“When I hear music, I see in the mind's eye colors which move with the music. This is not imagination, nor is it a psychic phenomenon. It is an inward reality."
Olivier Messiaen
“If, when a musical instrument sounds, someone would perceive the finest movements of the air, he certainly would see nothing but a painting with an extraordinary variety of colors.”
Athanasius Kircher
Musurgia Universalis (1650).
The Ancient Greeks drew a direct correlation between sound, color and astronomy in their search for cosmic harmony. Much later, 17th and 18th century scientists, mathematicians, and physicists were making similar connections. In Newton's
Opticks (1704) he identifies a sound for each of the colors. The Jesuit monk and mathematician Louis Bertrand Castel in a somewhat quixotic manner came up with the idea for a clavecin ocular, or light organ in which the "correct" color would appear for each corresponding note. Artists have continued to examine the relationship between color and sound. Kandinsky, Klee, and Whistler actively examined this idea. Others including Bridget Riley in her
Song of Orpheus series and Alma Thomas in her
Red Rose Cantata and
Cherry Blossom Symphony have also made direct relationships between color and sound. Architects like
Chris Janney have worked extensively with color and sound in interactive environments and contemporary artist Stephen Vitiello, working with lighting designer Jeremy Choate come back to the ideas in the clavecin oculaire for their 2008 installation
Four Color Sound.
What connections do you make between color and sound? How would you paint sounds? Or even more challenging, how would you paint silence?
Here are links to three great articles to help inform your creative process.
The Scale and the Spectrum, James Peel
published in Cabinet magazine, Issue 22, 2006Color and Music, Jorg Jewanski
published in the Grove online Music Dictionary, 2006published on line at Media Art Net
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