SOUND & IMAGE. Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors

About

In his On the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky wrote: “Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings.” Ever since Kandinsky likened paint to music, modernists have been thinking hard about the influential ways that visual art and music come together.

This exhibition explores the sounds of paint, ink and other media through the works of a group that has been an ensemble for 78 years and whose artists have been and still are fascinated by the coming together of two art forms. Founding member Mark Rothko’s son Christopher writes about his father: “Music was central to my father’s world—to his own aesthetic sensibilities, certainly, but also to the structure and expressive modes he found as a painter. I think it’s fair to say he was a painter who aspired to be a musician.” 

Interactive links to music are incorporated into the exhibition, as well as music events including an afternoon featuring Andrew Bolotowsky, flutist and son of Federation founder Ilya Bolotowsky, on February 11, 2018, 4-6pm in the gallery.