Part 1: In a Nutshell
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Kandinsky: 1920
Wassily Kandinsky opened the door to abstraction in art by painting music. That’s him in the image above, with his cat Vaske. Read the whole story in duopress’s new book Artists and Their Pets by Susie Hodge with illustrations by Violet Lemay.
Professor Violet: 1998
An art teacher uses music to help her students understand the expressive qualities of LINE.
Scroll to the previous post to read Part 1 in its entirety. 🙂
Part 2: Art Inspires Music Inspires Art
Gray: 2017
My teenage son is a talented artist and musician whose taste is almost exclusively classical. Once, as a baby, he danced to The Beach Boys. Video proof is locked in the family vault where it must stay lest I be disowned as a parent.
Excluding that singular event, Gray has always been an all-classics-all-the-time kind of guy. This year he’s gotten into classical Russian art and music.
In his research, my son stumbled across a cool story involving a collaboration between Russian artists and musicians, resulting in an amazing art prompt.
Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition
Composer Modest Mussorgsky and artist, architect, and designer Viktor Hartmann were friends who shared a love of Russian art.
After Hartmann died of aneurysm at the young age of 39, Mussorgsky and a group of mutual friends curated a memorial exhibition to celebrate their late comrade’s life.
Mussorgsky experienced the resulting gallery show as any viewer would, walking from room to room, admiring the 400 or so framed works that adorned the walls. The experience inspired him to compose Pictures at an Exhibition in 1874.
Each of the ten movements of Pictures at an Exhibition expresses emotions experienced by Mussorgsky as he stood before an image created by his late friend Viktor. The interlude expresses his emotions as he walked from one work to the next.
Click here to read a more complete version of the story.
Professor Gray’s Drawing Prompt
Gray sat me down to listen to Pictures at an Exhibition, at a table stocked with paper and a variety of drawing supplies.
The prompt: make a drawing in response to the music. Draw whatever pops into your head. Anything at all.
Gray paused the music between movements, to allow me to finish whatever I had been inspired to draw.
The exercise turned the Russian composer’s experience on it’s head. Mussorgsky composed music in response to visual art. We made visual art in response to his music.
My professor/son couldn’t wait to compare my drawings to Viktor Hartmann’s. Were they similar? Indeed, it was uncanny how closely my sketches resembled Hartmann’s original works, not only at an emotional level, but also in terms of subject matter. This was particularly interesting since I had never heard of Victor Hartmann, and had no idea what the source images looked like.
Gray stumbled across a YouTube video that pairs Mussorgsky’s score with the inspirational source images created by Hartmann. Click here to have a look and a listen. As for my drawings, they are sprinkled throughout this blog post.
The Pictures at an Exhibition drawing prompt is extremely relaxing and fun. I recommend it for any artist who is looking for a break, or for general inspiration. And for the art teachers out there: this assignment would surely keep a class entertained for an entire period, and would be a springboard for a range of important topics. Enjoy! And if you give it a go, snap some photos and send them along… I’d love to see!
All best,
Professor Violet
illustories 
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