“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.
When Paul Verlaine’s Fêtes galantes was published in 1869, Théodore de Banville penned the following critique in Le National of 19 April. “There are art-crazed minds, enamored of poetry more than of nature, who want Amintes and Cydalises deftly coiffed
Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) has been called “one of the most purely lyrical of French poets…an initiator of the modern word-music that marks a transition between the Romantic poets and the Symbolists.” His best poetry declared that the French language could
500 years ago, on 6 April 1520, one of the greatest painters and architects of the High Renaissance died suddenly at the age of 37. Raffaello Santi, better known simply as Raphael, hailed from the Italian town of Urbino, a
In pre-Christian celebrations of spring, the egg was seen as a symbol of rebirth. Symbolizing the resurrection of Jesus, it was subsequently defined as an Easter egg by early Christians, “likening the egg symbol to the tomb from which Christ
In 1911 Claude Debussy was questioned in the journal “Musica” on the ideal text to set to music. Having skeptically illustrated a number of possibilities, the composer declared his preference for rhythmic prose, adding that the composer himself should write
In 1982, American artist Julian Schnabel mixed what we might consider high and low culture in his four Maria Callas paintings. These highly abstract works, entitled Maria Callas #1, #2, #3, and #4, were painted on a beautiful dark red/purple
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is famous for his one opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, an opera of seduction and loss. But this was not his only assay into opera. He started work after work, leaving them incomplete: Hélène (1881), Diane au bois
“Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” (Only he who knows longing) is one of four Mignon songs in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister written in 1795. These songs are symbolic, because they are sung and not recited by the main characters. The episode
