I’ve been to see quite a few exhibitions this week. One which really did interest me was « Arnold Schönberg Peindre l’âme » The Artistic Revival in Vienna. A very dear friend in Australia didn’t know that Schönberg had also been a painter as well as a highly reputable composer/musician. I sent him a small selection of his paintings by email.
When did I first listen to him? I imagine that it was with my Mother but then Gianni who was really dedicated to his music took me on much further. When did I know that he was a painter? Much later as I visited a small retrospective of his work somewhere along the line.
http://discovmaggsie.blogspot.fr/2014/01/a-moment-i-will-remember.html
If you look at what I wrote them, it's frankly what I would write now. I find that Schonberg was very brave. He converted to be a protestant and then reconverted to his roots and judiasm when war had broken out.
My Australian friend was very derogatory and I decided to wait to see if I would write the chapter. Those were his feelings and I couldn’t even print them. Mine are something else. He is not a great artist, nor did he pretend to be one, but his relationship with other artists and especially with Kandinsky were landmarks at the beginning of the 20th century. When Kandinsky first heard his music he wrote :
Following a concert in Munich on 2 January
1911, Wassily Kandinsky wrote to Schoenberg
to tell him how much his music reflected
his own “aspirations” in painting. This letter
marked the beginning of the sustained
correspondence and life-long friendship
between these two great creators, and
led to Schoenberg’s participation in
the first exhibition of the Blaue Reiter
group in Munich in the winter of 1911–1912.
In 1912 Kandinsky published an article on
Schoenberg’s pictures, dividing them into
two genres: figures and landscapes painted
directly from nature, and “visions.”
I think the fact that his painting is so related to portraits of people who had influenced him, especially Kandinsky, have made me look at Schonberg’s work in a very different way. Of course you know how much l love Kandinsky's work...
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| Kandinsky 1910 - Improvisation 16 (photo) |
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| Kandinsky - study for improvistation 7 - 1910 |
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| Kindinsky, Painting with a red spot, 1914 |
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| Kandinsky, Impression V, (Park) 1911 |
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| Kandisky, Sonorité Blanch: 1911 |
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| Kandinsky, sketch for Violett 1914 |
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| Kandinsiky (Résonnace muttoclore) 1928 |
The fact that Shonberg could do caricatures or just have fun
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| Schonberg- Satire, 1910 |
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| Schonberg (Aube naissante à Hoisen près de Gmunchen) 1905 |
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| Schoneberg "Blick' 1910 |
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| Schonberg "Caricature" -1921 |
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| Schonberg "Caricature" -1921 |
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| Schonberg "Caricature" -1921 |
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| Schonberg -1921 |
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| Self Portrait - 1910 |
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| Blick (regard) 1910 |
Play games and not easy at that
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| Music for an electric typewriter - 1909 |
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| Card games for whist or Bridge 1909-10 |
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| Card games for whist or Bridge 1909-10 |
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| Echecs de la coalition - 1920-25 |
Or sometimes, his work didn't seem to be related to anything in particular...
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| Chair - 1909 |
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| Alliance - 1910 |
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| Hands - 1910 |
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| Memory of Oskar Kokoschka - 1910 |
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| Le chemin blblique (acte 111) 1927 |
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| Le chemin blblique (acte 1) 1927 |
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| Self portrait -man, walking with his back to us - 1911 |
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| Nocturne, 1910 |
Paint portraits or be painted by very well known artists of that period
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| Mathilde - 1910 |
DIFFERENT POTRAITS DIFFERENT PEOPLE
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| Self portrait |
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| Gustave Mahler - Schonberg 1910 |
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| Max Oppenheimer - Portrait of Schonberg 1909 |
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| Egon Schiele - Portrait of Schonberg - 1917 |
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| Shonberg Satire 1910 |
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| Self portrait - 1910 |
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| Self portrait - 1917-09 |
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| Self portrait - 1917-09 |
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| Self portrait - 1910 |
No perhaps he wasn't a painter for me, but rather a composer whose music is influenced by art around him. Not to mention the different ways he saw himself in his self portraits.
Another point I had quite forgotten that there was even the movement of degenerated music as there was with degenerated art.
I doubt if my Australian friend will see it this way…after his email, I certainly took much longer to look at the work on my computer - and then I decided, damn it, l’ll write a short chapter because quite simply his music means so much to me and I can still relate it to his painting…
Commentaires
‘’What a strange thing to say,’ said Maria. ‘But you’d finished with music, hadn’t you?’
‘I thought so, too, Maria. I’d tried to shut it out after moving to Switzerland. I was a painter now, I’d say to myself. My music days are over. But music, I found, was an integral part of my being and I couldn’t forget it completely. That had been one of my problems. Harry taught me to incorporate music into my art. He taught me about the blending of the arts into one all-inclusive Gesamtkunstwerk. He showed me how rhythm marks the movement of time in music and also in art. He pointed out other elements that had been interrupting the free flow of my work. One minute I was drawing, the next I was splashing colour across the canvas in a spasm of mad abandon. Here again, Harry showed me how I could calmly integrate all these opposing components.