“Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity.”
Modest Mussorgsky
As philosopher Richard Wollheim says, art is “one of the most elusive of the traditional problems of human culture.” In its simplest manifestation, art is a form of communication that serves as a vehicle for the expression of emotions and ideas. As ideas and beliefs are culturally specific and constantly changing over time, there really is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art. That being said, the classical branches of the visual arts are identified as painting, sculpture and architecture. Literature and poetry are considered part of the humanities or as one of the arts, while music, alongside theatre, film and dance belong to the performing arts. In this section you will discover not only specific explorations of individual art forms, but also a more detailed probing of the relationship between the visual arts and music, including painting and music, sculpture and music and architecture and music. Originally, poetry and music were treated as a unity, but gradually they have become more independent. Nevertheless, the two art forms have never forgotten their shared genetic makeup, and been intertwined for millennia. Art and music have engaged in a dynamic relationship that reveals a diverse range of human activity intended to be appreciated for their beauty.
Film director Martin Scorsese commented in 2005, “If Caravaggio were alive today he would have loved the cinema; his paintings take a cinematic approach… He painted religious subject matter but the models were obviously people from the streets; he had
The city of Salzburg rose from a small Celtic settlement into a powerful economic center because of its trade in salt. The city regulated the collection of tolls and taxes from barges ferrying salt from the northern part of the
In 2021 we commemorate the Quincentenary of the birth of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). He was an enigmatic, rebellious and dangerous individual, and he did affect a paradigm shift in the arts. His paintings probed the physical and emotional
The internationally renowned sculptor John Henry has produced a substantial number of monumental and large-scaled works across the United States, Europe, and Asia. His sculptures resemble huge welded steel drawings, “arranging linear and rectilinear elements that appear to defy gravity
In 1947, with Lucifer, American painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) put down his brush, laid his canvas on the floor, and started to apply his paint by drips and spatters. In this canvas, he also added small bits of gravel to
We think of Marcel Proust (1871-1922) mainly as the novelist, author of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past) but in his youth, he was a poet as well. In his
Marcel Proust’s oeuvre is rife with musical references. He openly refers to composers, librettists, performers and musical compositions. One anecdote reports that Proust woke up Gaston Poulet, the leader of the Poulet Quartet, in the middle of the night. The
The Belgian Symbolist painter and sculptor Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) is best known for his paintings that blend precise realism with a dreamlike atmosphere. His scenes are quite realistic, but then he mixes in motive and ideas from history and the
