MUSIC PAINTINGS

What we think of as music art can be art depicting musicians plying their skills, or the trappings with which music comes into our lives, for example the cover of a favorite CD.  Sound exists in opposition to silence, and music reflects this fact.  Silence bookends music, the same way that a frame contains a work of art on canvas.  Practically speaking, the transitory nature of music can be distilled to our heart’s content by a piece of music art in our home. Do you like jazz? Then an abstract painting of musicians and their brass instruments, caught in the middle of a jam session, can enliven your music room.  The tones of the music aren’t lost as soon as they are heard, but are captured by a painting and await your viewing enjoyment each time you desire to relive the moment you first heard that great jazz riff.  For romantic tastes, simply a painting of a Spanish serenader crooning and playing the guitar for his ladylove in the balcony will bring about sentimental memories of dalliances past and present.  The more formal aspects of music can be represented by an abstract painting depicting an orchestra fairly realistically, then the abstract renditions of notes produced by the musicians portrayed floating around the painting show an artist’s eye view of the entire musical experience.  For pure abstraction, the notion that music is sound in a sense of continual change, a “becoming,” can be shown in a range of colors and shapes, mutating from one to the next in a logical progression.  For the truly exhibitionistic form of abstract painting, the subjective nature of music becomes more prevalent. 

Music art is able to show the structure of music in ways that transcend media.  For instance, the notes C-E-G may be played as a chord, or as sequential notes in a phrase.  If an artist paints color and shapes in discrete formations, then the phrase is obviously shown in the painting, while if the colors and shapes are uniquely blended in a certain sequence, then the chord performance of the notes comes through.  How you can exercise your musical knowhow in this way!  Even if you haven’t a classical music background or don’t know how to read music, the notes you have in your mind give you the means to choose and then hang a piece of music art in your home.

Many of us play musical instruments and enjoy listening to others’ music on CDs.  The artwork for CD covers can be truly beautiful or profound, or it can be op art in the way of the Beatles’ Revolver CD cover.  A portrayal or even caricature of the Beatles and their 1966 look, the Revolver cover uses abstract collages as its theme, in stark black and white imagery.  Whether music art is by a painter on original canvas or a print from a fabulous CD cover, each gives music a place in the home.  Without music, we would have an existence, but it wouldn’t be much of a life.