year period stretching from the mid-1970s through the ‘80s, he created a large suite of watercolors, paintings, and prints that reflected his deep interest in music and practiced what some consider performance art through the pioneering work of his Visual Music Ensemble (figure 10), a group of five musicians with Dowell on piano. Dowell merged his knowledge of piano and its expansive sound potential (especially in the context of jazz) with art creation and placed himself within the avant-garde of thinkers who saw connections between listening and seeing. During his Music Period, Dowell created abstract compositions in which color, form, and space were manipulated and modulated to express the sensibilities
of sounds, if not the actual production of sound. The spaces separating shapes and planes were akin to sound intervals in music; intensity of color to high and low notes; and the length of lines to a chord held long or short. On occasions when the Visual Music Ensemble was performing, watercolors and prints by the artist were used as scores. During concerts, silkscreen prints such as Lines Played with Soul (L.P.W.S.) (1976, figure 13), C+W Duet (1976, figure 14), Sound Limits (1976), and Altered Chorus (1987), and several watercolors carried titles relating them to the Music Series. These works were displayed on easels during the ensemble’s performances in museums and concert halls across the country. Dowell shares his approach of having “musicians audially creating a representation of the visual artwork, which was functioning as the actual score. The music was jointly realized as a group development, rehearsed and reworked utilizing recordings of practice sessions and past concerts for self-critique and discovery. There was only limited improvisation, the artwork (score) guided the group and myself on the creative hunt.”
The improvisational style resonated with the saxophone and other horns, piano, bass, and other instruments favored by jazz musicians for their range of chords and tones.
Figure 14: John Dowell, C + W Duet, silkscreen, 30" x 22" 1976
Figure 15: Moe Brooker, ...And Then You Wonder, offset lithograph, 24" x 18" 1996
Another artist featured in Artura.org who professes the impact of music in his compositions is painter Moe Brooker (born 1940) (…And Then You Wonder, figure 15). Moved by music selected for the studio and the random sounds of the streets, Brooker expresses the inspiration he finds in music in fluid and aggressive lines and mark-making, contrasting colors, and the overall vibrancy of his abstract compositions. Brooker has described the slow marches, processions, and flowers of funerals as references for his “noise” and imagery. He also attributes the graffiti-like marks that swirl across and through his compositions as symbolizing the call and response of jazz musicians playing, street-corner rappers, and everyone’s interactions with the visual richness of urban environments. A deeply religious person, Brooker signs his prints with the note (To God Give the Glory), a nod to spirituals and, generally, the important role music plays in church services.
Japanese artist Junji Amano (born 1949) is represented on Artura.org with In the Wind D (figure 16), a lithograph with collage that visualizes the wind and its sound—swirling movements of soft color and textures and the suggestion of changing light accented by four vertical lines representing the stationary element needed to suggest the low intensity of sound whirling around it.
Whether directly referenced through the visualization of traditional composition and performance or found, nontraditional sounds now associated with the making of music, art—like music—can be created to symbolize many ideas and many emotions that tap into our lived experiences and the various inspirations that drive our creativity.
Reference Notes
Jung, C. G., and Marie-Luise Franz. Man and His Symbols.
New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1964.
Blau, Max. “33 Musicians on What John Cage
Communicates.” NPR, September 5, 2012.
Gilliam, Sam, Jonathan P. Binstock, and Josef Helfenstein.
Sam Gilliam: The Music of Color 1967–1973. Verlag Walther
König, 2018.
Dowell Jr, John E. The Visual Music Ensemble. In conversation
with Allan L. Edmunds, 2021
