Probably stating the obvious, but happily we don't have to choose which form is most affecting because we can enjoy visual art, music, architecture, and other arts, all at the same time! Amazing to be a human. :)
Great essay. It randomly came across my "notes" feed because of a shared subscriber and I am so glad it did.
You raise some good points regarding art and music. Context is often needed concerning abstract art and artists like Rothko, whom I love. Seeing a Rothko painting in a book or via a computer screen doesn't do it justice. One has to immerse oneself into his large color fields, absorb and bathe in its melancholy as you stretch to grasp the angles of its blurred squares. The squares are often its only anchor to ground its viewer. There is no need to overthink....just experience and feel one's own emotions. Being surrounded by several, for example in the Rothko room at the Tate Modern or the Rothko Chapel has a considerable influence and impact on one's emotions. His work can't have the same effect when viewing it on a computer or in a book.
I also wonder if people have less patience with visual art because of the spaces it is exhibited. Museums and Art Galleries are not particularly warm and inviting spaces and I say that as somebody who has an MFA and is an art educator. The galleries often feel overly academic, and stuffy. Many people don't see themselves represented in the art that's on the walls, and those who regularly frequent are often middle/higher income (museum admissions in the US are also quite high). The spaces we display art ask and expect too much from the general public when they should be more welcoming.
The mass streaming platforms for music are significantly more accessible and even physical media is relatively affordable. Music with a familiar time signature and easily identifiable lyrics also asks less from its listener. However, move into free or experimental jazz or, let's say, really out-there music such as 'Trout Mask Replica' by Captain Beefheart, and it is significantly more challenging to its listeners as the familiar has been removed.
It took years for John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' to reveal itself to me and when it did, it was like a light was turned on and a new universe opened up to me.
Fantastic question you raise. These are just my immediate two cents.
So many astute comments. It’s to your credit that your essay draws them. With respect to the research and everyone’s individual responses to the arts and reporting on their impact, my experience in my later life is somewhat different in that, if I am engaged, the quality of that engagement and consequent depth of immersion is the same no matter the art form or historical period in which a given work exists. This is probably a less articulate way of saying: transcendent. Like Richard Kamins, I saw the Rothko exhibit at the Tate all those years ago and distinctly recall wanting to hear Coltrane’s Crescent LP immediately following. Something in my perception connected the two, probably because I experience such art meditatively, as an emptying of myself into the work. I’ll go through the same thing with my favorite (countless) works of cinema. The suspension of critical distance is the hallmark of my experience. I might add that, as a painter myself, I aspire to the same meditative practice. One eventually has to step back, and what’s left is echo and memory, which is why we keep going back. 🙏
I think music allows for narrative and tension more easily than visual art. Not that narrative and tension cannot exist in visual art, but I think it’s easier to accomplish within music. And a compelling narrative or tension can strike deep, emotionally. I also feel physically closer to musicians than to visual artists when I consume their work, live certainly but recorded also, and I think that creates a human connection between the consumer and the artist that is not as strong as in visual art. And with the vast majority of music, there is more than one artist in the other side of the work. As an example I offer side 2 of Charles Mingus’s The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady album, a 17 minute piece of music I listened to recently (on LP) which brought me to tears. It’s one of the few pieces on my running list of songs that have made my cry that does not have lyrics. Part of what moved me was the image of the musicians in the studio playing together - the human achievement of their collective effort. Layer that on top of (or underneath?) the musical narrative in the piece, and it’s fantastically moving.
The immersive quality of music had a profound effect on me as a child which was why I became a dancer. I don’t know if dance ultimately has the same impact on audiences or if, perhaps, it becomes too “literal” to engender that transcendent quality possible with music. Your article has made me question it. Does dance (coupled with music most often) amplify the musical experience or does it bring it back to earth?
The Chichu Museum by Tadao Ando in Naoshima, Japan inspired me with awe. The approach walk skirts lily ponds and the main gallery is Monet's water lilies. The next door gallery is a sky space by James Turrell. Moving back and forth between these shifted my perspective on the Monet work so that I wasn't looking at the vegetation and water surface, but at the sky and clouds reflected on the water. I was looking down at water to look up at the sky. And then to add the awe of time, where the clouds move by fleetingly and painting in nature captures only a moment while taking many moments to fix paint to surface. This shift, where I sense that my seeing has shifted to what I feel is closer to an insight on seeing from the artist, is similar to the shift when I listen to music and hear something beyond the music, something like a message, an opinion, a gesture full of meaning, a solid truth amid the flowing abstraction. It's not just what is played nor just how it is played, but what and how together, like watching a movie with the sound off, then hearing a movie with visual missing, then taking in sight and sound together and absorbing the power when both emphasize the same point. Both of these shifts, in seeing and hearing, can evoke strong emotions in me. Usually, it is a joy and quickening of pulse, driving me to find someone to share the experience with, even if the shift reveals grief or anger.
Relative to music, there is a physical wave that actually moves us — at the level of the anatomy of the ear at the most necessary level and as the sound waves impact the whole of the body in the broadest possible way. While light may also be a wave, the sound waves actually move air while the frequencies of light work in ways with far less physical force.
Relative to visual arts, there are moments when something visual will take hold of me, will draw me to states of exceptional emotional and intellectual response. The Cy Twombly gallery at The Menil Collection is one such space, immersive paintings that consistently move the whole of my senses. The Al Held exhibit that WSU had back in the early 1990s also did that for me. And the painter David Aylsworth’s work also consistently puts me into a space of awe and joy.
Music works us over while visual arts give us a space within which to work.
I'll try to answer your final questions. For years, I've turned to music in good times and to get me through hard times. Then, I got involved with theater both as audience member and performer. Both live music and live theater have moments that can cut to the core and make you think. Exciting rhythms can free you up just as a good comedy can make bad days better. Watching the interactions of improvising musicians, how they cam communicate with their eyes or just a nod of the head, often, to me, is worth the price of admission. Watching good actors and how they move around the stage, how they listen, and how they use their body to convey one emotion while their words say something different can be transformative. Thanks, Michelle, for stimulating reading. PS: I took my daughter to England 22 years to spend a semester abroad and we spent a day in London. We stopped at the Tate Modern which, at the time, was displaying several pieces by Mark Rothko. The room was sublty lit and one particular large canvas stood out as if it were a 3-D projection. Absolutely stunning!
Probably stating the obvious, but happily we don't have to choose which form is most affecting because we can enjoy visual art, music, architecture, and other arts, all at the same time! Amazing to be a human. :)
Great essay. It randomly came across my "notes" feed because of a shared subscriber and I am so glad it did.
You raise some good points regarding art and music. Context is often needed concerning abstract art and artists like Rothko, whom I love. Seeing a Rothko painting in a book or via a computer screen doesn't do it justice. One has to immerse oneself into his large color fields, absorb and bathe in its melancholy as you stretch to grasp the angles of its blurred squares. The squares are often its only anchor to ground its viewer. There is no need to overthink....just experience and feel one's own emotions. Being surrounded by several, for example in the Rothko room at the Tate Modern or the Rothko Chapel has a considerable influence and impact on one's emotions. His work can't have the same effect when viewing it on a computer or in a book.
I also wonder if people have less patience with visual art because of the spaces it is exhibited. Museums and Art Galleries are not particularly warm and inviting spaces and I say that as somebody who has an MFA and is an art educator. The galleries often feel overly academic, and stuffy. Many people don't see themselves represented in the art that's on the walls, and those who regularly frequent are often middle/higher income (museum admissions in the US are also quite high). The spaces we display art ask and expect too much from the general public when they should be more welcoming.
The mass streaming platforms for music are significantly more accessible and even physical media is relatively affordable. Music with a familiar time signature and easily identifiable lyrics also asks less from its listener. However, move into free or experimental jazz or, let's say, really out-there music such as 'Trout Mask Replica' by Captain Beefheart, and it is significantly more challenging to its listeners as the familiar has been removed.
It took years for John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' to reveal itself to me and when it did, it was like a light was turned on and a new universe opened up to me.
Fantastic question you raise. These are just my immediate two cents.
Thank you again, for your essay!
So many astute comments. It’s to your credit that your essay draws them. With respect to the research and everyone’s individual responses to the arts and reporting on their impact, my experience in my later life is somewhat different in that, if I am engaged, the quality of that engagement and consequent depth of immersion is the same no matter the art form or historical period in which a given work exists. This is probably a less articulate way of saying: transcendent. Like Richard Kamins, I saw the Rothko exhibit at the Tate all those years ago and distinctly recall wanting to hear Coltrane’s Crescent LP immediately following. Something in my perception connected the two, probably because I experience such art meditatively, as an emptying of myself into the work. I’ll go through the same thing with my favorite (countless) works of cinema. The suspension of critical distance is the hallmark of my experience. I might add that, as a painter myself, I aspire to the same meditative practice. One eventually has to step back, and what’s left is echo and memory, which is why we keep going back. 🙏
I think music allows for narrative and tension more easily than visual art. Not that narrative and tension cannot exist in visual art, but I think it’s easier to accomplish within music. And a compelling narrative or tension can strike deep, emotionally. I also feel physically closer to musicians than to visual artists when I consume their work, live certainly but recorded also, and I think that creates a human connection between the consumer and the artist that is not as strong as in visual art. And with the vast majority of music, there is more than one artist in the other side of the work. As an example I offer side 2 of Charles Mingus’s The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady album, a 17 minute piece of music I listened to recently (on LP) which brought me to tears. It’s one of the few pieces on my running list of songs that have made my cry that does not have lyrics. Part of what moved me was the image of the musicians in the studio playing together - the human achievement of their collective effort. Layer that on top of (or underneath?) the musical narrative in the piece, and it’s fantastically moving.
The immersive quality of music had a profound effect on me as a child which was why I became a dancer. I don’t know if dance ultimately has the same impact on audiences or if, perhaps, it becomes too “literal” to engender that transcendent quality possible with music. Your article has made me question it. Does dance (coupled with music most often) amplify the musical experience or does it bring it back to earth?
The Chichu Museum by Tadao Ando in Naoshima, Japan inspired me with awe. The approach walk skirts lily ponds and the main gallery is Monet's water lilies. The next door gallery is a sky space by James Turrell. Moving back and forth between these shifted my perspective on the Monet work so that I wasn't looking at the vegetation and water surface, but at the sky and clouds reflected on the water. I was looking down at water to look up at the sky. And then to add the awe of time, where the clouds move by fleetingly and painting in nature captures only a moment while taking many moments to fix paint to surface. This shift, where I sense that my seeing has shifted to what I feel is closer to an insight on seeing from the artist, is similar to the shift when I listen to music and hear something beyond the music, something like a message, an opinion, a gesture full of meaning, a solid truth amid the flowing abstraction. It's not just what is played nor just how it is played, but what and how together, like watching a movie with the sound off, then hearing a movie with visual missing, then taking in sight and sound together and absorbing the power when both emphasize the same point. Both of these shifts, in seeing and hearing, can evoke strong emotions in me. Usually, it is a joy and quickening of pulse, driving me to find someone to share the experience with, even if the shift reveals grief or anger.
Relative to music, there is a physical wave that actually moves us — at the level of the anatomy of the ear at the most necessary level and as the sound waves impact the whole of the body in the broadest possible way. While light may also be a wave, the sound waves actually move air while the frequencies of light work in ways with far less physical force.
Relative to visual arts, there are moments when something visual will take hold of me, will draw me to states of exceptional emotional and intellectual response. The Cy Twombly gallery at The Menil Collection is one such space, immersive paintings that consistently move the whole of my senses. The Al Held exhibit that WSU had back in the early 1990s also did that for me. And the painter David Aylsworth’s work also consistently puts me into a space of awe and joy.
Music works us over while visual arts give us a space within which to work.
I'll try to answer your final questions. For years, I've turned to music in good times and to get me through hard times. Then, I got involved with theater both as audience member and performer. Both live music and live theater have moments that can cut to the core and make you think. Exciting rhythms can free you up just as a good comedy can make bad days better. Watching the interactions of improvising musicians, how they cam communicate with their eyes or just a nod of the head, often, to me, is worth the price of admission. Watching good actors and how they move around the stage, how they listen, and how they use their body to convey one emotion while their words say something different can be transformative. Thanks, Michelle, for stimulating reading. PS: I took my daughter to England 22 years to spend a semester abroad and we spent a day in London. We stopped at the Tate Modern which, at the time, was displaying several pieces by Mark Rothko. The room was sublty lit and one particular large canvas stood out as if it were a 3-D projection. Absolutely stunning!
So much brilliance Michelle- thank you!